How cutting emissions is future-proofing industries beyond the ‘green premium’

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Noam Boussidan: The First Movers Coalition's Role

The First Movers Coalition (FMC) aggregates collective demand for clean technologies to send a strong signal to markets and investors, thereby accelerating the commercial viability of crucial climate technologies like green hydrogen and carbon capture. The FMC focuses on pulling these technologies into the market by securing offtake agreements, especially for hard-to-abate sectors.

Robin Pomeroy: Shifting from Ambition to Delivery

The climate action landscape has shifted from setting ambitious goals five years ago to focusing on the practical delivery and implementation of decarbonization strategies. While political winds may fluctuate, the fundamental direction of travel towards climate action is set, driven by the understanding that it makes economic and business sense.

Jennifer Holmgren: China's Speed Advantage

China builds and prototypes new technologies significantly faster than the West, a critical factor in bringing new innovations to market. This speed is essential for developing and scaling technologies like those used in batteries, where they are innovating with materials like sodium.

Rebecca Boudreaux: Waste-to-Value Fuels

Oberon Fuels converts waste streams, such as those from trees or food, into renewable fuels like DME (dimethyl ether), which can be blended with propane or used as an aerosol propellant. This process offers an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional fuels and propellants, creating value from waste.

Rebecca Boudreaux: Scaling Green Tech Requires Collaboration

Commercializing and scaling green technologies requires more than just good science; it necessitates aligning the entire supply chain, securing necessary regulations, and bringing all stakeholders—governments, customers, and producers—to the table. Initiatives like the First Movers Coalition are crucial for creating these 'reaction conditions'.

Noam Boussidan: The Evolving 'Green Premium'

The 'green premium,' or the higher cost of sustainable technologies, is evolving from a barrier to a 'security premium.' This shift acknowledges that investing in diversified, secure supply chains and future-proof technologies offers benefits beyond just carbon reduction, making the investment more justifiable.

Swaminathan: Technoeconomics Drive Green Investment

Venture capital investment in green technologies is primarily driven by technoeconomic viability and the potential for lower costs than traditional fossil fuels, not by a 'green premium' or subsidies. Investors seek significant returns based on the technology's own merits.

Boussidan: Scaling Challenges and FMC's Role

Scaling green technologies faces barriers like regulatory uncertainty and the need for offtake agreements. The First Movers Coalition (FMC) can help by providing market signals and encouraging large companies to partner with startups, ensuring these critical industries develop competitive advantages for geopolitical security.

Holmgren: LanzaTech's Commercialization Strategy

LanzaTech commercialized its ethanol technology by partnering with Chinese steelworks, demonstrating profitability. This success paved the way for its subsidiary LanzaJet to develop a scalable approach to producing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), proving that innovative partnerships can drive global adoption.

How cutting emissions is future-proofing industries beyond the ‘green premium’

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World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report Media Briefing 2026

Politics1 of 13

Saadia Zahidi: Progress and Stagnation in Gender Equality

Over the past 20 years, the global gender gap has seen progress, with the overall index reaching 69.2%. However, this progress is uneven and has slowed in the second decade, exacerbated by the pandemic. At the current rate, gender parity is projected to take 120 years, a slight improvement but still beyond lifetimes. While individual economies have improved, the pace is not guaranteed or consistent.

Education and Health Lead, Political Empowerment Stalls

Significant progress has been made in closing the gender gap in education and health, areas that were strong from the outset. However, political empowerment, with only 22% of the gap closed, has seen a reversal in recent years after a peak around 2016. While women's representation in ministerial and parliamentary roles has increased, they are often concentrated in less influential portfolios.

Sue Duke: Stalled Progress in Women's Leadership

While women's participation in the labor market and representation in leadership positions have increased over 20 years, progress has stalled in the last decade. The share of women in leadership roles has only risen to just under 30%. At the current rate, leadership parity is projected to take 90 years, meaning a girl born today will not see it in her lifetime.

