A welcome letter from our CEO, Amali de Alwis
Dear Subak community,
A very warm welcome to you all as we kick off a chilly November here in the UK. My name is Amali de Alwis, and I’m the new Chief Executive of Subak. Having joined the team last month, I feel fortunate to be joining an incredible team and community of talented and motivated individuals who are working tirelessly to address climate change.
This is not a simple challenge. If we are reminded of anything as we come to the end of COP26, it is the scale of the challenge at hand and the speed at which we need to come together to solve these issues. But it can be done. And this is just the start of what we will accomplish by working together at such a critical time for collaboration and climate action.
Thinking about how we will get there, there is undoubtedly a key role to play for innovative technologies in helping to address the climate crisis. Whether that is technologies that help us to avoid future damage or undo the damage already done, the global need for innovation and collaboration has never been more critical. The Subak community are uniquely positioned to help answer the toughest climate challenges by linking tech, data, policy and human behaviour.
But we won’t be able to reach success alone. In order for us to reach our climate goals, we have to find our common ground and understand our mutual challenges across the globe – this means sharing our data, knowledge and tools so we can connect information and ensure that the public and policy decision makers make better decisions around climate change.
So how are we doing this already? At Subak, our non-profit Members are not competitors, they’re collaborators. With one of the #COP26 pillars being collaboration, I wanted to highlight some of the recent achievements from our member ecosystem.
TransitionZero released a new piece of analysis finding that nearly 3,000 coal plants will need to be closed by 2030 if we are to have a chance of limiting climate change to 1.5C.
New Automotive published their annual report, State of the Switch 2021, measuring the UK Transition to Electric Transport.
Ember released a report - The UK Clean Power Plan - with YouGov polling and gas prices analysis, which contributed to the UK government announcing a 2035 clean power target.
Open Climate Fix signed a contract in Q3 with National Grid Electricity System Operator to create a pilot Solar Nowcasting service.
Climate Policy Radar CIC have demoed a prototype of their MVP at COP26 and just released their new website.
If you would like to get involved in shaping this community even further, please do reach out to myself, or our team. Subak looks forward to meeting more of you, and working together to solve the climate crisis.
Warm wishes,
Amali
--
Amali de Alwis enters the non-profit environmental space continuing an esteemed career in tech. She is widely recognised for her work as CEO of multi award-winning social enterprise Code First: Girls and was named Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Woman in IT in 2018. She has also been awarded an MBE for her services to women in technology.
You can find the press release for Amali’s arrival here.