Philip J. Moss T'06
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"It's along the lines of an 'in your wildest dreams' scenario"
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Toward A Sustainable Future
The delicate balance of working toward the common good and generating financial returns has always fascinated Philip Moss.
Today he's exploring that relationship writ large, thanks to an ambitious multi-billion-dollar investment in clean energy solutions led by Masdar, an initiative of the Abu Dhabi government. "It's along the lines of an ‘in your wildest dreams' scenario," says Moss. "Fortunately, I was in the right place at the right time to take advantage of it."
That place is the Carbon Management Unit of Masdar (the trading name for the United Arab Emirates–owned Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company) where Moss helps develop projects that promote sustainable growth and reduce carbon emissions—including demonstrating the commercial viability of carbon capture and storage technology—by using market-driven incentives and tradable carbon credits.
Abu Dhabi sits on approximately 10 percent of the world's known oil reserves, making it an unlikely epicenter of clean-tech investment. The city has nevertheless set its sights on diversifying its economy and promoting local sustainable development. The centerpiece, and where Moss and his colleagues expect to be conducting their work from within the decade, is Masdar City, a planned, "zero-carbon, zero-waste" eco-city of 50,000 now under construction in Abu Dhabi.
It's a long way from both his homeland of New Zealand and North Carolina State University, where Moss earned dual undergraduate degrees in 1999. After a brief stop in retail banking in Las Vegas, Moss moved to Geneva, Switzerland, to work for the United Nations Environment Programme's Finance Initiative. That experience, says Moss, put him on a path to "figuring out a way to capitalize on the interconnection between the environment and the commercial sector."
That led him to Tuck, where he acquired a deeper understanding of the relationship between business and society. After graduating, Moss put this knowledge—and newfound project management skills—to use at CantorCO2e, a London-based firm that brokers emissions from both traditional and new energy sources.
Moss's group at Masdar is currently focused on projects in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. Among them is one in Abu Dhabi that will see the sequestration of more than 20 million tons of carbon dioxide in the ground by 2020 by injecting it into oil wells. "It's never been done on this scale anywhere else in the world," he says.
"We're also looking at projects like reducing gas flaring from oil wells, rehabilitating gas pipelines, and fostering certain types of renewable energy such as solar and wind power generation. There is an involved process with which we help the people who own these assets to generate carbon credits, which we purchase and trade to maximize their value," he explains. "The carbon market has really taken off in the past three years."
That's not the case in the United States, where the carbon market remains largely underdeveloped. Moss doesn't expect it to stay that way for long. "There's anticipation there will be a cap and trade scheme in the U.S. in the near future," he says. "Analysts say the market in the U.S. will be worth a trillion dollars by 2020, and considering it's around zero today, that's quite a growth potential."
"Given oil prices," he continues, "I think people are recognizing that the way forward is going to be in cleaner technology." As Abu Dhabi takes the necessary steps toward a sustainable future, Moss is simply happy to have a hand in it.
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