AI Economy: Replicating Old Gaps

The burgeoning AI economy is rapidly replicating historical gender gaps. Women hold only a quarter of new AI hires and one in eight senior AI executives. This is driven by underrepresentation in STEM talent pools, the male-dominated nature of early tech sectors, and the rapid pace of AI development, which disproportionately impacts women who take career breaks.

Saadia Zahidi: AI's Impact on Disrupted Roles

AI is disrupting white-collar roles traditionally held by women, such as administrative and paralegal positions. This necessitates a focus on gender-disaggregated data to understand who is being displaced and to ensure effective reskilling and redeployment. Furthermore, adjacent industries like skilled trades and technology-adjacent roles, which historically employed many women, may offer new opportunities.

Saadia Zahidi: Prioritizing Implementation Over Reform

While thousands of legal reforms have expanded women's rights since the 1970s, their implementation and enforcement remain a significant gap. The focus for the next decade should shift from creating new laws to ensuring existing ones related to work, entrepreneurship, and equal pay are effectively implemented and enforced across economies.

Sharon Peak: Segmentation in Leadership Roles

Women are overrepresented in functions like HR and marketing but underrepresented in more influential roles such as CFO or COO, which are often pathways to CEO positions. Even in sectors with a majority of women, like healthcare, representation at the C-suite level significantly drops.

Saadia Zahidi: The Evolving Skills Landscape

Businesses are increasingly demanding a blend of uniquely human skills like empathy, collaboration, and critical thinking, alongside technical proficiencies. However, current job descriptions and assessment methods haven't caught up, necessitating a new approach to talent management in the evolving economy. Women often excel in these human skills, but face underrepresentation in critical AI and technical roles.

Regional Disparities in Gender Progress

While the Middle East and North Africa region shows diversity in progress, some GCC countries have made significant strides in female representation, partly due to economic shifts. However, overall progress in the region can be slow, with a tendency for retrenchment during crises. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has seen rapid progress in the last decade, but the starting base was low.

Systemic Shocks and Women's Labor Participation

Economic and geopolitical shocks, similar to the pandemic, disproportionately impact women's labor force participation and leadership roles. Hiring managers tend to revert to familiar patterns during times of stress, hindering women's advancement. This pattern is consistent across various crises, indicating systemic barriers that require fundamental change to ensure women are not the first to lose out.

US Gender Gap Trends and Policy Impact

The US has dropped five spots in gender gap rankings due to a minor decline in labor force participation and senior positions, despite an increase in earned income and wage equality. While parliamentary and ministerial representation has slightly declined, the impact of specific administrations and policies, like those during the Trump administration, is difficult to isolate within broad data trends.

Equal Parental Leave and Career Progression

The stark difference in career breaks taken by men and women, with women more likely to take breaks for full-time parenting, significantly impacts career progression. Men are more likely to advance into senior roles after a break than women. Equalizing parental leave and valuing caregiving time are crucial to mitigating this gap and ensuring women have a fair shot at career advancement.

The Persistent Risk of Regression in the AI Era

The rapid emergence of AI presents a risk of regression to old patterns, even in future-oriented fields. While pipeline issues (girls in STEM) are a factor, the fundamental problem lies in systemic barriers that cause women to be the first to lose out during economic shocks. Continuous overcorrection and addressing systemic issues are necessary to prevent regression.

World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report Media Briefing 2026

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What I tell my Stern Business School students on how to thrive in the age of AI

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The Sharing Economy's Evolution

The sharing economy, characterized by platform-mediated commerce and crowds of providers, has fundamentally shifted work arrangements away from traditional full-time employment towards flexible, non-employment work. This trend, documented a decade ago, has accelerated, with a significant portion of workers in countries like the US and China now operating under these arrangements.

What I tell my Stern Business School students on how to thrive in the age of AI

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AI's real impact on jobs - what it means for you, your company and future generations

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Ravi Kumar: AI's Fogged Foresight

Artificial intelligence has created a 'fog' on foresight, making traditional long-term business planning and investment strategies obsolete. The rapid evolution of AI means business models, talent strategies, and job roles are being rapidly reforged into new forms, tasks, and families. This necessitates a reset of the future of work, workplaces, and the workforce.

