Each issue we sit down with a core team member and chat about their work and objectives, views on mitigating climate change, and inside perspectives on the ETC’s workstreams and analysis.
In this issue, we get to know Hannah Audino, Buildings Decarbonisation Lead at the ETC. Hannah was the lead author of the Financing the Transition report and Costs of Avoiding Deforestation supplementary report. She supported broader ETC work on Materials and Resource Requirements and Fossil Fuels in Transition. Hannah is currently leading on the ETC’s next major report on Achieving Net-Zero Buildings, coming in early 2025.
What made you join the ETC?
I didn’t have an energy or climate background before joining – I was an economist at PwC – so my main motivation was to upskill myself in an area that I had grown to care so much about. I had been working on a year long project for the government of Cyprus to set out a long-term economic growth strategy. And I realised that questions regarding climate and energy were what really energised and interested me – and where I wanted to focus the next stage of my career. The ETC has been the perfect place to learn, with the opportunity to work with a wide variety of stakeholders and industry stakeholders across the entire energy and climate landscape. The opportunity to work on such important and broad topics and to influence real policy and business decisions is unparalleled
What is your proudest achievement to date at the ETC?
I think it has to be the Financing the Transition report, which we launched back in 2023, and have since repackaged ahead of COP29, which I think is a real sign of the longevity of the analysis and the clarity that we brought to the debate. We set out to cut through all of the conflicting and unclear things that you read about “climate finance” and to put some clear numbers, definitions and context to the debate, for example how small these figures are as a share of GDP.1To finance the transition, investment needs to average around $3.5 trillion a year between now and 2050. After accounting for the expected decline in investment in fossil fuels, this figure falls to $3 trillion a year, or around 1.3% of annual global GDP over the next three decades.
I think two things that really showed the impact of this report – firstly, our analysis being featured in the cover story of The Economist on the importance of scaling up investment in grids. And secondly, hosting a roundtable with Nigel Topping (UK’s High-Level Climate Action Champion for COP26 and Founder of Ambition Loop) at Reuters IMPACT on how to mobilise finance for lower-income countries. For me, these two things really crystallised the impact and the value of the report.
What does the energy transition mean to you?
One of the things that I’ve been really struck with since moving into the energy and climate space over the past few years, is how easy it is to actually make a compelling argument – beyond climate – for investment in the transition. For example, do you want to have better air quality by moving away from ICE cars to EVs? Do you want to have heating that is over 100% efficient and therefore has much lower running costs? Do you want to have energy that has a virtually zero marginal cost to keep generating rather than keeping digging up more of the earth and depleting resources?
The net zero-economy is not just imperative from a climate perspective, but these investments will deliver huge economic, health, and social returns in their own right. So for me, it’s all about an altogether better direction for the world on so many different levels. And that’s not to say there won’t be challenges or losers from the transition – and these need to be carefully managed. But over the last few years, I’ve become much more optimistic about how fast that we could go, if the true wider benefits of the transition to households and to economic development were fully recognised and promoted.
On the pathway to net zero, what do you see as the biggest obstacle?
One thing that I like to always tell my friends when we talk about this, is that all of the technologies we need to get to net-zero are available today. It’s just about scaling these up and deploying them cheaper and faster. But of course, there are many obstacles to this.
I think the one that has been on my mind – and I’m sure everyone’s mind – recently is misinformation. Working on buildings this year, we have confronted many of the myths surrounding heat pumps, including their total cost of ownership, their applicability in all buildings, and their effectiveness. In the UK especially, there is a huge amount of negative press and misinformation that impacts decision-making and is arguably one of the biggest barriers in some markets to adoption. Even if we continue to drive down costs and even if we continue to improve ease of installation, if those facts aren’t getting through to people in the right ways, then how do we actually accelerate change?
What are you most excited about that’s coming up at the ETC?
The launch of the buildings report, which has been the culmination of over a year of work! I’m really excited to launch this piece. It’s such a comprehensive piece of work covering every aspect of the building’s transition, which has given us lots to think through in terms of how we tell the story. And I think there will be huge value in putting an ETC spin on a very complex aspect of the transition, spanning many different sectors and requiring action from households.
This report aims to be a one-stop evidence base for the entire buildings energy transition, both the energy used to operate buildings and the embodied carbon from building new buildings. So how do we decarbonise heating? How do we improve access to efficient cooling and clean cooking? And how do we reduce whole-life emissions in the next generation of new buildings that are going to be built, with global floor area set to expand at least 50% over the next 25 years? It is a truly global report, addressing the challenges in different regions and climates.
What’s the best piece of advice that you received from an ETC colleague?
The main overall skill I’ve learnt since being in the ETC is how to condense very complex pieces of analysis and tell a compelling story, including both to technical and non-technical audiences and inspire action. I remember one time, I was presenting on heat pumps to Octopus Energy and I remember thinking, “what am I going to be able to tell them that is new?” But they were really complimentary on the way that we told the story and condensed it all into 15 minutes. And I think that is one of the main ways that the ETC really adds value.