Clean machines: Investing in the disruptive technologies to reach net zero
To limit the increase in global temperatures to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, disruption is needed on an industrial scale in a world where history, the wealth effect and population growth all point towards increased energy demand.
With energy accounting for nearly three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions, it’s imperative that investors understand and mobilise capital towards the key technologies that will enable carbon intensive subsectors to decarbonise within the remaining window of opportunity.
Time is of the essence – 2014 to 2023 was estimated to be the warmest 10-year period on record at around 1.2°C above the average between 1850 and 19001. Last year was the hottest recorded and the first where surface temperatures exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels2, but last year was also a different age.
If 2024 was the year of democracy as billions of people around the world cast their ballot, then 2025 – and beyond – is where we see seismic shifts in policies from new administrations, as well as the implications that cascade onto the domestic as well as the global stage.
Within hours of his inauguration, a promise to “drill, baby, drill” and a swipe of a Sharpie, US President Donald Trump signed a flurry of executive orders, from pulling the country out of the Paris Agreement – again – to declaring a “national energy emergency” to ramp up oil and gas output at a time when the US had “produced more crude oil than any nation at any time, for the past six years in a row3.” Meanwhile on the West Coast, more than 300 wildfires were devastating California, burning more than 57,500 acres and destroying more than 16,000 structures4 at the time of writing.
As a sector, energy accounts for 73.2% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This comprises energy use in industry (24.2%) to produce anything from iron and steel to chemicals, transport (16.2%) and energy use in buildings (17.5%).
1 World Meteorological Organization (WMO), ‘Climate change indicators reached record levels in 2023: WMO’, (WMO.int), March 2024.
2 Associated Press (AP), ‘Earth breaks yearly heat record and lurches past dangerous warming threshold’, (apnews.com), January 2025.
3 US Energy Information Administration (EIA), ‘United States produces more crude oil than any country, ever’, (eia.gov), March 2024.
4 California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, ‘Current emergency incidents’, (fire.ca.gov), as of February 2025.
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