Ben recently returned to Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington to run Cogo’s New Zealand office from Taiawa Wellington Tech Hub.
“Climate affects everything,” Ben says. “You could focus on water quality or animal welfare, you name it. You can be purpose-driven in your work. But for me, climate came up through my studies at Vic as being a thing that if we don’t solve this, it doesn’t matter whether or not we’ve managed to save certain species. The climate is such a systematically impactful thing.”
Ben says he always felt the need to make the world better. His parents were activists around anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid, as well as other issues of the time. “I remember being on my mum’s or dad’s back as a kid demonstrating at rallies. So I always felt the need to contribute in that way. That value has been built in from childhood.”
His work in the climate arena is also motivated by a sense of injustice. “The impacts are going to be felt the most by the people who have contributed least to causing it. The effects of climate change will be bad, but I think it’s the displacement of people and the issues that I think will cause the biggest impact.”
Ben originally studied engineering in Auckland for a couple of years, but realised it wasn’t right for him.. After some time running a cafe and setting up music festivals with a sustainability lens, he decided to apply some of his knowledge and learn new skills at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.
As well as completing a Bachelor of Science, Ben also did a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies, majoring in Economics, looking at the carbon market . This was in 2004, the early days of electric and hybrid vehicles coming into the market. He has always been interested in the question, ‘how can we address climate change?’.
“The quality of lecturers at VUW was really high, and the support and advice around the specific subjects areas like carbon accounting was a revelation. So my studies equipped me with those skills. There was also a real sense of purpose in the topic that we were learning—the lecturers had passion and commitment, they really loved the work they were doing, and wanted to help you learn the stuff to ultimately have an impact in the world.”
After graduation, Ben worked at The Treasury for seven years. He did work around the emissions trading scheme, and spent three years on the negotiating team for New Zealand. “It felt like we were flying around the world causing more carbon emissions than reductions. I thought we were going to change the world but it wasn’t changing fast enough.”
During his last couple of years at The Treasury, Ben negotiated a four-day working week and spent his ‘day off’ setting up and working on Conscious Consumers, a charity promoting sustainable consumption. Eventually deciding that climate change was a bigger problem than a charity could solve, he set up Cogo in 2017 and started raising capital.
Now, Cogo has offices in Hong Kong, Japan, Europe, and Canada, as well as here in Wellington, New Zealand, and reaches 30 million people and small businesses around the world, helping them understand and reduce their carbon footprint. In New Zealand, Ben is based at Taiawa Wellington Tech Hub, at the University’s Pipitea campus, and appreciates the sense of community the coworking space provides. “Even just the emotional support of having other founders around that could feel the pains and the highs. We’re happy we’re here—we’re not going anywhere!”
The team at Cogo has also conducted a number of lectures at the University and have had students join them for internships from a variety of courses. Being on campus at Taiawa has helped Cogo to support students’ education in a practical way.
“I feel like when I was studying, if I’d had the chance to just go up a few flights in the elevator and actually start working or being able to apply my skills and knowledge, it would have been pretty cool.”
Cogo helps individuals measure their carbon footprint through their banking app, in real time, according to how you use your money, with a product called Carbon Insights. They also launched another product—Carbon Manager—a few years ago, helping businesses report on their carbon footprints. The University provides this tool to a number of suppliers, helping both the service providers and the University analyse their accounting data and report on their carbon footprint.
Cogo also has a third tool, Electrification, that helps homeowners and car owners to electrify their homes and cars with solar panels, batteries, heat pumps, and electric cars. It helps people save money on their energy and fuel bills while also saving carbon.
“We sometimes say it’s a Trojan horse, where we dress it up to save money, but behind the scenes we’re still focused on carbon. There are time periods where people care more about the climate than others, but saving money is what people will always care about.”