It is my great pleasure to welcome here today we have your Royal Highness from work enough princess of c. To take much she is joining us today she is the ambassador of burkean a fast so for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency we also have from door to post. Professor dr Christoph Earhart executive Vice President for Corporate Communications and responsibility. And from deutsche Asset Management mikhail holter joins us today you are a director at door to and we thank you very much for being with us and from the local institute in germany dr felix mathis is with us here on the set and dr felix mathis is Research Coordinator for energy and Climate Policy was to all of you thank you so much for being here today and thank you also to our host to door to post d. H. L. Group christophe i want to direct the first question to you because were sitting in your Global Headquarters right now both the post tower in bonn germany a structure which has won numerous awards for just how green and sustainable it is. Apart from building green structures can business save the climate and what is d. H. L. Doing well i think a business can make a significant contribution to it and has to because on the one side we have a responsibility to the environment in which we are active Natural Environment as well as Society Environment secondly we have an opportunity also to differentiate us from competitors with sustainable products and services. And then for sure we can be a role model for other companies in our industry and so that actually basically three reasons why we think it is necessary to be engaged in sustainability as a company and we have goals in that area since quite a while we started a project to reduce our suit two emissions by thirty percent ontario twenty twenty in two thousand and seven already and we achieved those targets four years earlier than expected and as a result of that we did a lot more long term shop now and we decided to aim for going emission free by twenty fifty which is a long very ambitious shop yes most of us may not be around and twenty fifty anymore and thats why we have to find old so in between targets by the twenty twenty five and i want to talk with you a little bit later about how it is that you plan to get there because what an ambitious goal that is but but first i want to go right now from from big business to a small product which is having a very big impact especially on the continent of africa and your highness i will turn to you without because you have pioneered this solar lamp which has actually been they named by the United Nations as one of the fourteen global Breakthrough Solutions for achieving sustainability first of all congratulations to you on doing that second of all id like to know how big do you see its impact as being. First of all i would like to thank you to having me on the program and also to thank the government of germany for thing the cup twenty three im here also has a special envoy for the president of kenya first so as the g. s and Climate Change so of course coming back to your question the why did i start the mama Light Initiative and why this is because when you finish your study thats what junior by profession i went back to the countryside all the way down what we called the last mile and it was dark as you cant imagine i say my husband is that my kids i have four kids and they have life they can make they they study things need to change thats was i say im a highness from the countryside i have responsibility so there i need to take my responsibility and start doing my homework the marmalade is for t. V. Is doing my homework because parents are sending send send send me to school so i came with a solution so that i start to the world and the impact its really huge when you see Small Business start growing is reduced and our pollution myself my lungs are weak and why because i study myself when i was small with care isnt it there is a lot to i know the empath and i know also the value when you have a light a powerful light that also it for me bringing that solution is was to dont bring a disease to my people. Everything and the quality of the l. E. D. That im jude that im using because you have a lot of long tents in the market but the quality of the lead any of these are not good then its creating also ice problems so thats is the so amazing to see how something so simple with just a little injection of passion there can really make a very big difference michael i want to turn to you because you cover the big money perspective here youre designing funds which you used to see in a bill assets people can invest in them at deutsche Asset Management how do you see sustainability and profitability going together well i think profitability is a function of Sustainable Business practice there is no there is no difference between the one of the other is not its not a contradiction i think the challenge we have is to find enough good businesses like such companies to tips which capital can support. We have an affluence of capital there is no question about it we have invested already capital that has financed the acquisition of our own two hundred thousand of installations like her highness as presented in Eastern Africa we are migrating to western africa right so we have solutions we have capital we have the technology we need entrepreneurs and we need to find this kind of spirit to drive the seduced into the market is that because there arent enough businesses today that are making money being sustainable. I would all be any business that has long term success works sustainably it is also something a study of studies that has been performed by the Hamburg University in cooperation with the task management has revealed sort of an analysis of two thousand two hundred studies that have tried to find a correlation between positive long term positive return and Sustainable Business practices determined that the majority of businesses previews long term positive returns exceeding the market level if they have sustainability practice being part of their d. N. A. Or being part of their business attitude felix now i want to put it in the big picture with you because i know that you really have this big picture view of how it is that business is impacting the climate how do you see the relationship between the two right now well first of all business is part of the problem and Business Needs to be part of the solution and i think the key issue is theres a plenty of opportunity for growth if the regulatory and of market framework is right but on the other hand we also need to deal with the business which needs to phased out so if it is about coal etc etc that is not about growth in Business Opportunities its its about a managed decline and that brings me to the point that in the end of the day the question is what drives business and an. Business is driven by the Regulatory Framework by the market framework it is a bald Carbon Pricing but it is also the ice breaker which delivers to new options but again this is about the growth story and as an important growth story if the framework is right but theres also another story we need to work visit business and the employees and others because especially in the industrialized countries it is also about face out nonsustainable a high carbon in this gs. Phaseout nonsustainable high Carbon Industries i mean would you consider your business to be in one of those industries kristoff i mean because when we think about logistics for example when you have to move things from one place to another you actually have i believe one of the Worlds Largest air Freight Centers here in germany as well which you have some of those products whats your priority in offsetting that impact where do you start i mean we have two principles here. Which are burning less and burning clean and we try to apply them to all kinds of infrastructures we have such as buildings our fleet. For sure in all kinds of infrastructure them and of what we do. We have started that as i said pretty early and we came a long way in the beginning by harvesting the low hanging fruits in that area by again for example changing the Lighting Systems of our buildings or optimizing the way we use our cars but then you come to a point where you have to think really big and i like the notion of the ice breaker in our case. I can make example would need. Delivery solution on the last mile as we say its all the car by which