Truman Semans
Truman Semans (born April 28, 1966) is an American entrepreneur and thought leader in the field of environmental sustainability, business, investing and policy. He is CEO of Element Capital Advisors.
Education
Semans was educated at Duke University, receiving a B.A. from Duke's Trinity College of Arts and Sciences in 1990 and an MBA from its Fuqua School of Business in 2001. He also received an M.A. in economics and international affairs from The johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
Career
Sustainable Economic Development
In 1993, at the International Institute for Energy Conservation (IIEC), Semans and Robert K. Watson of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) worked with partners in the U.S. Congress to require the World Bank Group to adopt policies supporting increased investment in energy efficiency across its $23 billion financing portfolio, as a condition for receiving overseas development assistance appropriations from the U.S.
In 1995 and 1996, Semans advised U.S. negotiators as an NGO Observer to the First and Second Conferences of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Berlin and Geneva, which launched the process resulting in the Kyoto Protocol.
Joining the U.S. Treasury Department later in 1995, Semans led the U.S. Government’s Interagency Working Group on the Global Environment Facility (GEF), coordinating efforts to improve effectiveness of the GEF. As part of the United States Government climate change negotiating team from 1995-1999, he led negotiations for the U.S. on the Financial Mechanism of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for investments to address climate change.
Growing Green Business
In 1999, Semans founded Global Sustainability Strategies, a consultancy helping companies, governments, and NGOs including the United Nations Foundation to build innovative businesses and financing tools for sustainable products and services. Semans joined McKinsey and Company in 2001.
In 2005, former Assistant Secretary of State Eileen Claussen asked Semans to run the Business Environmental Leadership Council (BELC) of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change’s Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.
Semans commissioned reports including Adapting to Climate Change: A New Frontier For Business by ICF International, and collaborated with Dr. Andy Hoffman on Getting Ahead of the Curve: Corporate Strategies That Address Climate Change.
U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP)
In September 2005, Semans published an article in Petroleum Economist outlining the business case for major energy producers and energy-intensive companies to work with Congress on legislation to address climate change through a cap-and-trade system. Semans and Claussen began to organize a sub-group of the most progressive BELC companies to work on a plan for federal climate policy with regulation of greenhouse gases.
Initially explored as a collaboration with Goldman Sachs under Hank Paulson, the effort was merged in January 2006 by Claussen and Semans with a similar initiative by General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, Environmental Defense Fund CEO Fred Krupp, and World Resources Institute President Jonathan Lash to form the Climate Change Initiative. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) joined the group, and Semans recruited BELC companies Alcoa, BP, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Dupont, Florida Power & Light, Pacific Gas and & Electric, and PNM Resources to join.
On January 22, 2007, the initiative launched publicly as the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) with A Call for Action, calling on Congress to pass legislation establishing a mandatory cap-and-trade system on carbon dioxide emissions as a means to accelerate investment in low carbon technology. Semans served on the USCAP Executive Committee.
GreenOrder
In 2007, in Canada’s Globe and Mail, Semans discussed the impact of General Electric’s “ecomagination” clean technology initiative on investment by other corporations. Later that year, he joined GreenOrder. In 2007, Fortune Magazine reported on GreenOrder’s work with clients on investments on sustainability in operations and green products, calling it "The go-to consulting company for green business”.
Scaling sustainable investment
In 2005, Semans began engaging Wall Street to design new institutional grade investment vehicles focused on climate solutions. In a September, 2005 New York Times article Wall St. Develops the Tools to Invest in Climate Change, Semans explained that the shift from traditional socially responsible investing toward climate-focus funds was due to the greater measurability of how climate factors impact companies, relative to social factors.
In 2009, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change published a report by Semans called Innovating Through Alliance, which analyzed drivers for returns from a joint venture investment by GreenOrder clients, BP and DuPont in next generation biofuels, including butanol.
Later that year, he co-founded the U.S. Partnership for Renewable Energy Finance (US PREF) with Jeffrey R. Holzschuh of Morgan Stanley, Neil Auerbach of Hudson Clean Energy Partners, and Michael Eckhart of the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE).
Scientific American interviewed Semans in 2010 for “Can the Green Economy Survive in a Policy Vacuum?” stating that “the green economy continues to show vitality, business leaders say, despite the near-total collapse of global climate talks, stalemate in Washington, D.C., and polls showing decreased urgency to tackle global warming.”
In 2011, Semans, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, and Nicholas Stern, Baron Stern of Brentford delivered the keynote addresses at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. The event was the largest renewable energy conference ever convened, with 26,000 attendees from 137 Countries. Semans discussed the emerging age of radical transparency that increasingly reveals to investors the environmental risks and corporate environmental performance affecting every geography, market, company and asset class globally.
Semans founded investment advisory and analytics firm Element Capital Advisors in 2013 then co-founded financial technology company Intersect, building on prior work at Treasury, Pew, GreenOrder, and Element to develop software for analyzing climate-related factors and improving risk-adjusted returns in portfolio construction, asset allocation, and securities selection.
Work with NGOs
Semans serves on the Board of Directors of the National Wildlife Federation and the American Farmland Trust, the Board of Visitors of the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment. Previously, he served on the Board of Directors of The Climate Trust.
See also
- GreenOrder
- Center for Climate and Energy Solutions
- United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change