Decarbonizing The Hardest to Decarbonize Sectors with Kim Carnahan

Let’s say a company has set an ambitious climate goal to drastically reduce their carbon emissions, but in order for them to meet that goal, they would need their supplier two or three links up the chain to clean up their own footprint. If the company has no relationship to this supplier and no influence over how they do business, how does the company get that supplier to reduce their emissions? That’s where Kim Carnahan and the Center for Green Market Activation come in. At GMA, Carnahan is working to decarbonize the hardest to decarbonize sectors including, aviation, maritime, trucking, and cement and concrete. GMA finds companies like the one described above and orchestrates procurement deals on their behalf with decarbonized suppliers.  On this episode, she joins host Inder Singh to break down the market-shaping tactics GMA is using to create and accelerate a greener market in the heavy industry and transport sectors. They go over the importance of aggregating demand through buyers’ alliances, how to build trust across buyers and suppliers in a nascent market, and the ways they’re incentivizing suppliers to innovate towards greener technologies.  The Market Shapers Podcast is a production of Inder Singh and is produced by University FM. This interview was recorded in June 2025. Episode Quotes: Climate ambition requires market expertise Most of the companies that we're working with are trying to decarbonize sectors that they don't actually work in. You know, they're a bank, but they fly a lot. And what they have found is, one, in almost all cases, the bulk of the emissions from the good they are buying don't lie with the supplier they buy it from. They lie three or four steps down the value chain to a supplier they have never met and certainly do not have a contract with. You very quickly faced this problem of influence, which is, does your supplier even have enough influence on the next guy to tell him anything? We had to find a way to connect the buyers with a willingness to pay a premium with the suppliers who actually need to be doing the hard, hard work of decarbonizing heavy industry and transport. You need something like this book and claim system that we design to help the money find its cause, so to speak. Markets don't shape themselves 26:23: Markets don't shape themselves; it's probably a naive idea that markets shape themselves, but really, behind every functioning market is infrastructure. And that's rules and laws and standards and registries and demand signals like what we're doing, and government policy, various incentives. Somebody had to put all of those in place and maintain them also over time. Altruism is not going to create green markets 27:02: Altruism is not going to create green markets. We aren't going to have green markets because we should have them, or because the planet needs it. We have to really look at risk and rewards, incentives, influence. That's what makes companies take action. So, use what you've got, where is their influence and where can we drive the creation of green markets. Show Links:  Kim Carnahan | LinkedIn The Center for Green Market Activation Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.