the delivery person comes to the household and delivers the policy or the letter now you know problem is that technological devise of choice usually is a carbon driven car and in order to find an alternative we had to go to the extreme that we had to build our own car and it was the only alternative to find a way to optimize that last minute element and in the meantime we have three thousand five hundred on produce cars on the streets we call them streets good. What does that say about the role of german business in helping the climate the fact that you had to go it alone the fact that in a country where the Automotive Industry is the largest industry in the country you had to develop your own electric vehicle. Well what i can say on the Positive Side is it shows that it is possible with the technology of today to build your own car you need to know how and we gain that by acquiring start up close to the. Industry university in germany not the only one but one of the big ones they had to know how we had the vision for delivery car we used our own delivery people to optimize the concept and build it and now we have it i think on the Positive Side you can say its possible to build it if you really wanted it was difficult to get it on the market. Fascinating that you were able to do so and i want to continue this theme of partnership in fact and i want to turn to your highness because this is something that that that you have also talked about as well what do you think that is the business big business can learn for example from from your efforts in the Energy Market on the Grassroots Level especially when it comes to partnership for me is about sometimes we think a lot top down for me is about bottom up approach which i call the greening up it goes we afrique and so even the the small islands as well theyre green by where green by the nature and theyve been and now our culture we are not creating our family we building we continued a family so i think this is about contiguity and when we talk about sustainability and i took really agree with what she was saying they want to wait for the solution you because you are the solution but you need to be conscience about it and you need a vision as and people who see that and i and the reverb here you have the crocodiles but you need one of those ok run has fast i can and jump and cross it thats was his able to do you need those kind of people to power the way to show the vision it on if were not the one whos go. When to employment it but you need to start because the the technology of tomorrow and for instance in africa we are not going to use the technology of the past and also. Bringing the attention of our universities dont train our kids on the jobs of yesterday please that is also one of the because this is part of our homework as africans we need if we need to to jump to make the jump and to Grow Together and also this brings me to the ongoing Business Models also and countries regarding how to buy the solar and put on the roofs you have the leasing where are we going to. When the lease contract will have will and why are those. And. Because myself i dont want to be part of that im taking on the technology so we need thats what i say we really need to fake together the technology how we are going to recycle then and think on the recycling and that leads perfectly to our next point here because i mean as as we mentioned at the beginning of the show we are in bonn today the site of where the cop twenty three is currently taking place if we need to Work Together felix what do you think that we need to see come out of this meeting because i mean in past cops for example we saw the paris accord for example agreed to a moment of jubilation but now its really about getting into the dirty details for example what do we need to see you know i think we need to have an outcome on what transparent and reliable and drug bost implementation provisions for parents because paris has set the big framework the big targets and now its coming to the nitty gritty details how to make things comparable how to build to come and framework and that is hard work i think we went through these sort of secured a protocol that america courts and america courts have been much much thicker paper and then then the kyoto protocol and we will see the same here and so its about Building Trust and building a common vision and my favorite chinese saying is crossing the river by feeling the stones because that says two things you need to know where the other riverbank is and you need to have a clear plan that you know one to cross the river but on the other hand you need to deal which with with the the solutions which vailable and the solution but imaginable and i think this is the this is the key issue also for you all come of the cop. Softy issues was. In the nitty gritty details of reporting Transparency Trust etc etc without losing track on the big target and i think that that that brings me back to christophe we all dont know how the world will look like in two thousand and fifty but we can use the two thousand and fifty vision and the purse agreement is a two thousand and fifty vision to ensure consistency with the things which can be done in vigil needs to be done here and today and and and and also maybe tomorrow and i think this is the this is the this is the key importance that the all come from very very Different Directions but what happens in born here is to make Different Things from Different National circumstances from different cultures from the different political systems compared to poor comparable to join forces for these vision of Carbon Neutral world michael as an asset manager and also Deutsche Bank being a partner for example at cop and a sponsor what would you like to see and i think personally i would like to see a kind of a deep politicize ation of the topic and because as you already indicated now its a time of the practitioners and we need solutions and human beings that can deliver the solutions we dont need further targets or discussions whether the target can be achieved with certain interventions we need is as a plane level globally on the one side with respect to regulation so what regulation do i need to abide by what are the rules im being bound to and the other side we need to have practitioners that have. The ability also to fail is what i was thinking about what you discussed before. This is a little bit the missing piece allowance and acceptance of failure we need to try an errata try an error this is how we have to follow up over the last hundreds of years and this will never change no one wants to talk about failure. But we need to have a certain exceptions on failure. And i can give you another example where i think the attention of politics and the attention of Public Sector towards an issue was already solved before it was even realising thats a Telecommunications Act in africa was leapfrogged we were thinking about cables and networks they just built their mobile stations you dont digitalized fully things like this can happen and they dont even need to happen with public intervention. Sometimes public intervention is helpful but there is a point in time when the public needs to revoke and go back but what happens here is i think its deeply political because climate is a matter of time we dont have much time for this and the second is that we have Different Levels or different degrees of responsibilities and i think we are talking about a level Playing Field today but a level Playing Field which also reflects the different responsibilities in these world is in a highly political issue and there will therefore i would say even these implementation stuff which is negotiated here is extremely political because its not only about today it is also about the past and obviously on the future. May i would actually echo both of the positions i think cope twenty three very nicely shows that nobody can go alone in the issue its a complex topic it has not been created by one Single Player i would again agree to what felix said industry played a major role into it so we also have to be a part of the solution but they also are other partners in the game and i think the whole called movement in recent years has shown if n. G. O. S governments business come together and look jointly for solutions then a difference can be made and what i find fascinating is and you all know not all of the global lets industrial states are so s