AI's real impact on jobs - what it means for you, your company and future generations

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Trade, tech and geopolitics: what you need to understand about China today

Business1 of 7

Qian Liu: China's Export Engine Re-calibrated

While China's trade surplus has grown, exports are no longer the primary driver of its economy, constituting only 18% of GDP compared to 35% two decades ago. The US market represents less than 10% of China's exports, making its impact on China's GDP minimal. However, potential trade frictions with Europe pose a greater concern than those with the US. This shift indicates a strategic rebalancing away from export dependency.

Europe's Brewing Trade Tensions

Unlike the US's transactional approach to trade disputes, Europe is perceived as slowly building negative sentiment towards China, potentially leading to a more sustained trade war. This is driven by concerns over trade deficits and job losses. China's retaliatory measures, like targeting European agriculture and cognac, are strategically designed to exert pressure, indicating a more complex and potentially prolonged trade conflict than with the US.

Southeast Asia's Export Dilemma

Southeast Asian economies are feeling the pressure from China's intensified export push, particularly in sectors like textiles, furniture, and automotive. This surge is partly driven by China's domestic economic constraints and the need to find markets for its manufacturing capacity. While China previously offered 'early harvest' benefits, its current export strategy is causing significant disruption in neighboring economies.

Qian Liu: The Unsustainable 'Involution'

China's current economic model, characterized by intense internal competition ('involution') and a focus on marginal cost efficiency, is unsustainable. Younger generations are prioritizing happiness over relentless work, and businesses are realizing the futility of operating at a loss indefinitely. This organic shift, coupled with government recognition, signals a move towards a more balanced and sustainable economic approach.

Geopolitical Shifts and US Leadership

The Strait of Hormuz oil transit issue has minimal direct economic impact on China due to its oil storage and diversified import routes. However, it serves as a significant geopolitical signal, shaking global faith in US leadership and potentially encouraging China's strategic watchfulness. This year (2026) marks a watershed moment, with a more 'respectful' US engagement in Beijing reflecting broader global power realignments.

Gender Economics: A Powerful Engine for Global Growth

Investing in women's education is a superior economic strategy, yielding higher returns than financial capital. Studies show that increased education for women leads to higher earnings for both women and men, healthier children, better educational outcomes for the next generation, and a significant increase in global GDP, projected at $4 trillion by 2030.

Qian Liu: Redefining Gender Equality Beyond Traditional Roles

True gender equality means equal access and opportunity, not necessarily identical outcomes or prescribed roles. It allows individuals, regardless of gender, the freedom to choose their path, whether it's a man staying home or a woman pursuing a high-powered career, fostering a society where everyone can thrive without societal constraints.

Trade, tech and geopolitics: what you need to understand about China today

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The Next Billion Jobs

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The Looming Job Gap

The World Bank projects a potential shortfall of 400 million jobs globally, indicating that the number of young people entering the workforce will significantly outpace job creation in the coming years. This presents a substantial challenge for economies worldwide.

Entrepreneurship as the Future of Work

The future of job creation, particularly in IT-driven economies like Southeast Asia, will be largely driven by entrepreneurship and SMEs. The current generation's flexibility and comfort with technology, combined with supportive government and private sector initiatives, can foster new job creation rather than just filling existing roles.

The Three Pillars of AI Adaptation

Successfully integrating AI into the workforce requires a three-pronged approach: transforming businesses through process redesign, fostering innovation and entrepreneurship with incentives, and prioritizing large-scale reskilling efforts for a tech-native generation.

Algeria's University Incubator Model

Algeria is transforming its university system by integrating business incubators and encouraging students to pursue startup projects as their final academic endeavors. This initiative aims to foster an entrepreneurial mindset and direct research towards concrete problems, leading to more sustainable job creation.

