We are ideology neutral and choose our partners for their leverage and commitment to solving the climate crisis

our work

What we do

We focus our work on the hardest unaddressed issues in climate change, seeking leverage to create change that is both faster and has greater impact.

Our recent work focuses on carbon removals and carbon capture and storage. For removals, we launched Rethinking Removals in 2021 in partnership with the UN High Level Champions for Climate Action. For carbon capture and storage, we are partnering with Northern Lights to share lessons from the shipping based hub they are developing. We also wrote the content for The CCUS Hub, a project commissioned by the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative in partnership with the Global CCS Institute, the Clean Energy Ministerial, BCG and IEA GHG. And we are working with the Sustainable Markets Initiative to facilitate the development of low-carbon product standards.

In all our work, we bring leaders together from a wide range of sectors to help them:

  • Rethink problems
  • Have fresh conversations
  • Reset narratives
  • Build innovative alliances
  • Identify a wider set of solutions
  • And enjoy doing it

How we do it

We bring together high-level stakeholders who might not naturally gather around the same table but whose collaboration is critical to solving the climate crisis. Following decades of collective experience operating at C-suite level in global corporations as well as working with NGOs, think tanks, academics and policy makers, we can reach a wide range of senior global leaders and influencers. This enables us to build bridges across multiple geographies, industries, sectors of economy, private and public organisations.

We take a tailored approach to each project, but they all tend to involve a combination of these impactful tools.

  • Personalised interviews

    • We conduct in-depth, personalised interviews with stakeholders across a broad range of sectors, cultures and geographies. We are both deeply committed to action on climate change and ideology neutral, and this combination helps us to build trust and engage meaningfully with people who can be on opposite sides of wide ideological gulfs. These discussions are designed both to understand deeply held views and discover potential blind spots or underappreciated opportunities.

  • Fresh conversations

    • We convene “safe space” conversations between senior stakeholders from very different sectors to produce free-flowing dialogue and fresh insights. All are carefully curated to ensure that in addition to providing rich and lively conversations, they identify and trigger practical actions. Taken as part of our ongoing programmes, these conversations provide building blocks for faster climate impact. Formats include:
      Salons
      • These short, intimate gatherings (which can be either virtual or face-to-face) focus on brainstorming solutions to the climate crisis that have until now been underrated or less well understood. Each Salon covers a specific topic and involves a select group of carefully chosen influencers. They can stand alone or be part of an interconnected series.
      Workshops
      • These are larger gatherings, usually face-to-face although they can still work virtually. They give more time and space to a particular issue and are carefully choreographed using innovative tools, exercises and engagement that help people avoid their usual conversational grooves and open up to new insights and mindsets.

  • New narratives

    • We work with our stakeholders to create a common language and fresh transformative narratives for topics around climate action that are underrated or less well understood.

      These narratives:

      • Weave together the message, the messenger(s) and the audience(s)
      • Reflect a wide range of mindsets
      • Are rooted in a deep understanding of existing perceptions and beliefs
      • Identify where the common ground lies, what makes conversation difficult and where the most significant unaddressed barriers lie
      • Propose impact models

  • Energizing champions

    • We convene and energise alliances of doers. These champions for change are globally respected voices from a spectrum of companies and organisations who are willing to pour energy into creating solutions to the most intractable climate problems and accelerating change within their organisations.

  • Catalyzing action

    • We develop actionable, scalable toolkits and solution playbooks built with and for the practitioners, which offer practical, on- the-ground recommendations to catalyse action.

Who we work with

Individually and collectively, the Valence team has worked with start-ups and C-suite leaders from dozens of major global corporates across a wide range of industries, as well as NGOs, policy makers, academics and think tanks around the world.

Our Rethinking Removals programme was launched in 2021, in partnership with the UN High Level Champions for Climate Action. During that year, we worked closely with many organisations including: TED Countdown, UNFCCC, South Pole, Climate Action Platform – Africa, Microsoft, Mission Innovation and Carbon Gap, convening dialogues across the removals ecosystem to identify what is needed now to scale up high-quality removals. Funding for this project has come mainly from philanthropic sources with some corporate contributions. We are currently creating an advisory board made up of our most committed partners, and building the scope of the programme.

On carbon capture and storage, we work with Northern Lights and the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, in partnership with the Global CCS Institute, the Clean Energy Ministerial, BCG and IEA GHG. We also work with the Sustainable Markets Initiative, in a programme sponsored by BHP and Shell.

Through our work, we have engaged senior stakeholders in: some of the world’s most influential NGOs and think tanks (e.g. Greenpeace, WWF, Carbon Tracker, Client Earth, Clean Air Task Force, The Nature Conservancy, European Climate Foundation, We Mean Business, Rocky Mountain Institute, Energy Transitions Commission); leading academic institutions and specialist climate change organisations (e.g. University of Oxford, UNFCCC, IEA, World Bank, World Economic Forum, International Emissions Trading Association, Global CCS Institute, Carbon Gap, Carbon180); the oil & gas majors; heavy industry players (e.g. ArcelorMittal, Heidelberg Cement, BASF, Air Liquide); tech companies (e.g. Microsoft, Stripe, Shopify); start-ups (e.g. Climeworks, Carbon Engineering, Charm Industrial, The Future Forest Company); trade unions; investors and lenders (e.g. Citi Bank, HSBC, Swiss Re, Société Générale, BNP Paribas); as well as policy makers in Europe and North America.

We choose our partners carefully, working only with those who we believe are serious about climate action, and who could provide significant leverage for solving an otherwise intractable issue. We are ideology neutral. Our concern is preventing greenhouse gases from reaching the atmosphere, and/or helping to remove those that are already there, while avoiding unintended negative outcomes and seeking positive co-benefits.