Axios House: Leaders talk water access, sustainability and the AI-energy landscape

DAVOS, Switzerland — Natural resource conservation and access were central to conversations at an event at Axios House this week.

Why it matters: Rising emissions, global warming and resource pollution are making sustainability-focused initiatives all the more pressing for both nonprofits and larger companies.

Axios' Amy Harder spoke with Water.org co-founders Gary White and Matt Damon, Novonesis president and CEO Ester Baiget, and Emerald AI founder and CEO Varun Sivaram at the event, which was sponsored by PepsiCo.

What they're saying: "100% of our electricity, it's green," Baiget said.

• "The footprint is what we make on the way that we produce, and we want to make it as little as possible. Of course, it's using green electricity. We have reduced close to 63% of the CO2 emissions since we started this journey, and we have increased the revenue 25%."
• "So sustainability, planet, growth, profitability, two sides of the same coin."

Driving the news: White and Damon announced Water.org's new Get Blue initiative, with initial partners Starbucks, Amazon, Gap and Ecolab.

• They're working to get more companies on board, which is part of the reason for launching the program at Davos, White said.
• "We're trying to build a movement, really," Damon said.

How it works: Water.org focuses on expanding access to clean water worldwide.

• "What we primarily do in the context of water is help women living in poverty get small, affordable loans so that they can get the solutions that are best for them," White said. "We've reached about 85 million people through those programs, and that's churned about $7 billion in microloans."
• "So what we see is the ability to look at market capital as a way to kind of fill some of the gaps that might be left because of the reduction in aid."
• Damon added that "this is an enormous problem – 2 billion people on the planet don't have access to safe water, and what that means is that the water collection falls predominantly on women and girls. And so girls aren't in school because they have to find water for the family, and then you can just imagine what that does to their outcomes and their futures and their potential."

What we're watching: "I think 2026 is when energy and AI become the most important topic, because they govern the way that the most important technology of humanity's future will evolve," Sivaram said.

Content from the sponsor's segment:

In a View From the Top conversation, PepsiCo chair and CEO Ramon Laguarta explained the role sustainability plays in PepsiCo's company strategy.

• "For us, sustainability is not a choice, it is a must-do, because when we're running the company for the next 10, 15, 20 years, and if we want PepsiCo to be a highly successful company, high growth … we need to protect nature," Laguarta said. "We need to make sure that we use resources in a way that they are regenerative."