Lenny’s Way: How the Global Bioeconomy Found Its COP30, G20 Game Plan

November 30, 1977, Kansas City. The Seattle SuperSonics were exhausted — three games in five nights over Thanksgiving, losses piling up, their record a miserable 5–17. The season was over before it began.

They hardly knew or cared whether they were flying Frontier or Air Midwest. The coach seats were too small for the big men, and outside the window, the rain was turning to sleet. Gloom was everywhere you looked. Then came the flash: Lenny Wilkens was back.

The legendary player-coach had been rehired. The team was electrified. They went on to win twelve of the next thirteen through Christmas — the start of a surge that would carry Seattle all the way to the 1978 NBA Finals and, a year later, to the 1979 championship.

“When I came in,” Wilkens later recalled, “no one believed in the players. After we started winning, people said, ‘Well, they always had great players.’”

It remains one of sport’s simplest truths — what happens when a team believes in its system, and in each other.

That’s the feeling in the air at COP30 in São Paulo this month. After years of missed shots and moral victories, the global bioeconomy has finally found its system — a coordinated offense built on the Belém 4X Pledge, the Osaka Call to Action, and the IEA Pathways report that gives the team a playbook everyone can see.

Show People How to Have Success

In 1971, in his NBA player-coach days, Lenny Wilkens came off the bench at the NBA All-Star Game and shot 8-for-11, earning the MVP trophy. “Show people how to have success,” he said later, “and then you can push their expectations up.”

That’s exactly what happened in São Paulo. The International Energy Agency brought the diagrams and the data — the first clear picture of how the world could actually run the play. Its Delivering Sustainable Fuels: Pathways to 2035report lays out an “accelerated case”: if nations fully implement existing and announced policies, global use of sustainable fuels can double by 2030 and quadruple by 2035.

That projection became the backbone of the Belém 4X Pledge, introduced by Brazil, India, Italy, and Japan. The pledge commits the world to that 4X target — not as wishful thinking, but as a credible, measurable trajectory.

Sustainable fuels are the complementary offense to electrification — the long-range shooters who score where batteries can’t: aviation, shipping, and heavy industry. For once, the team has a real system. Belém provides the scoreboard, Osaka brings the playbook, and the IEA keeps the stat sheet. Together, they sketch the first global offense that could actually win the game.

Accountability Is Everything

“The most important quality I look for in a player,” Wilkens said, “is accountability. You’ve got to be accountable for who you are.”

At COP30, accountability is finally on the box score. Two companion documents put structure behind the pledge:

The Osaka Call to Action (C2A) — endorsed by companies across the sustainable-fuels value chain — urges governments to design long-term, technology-neutral policies that create predictable demand and reward verified carbon reductions. It calls for life-cycle carbon accounting so everyone plays by the same metric.

The Biofuture Platform Declaration on Sustainable Chemicals and Materials, launched the same week, extends accountability into the chemical sector, where carbon isn’t burned — it’s built into everything we make. The declaration calls for cooperation on technology, supply-chain transparency, and international standards.

Not every player signed on. The United States declined to endorse the chemical declaration, citing its energy-abundance agenda — a reminder that consensus, like chemistry, takes time. But the tone has shifted: it’s no longer about who’s on the floor; it’s about who’s keeping score.

Finding a Way Around It

“If you can’t go through it,” Wilkens said, “find a way around it. Don’t spend all your time banging your head against it.”

The cost gap has always been the rim protector. Electrolytic hydrogen can run nearly four times the price of fossil hydrogen; synthetic fuels are still learning to dribble in traffic.

The IEA’s answer isn’t brute force — it’s system. Think of it as the policy world’s version of a Wilkens motion offense: a coordinated, flowing set of plays where timing, trust, and passing matter more than any single star. Beating the defense made of economics takes movement, not muscle.

Their six-play sequence could’ve been drawn straight from a Wilkens timeout:

1. Regional Roadmaps – tailor the plays to local floors.
2. Demand Predictability – mandates and procurement as the shot clock.
3. Transparent Accounting – every ton tracked, no hidden stats.
4. Innovation Support – fund the rookies, close the gap.
5. Integrated Supply Chains – feedstock to flight in one motion.
6. Accessible Finance – open the lane with grants and guarantees.

A 15 percent SAF blend by 2035 would raise ticket prices only 5–7 percent. Low-emission steel adds about 1 percent to an EV sticker. The cost wall is high, but not unscalable. Coordination is the ladder — and the play is passing beautifully.

The Give-and-Go

“If you want it, you’ve got to give it.”

The IEA estimates $1.5 trillion in cumulative investment between 2024 and 2035 across all sustainable-fuel pathways. That spending isn’t a cost; it’s an assist — the pass that keeps the play alive.

It’s a necessary assist against a tough defense: electrolytic hydrogen still runs nearly four times the cost of its fossil counterpart, and only sustained capital can bring the score even. Those investments could create two million jobs, many in rural and underserved regions where feedstocks grow and distributed refineries thrive.

It’s the global give-and-go: governments give policy certainty, investors give capital, innovators give solutions, and communities get the points.

The Biofuture Industry Council, in a statement after the 4X announcement, called for pivoting “from political outcomes to practical change.” The next big play: the U.S. G20 Presidency in 2026 — a fast break opportunity to turn this late-season surge into a championship run.

Fourth Quarter: Opportunity to Achieve

“Intimidation doesn’t last very long,” Wilkens reminded his players. “Accountability does.”

By 2035, sustainable fuels could cover 15 percent of aviation demand, 35 percent of shipping, and 5 exajoules of industrial energy — mostly from clean hydrogen in steel and chemicals. The Belém 4X Pledge cements those targets, while the Osaka Call to Action and Biofuture Declaration keep the plays in motion.

Think of it as a full-court press for the planet: electrification runs the fast break for short-range travel, sustainable fuels drive the lane for the long game. Together, they move the whole economy downcourt.

The Final Buzzer

“The American dream,” Wilkens said, “means having the opportunity to achieve, because I don’t think you should be guaranteed anything other than opportunity.”

That’s what the Belém 4X Pledge is — not a guarantee, but a chance. A chance for nations to align effort. For industries to trade blame for belief. For science to meet willpower in the open court of collaboration.

Next year’s U.S. G20 Presidency will be the test of that system — the moment to prove that Belém and Osaka weren’t just a hot streak but the start of a dynasty. The G20 bench is deep enough to run the full offense: financing, standards, accountability, and trade alignment. If this team executes, the late-season surge becomes a championship run.

In 1979, Wilkens’s Sonics lifted the trophy that had seemed impossible eighteen months earlier. The crowd roared, but the coach didn’t smile much. He knew the truth: the real victory had already happened in the practices where a team learned to trust its system.

That’s where the bioeconomy stands today. The practice is over; the season is on. Time to run the play.

Lenny Wilkens, who coached more NBA games than anyone in history and was inducted into the Hall of Fame three times — as a player, a coach, and for his leadership with the 1992 U.S. Olympic “Dream Team” — died November 9, 2025. He was 88.