TIME 100 CLIMATE

The most influential leaders driving business climate action in their own words

- Leslie Dickstein, Bee Hui Yeh, Jessica Hullinger, Tara Law, Sanya Mansoor, Simmone Shah, Andrew Wu, and Julia Zorthian

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IN 2023, CHINA HONGQIAO GROUP, ONE OF THE LARGEST ALUMINUM producers in the world, shut down 1.5 million tons of smelting capacity and moved it across the country-unplugging from coal electricity and connecting instead to cleaner hydroelectric power. By itself, the move is expected to slash carbon pollution from those smelters by 30%.

It's the kind of business decision that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, and a dramatic example of a nascent but important trend: business taking direct action to fight climate change.

Solving climate change requires bold new styles of business leadership. It also requires mobilizing massive amounts of capital-recent estimates vary from $3 trillion to $5 trillion annually over the coming decade-into practical solutions that reduce emissions, restore nature, and improve quality of life. Scientists have identified the problem and can evaluate our options; activists and organizers can amplify the conversation; but businesses are often best positioned to actually deploy solutions on the ground, at scale.

This is starting to happen. The U.S.'s Inflation Reduction Act, considered the most important piece of climate-related legislation ever, represents about $370 billion in investment over the next decade, and a new generation of business leaders is taking advantage of its incentives to build better products, services, and companies. But unfortunately, business is still moving far too slowly, and most people have no idea that these transformations in commerce, law, policy, technology, community leadership, and science are taking place.