November 1st [Washington, DC, London, Geneva, Houston, Los Angeles], the Mission Possible Partnership (MPP) announces the appointment of Faustine Delasalle to the position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Effective today, Faustine will lead MPP’s growing portfolio of activities to unlock deep decarbonisation projects in industry, including live programmes in the US and Europe.
The move signals a step-change for the organisation, which was founded in 2019 and recently established as a fully independent not-for-profit entity. With the Board’s backing, Faustine will lead a new strategic phase centered on supporting and unlocking decarbonisation projects across heavy industry and transport sectors, which together account for more than 30% of all global carbon emissions. The goal is to build a critical mass of zero-carbon projects across seven carbon-intensive industries this decade – and get ‘shovels in the ground’ by 2025 for those projects to be up and running by 2030.
MPP milestones for the decarbonisation of these industries – aluminium, concrete, chemicals, steel, aviation, shipping and trucking sectors –, a result of its vision-setting sector transition strategies, reveal the minimum number of projects that must be online in each sector by 2030 to make net zero emissions by 2050 viable. Whilst the pipeline is growing, it is uneven and far short of what is needed, and Final Investment Decisions (FIDs) must be reached on hundreds of projects in the next two-to- three years.
Faustine first conceived that hard-to-abate sectors reaching net zero emissions by 2050 was ‘mission possible’, with colleagues, back in 2018, whilst she was spearheading the growth of the Energy Transitions Commission (ETC). From here, the Mission Possible Partnership was created, with ETC as a founding partner along with RMI, the We Mean Business Coalition, and the World Economic Forum. Faustine has held MPP leadership positions ever since and directly helped to position decarbonisation as a business opportunity with executives and boards of major industrial companies. Today, most big businesses in those sectors have committed to reducing carbon emissions close to zero, with significant cuts already before 2030, and the very first commercial-scale, zero-carbon plants have broken ground.
Jessica Uhl, MPP Co-Chair says, “Faustine continues to be an inspiration with her relentless pursuit of our mission and her ability to experiment to learn new ways to get there. She has such clarity and has already proven that she can deliver impressive breakthroughs in this journey. She is perfectly placed for this new role.”
To unlock green investment in the hard-to-abate sectors, Faustine will now steer MPP in creating a flywheel of collaboration across industry, energy, manufacturing and consumer goods, finance sectors and governments to incubate green value chains and improve the business case of green industry and transport projects. The work will incorporate direct support to flagship projects; orchestrating value chain collaborations – such as the recently announced Transatlantic Clean Hydrogen Trade Coalition, created to enable the first clean hydrogen shipment across the Atlantic by 2026; supporting green industrial hubs in the US and beyond; and building market acceleration platforms to facilitate supply- demand matching at scale for green products. MPP aims to expand its geographical footprint beyond US and Europe.
Together with her team, Faustine is supported by a newly established network of Senior Fellows – comprising recognised leaders from across the corporate landscape, with unique expertise in industries related to the organisation’s work. MPP will also continue to operate as a collaboration platform, partnering up with like-minded organisations across the globe to expand its reach and impact, and facilitate collective learning in the face of the climate emergency. MPP continues to benefit from the support of the Bezos Earth Fund, Breakthrough Energy, and Schmidt Futures.
Dick Benschop, Senior Fellow and MPP Board Member says, “Faustine’s inspirational leadership has already brought incredible progress to the industry. Embracing and embedding collaboration in the decarbonisation space is a true Faustine superpower that has long-benefitted MPP, and we are grateful she will now bring these skills to her role as CEO.”
Prior to joining MPP full-time, Faustine was a Partner at systems-change firm Systemiq and was the Director of the ETC for its first 6 years of operation. She will continue to serve as ETC Vice-Chair. Earlier on, Faustine worked in the public sector, with a career in French politics, incorporating both Parliament and local authorities. She is an alumna of SciencesPo Paris and of the London School of Economics and holds degrees in political sciences and economics.