Pete: Bridging Industrial Policy and Workforce Strategy

Effective workforce development hinges on the seamless integration of industrial policy and workforce strategy, treating them as interconnected elements. This involves creating clear entry-level pathways through apprenticeships, work experience, and project-based learning to ensure new jobs are accessible to the emerging workforce.

Pratibha: The Challenge of Future-Proofing Skills

Given the uncertainty of future job requirements, the 'reskilling revolution' must prioritize the ability to learn and curiosity, as specific curricula quickly become outdated. It's also an opportunity to address the global wealth and tech gaps by ensuring inclusivity and bringing these new skills to underserved regions.

Pete: Bucketing Future Skills Beyond Domain Expertise

Future job skills can be categorized into three buckets: domain expertise (though hiring solely for this is outdated), AI fluency, and agility. Crucially, 'human skills' like judgment, problem-solving, and critical thinking are in high demand and command a significant wage premium, despite the difficulty in developing them.

Timothy Ma: Addressing Elderly Employment and Care Needs

The aging global population presents a challenge, with early retirement and a mismatch of available jobs. While AI cannot replace roles requiring human care, it can optimize processes. There's a need to increase elderly re-employment by valuing their experience beyond menial tasks and bridging the gap with younger generations who may be less inclined towards care professions.

Walter Alvarado: Solo Entrepreneurs and AI Agents

The rise of solo founders working primarily with AI agents presents a new paradigm for entrepreneurship. While AI can enhance productivity, it raises questions about whether this model truly creates jobs or shifts the landscape towards individual productivity augmented by AI, potentially impacting job creation metrics.

Accra Hub: Inclusive Development Beyond Urban Centers

Job creation in emerging economies often concentrates in major cities, neglecting underserved communities and rural innovators. To ensure inclusive development, efforts must focus on providing capital and support to entrepreneurs in these areas, fostering businesses that meet the needs of the local young population.

Joe Riley: Immediate Actions for Job Creation

The most crucial immediate action for educational institutions, governments, and corporations is to collaborate on fostering the creation of the next billion jobs. This requires a unified strategy that aligns educational outputs with industry needs and government policy to ensure a cohesive approach to workforce development.

Minister: Algeria's Digital Freelancing and Youth Policy

Algeria has successfully launched an online freelancer status, enabling 100,000 individuals to work digitally and reducing the urban-centric job creation model. This digital infrastructure is crucial for leveraging AI and creating jobs in remote regions. Furthermore, empowering youth as entrepreneurs and ensuring their political participation are key to influencing national economic policy.

Jay: Creating Synergy Between Aging and Youth Workforces

Bridging the gap between aging populations with vast experience and younger, burgeoning workforces is essential. While aging populations may take on more menial roles, their experience holds significant value. Creating platforms for intergenerational connection can foster mentorship and leverage collective wisdom to address future challenges.

Minister: Influence Through Success

True influence isn't gained by simply protesting; it's a byproduct of achieving success in one's chosen field, whether as an entrepreneur or in another endeavor. Creating jobs and demonstrating success naturally draws people to you, offering more leverage than mere activism.

Jae-Hwae: Online Business and AI as Opportunity Creators

The internet and AI are powerful creators of job opportunities, even as they disrupt traditional sectors like retail and catering. While some jobs may be replaced, new roles like video creators and distributors emerge, and AI enhances efficiency across R&D, supply chains, and decision-making, with essential sectors like healthcare and construction remaining resilient.

Pete: The Crucial Role of Trust in the Workforce

Trust between workers and leaders is paramount for successful outcomes, regardless of the tools or education provided. Equipping line managers with the skills to support and integrate younger workers is essential for building this trust and fostering engagement.

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Conversation with Elon Musk | World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2026

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Musk: Maximizing Civilization's Future

Elon Musk states that the overall goal of his companies is to maximize the future of civilization and expand consciousness beyond Earth. He views life as precarious and believes humanity should do everything possible to ensure the light of consciousness is not extinguished. Therefore, making life multi-planetary is crucial for the survival of consciousness.

Conversation with Elon Musk | World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2026

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