Climate Beef

Happy Tuesday. Big Meat firms have been put on watch by advocacy groups

January 24, 2023

In today’s edition:

🏢 London’s tallest timber office

⛏ Big bets from Aussie miner

🥩Complaints about Brazilian beef

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💼 Big Business (1-minute read)

U.S Brazilian beef giant faces SEC greenwashing complaint.

Advocacy organisation, Mighty Earth, filed a complaint alleging JBS, the world’s largest meat company, is failing to meet its emissions targets. This complaint comes after JBS sold $2.3bn worth of “green bonds” to finance reductions in its global Scope 1 (direct) and 2 (power-related) emissions intensity by at least 30%

The accusation: The advocacy organisation is arguing that the bond packages should not have been badged as ‘green’ or ‘sustainability-linked’, given that they will not fund activities to bring down JBS’s Scope 3 (indirect) emissions. As is the case for most large multinational food firms, JBS’s Scope 3 emissions account for the majority of its footprint – upwards of 97%,

The importance: We need trillions of dollars in investment in decarbonisation to support global net zero pathways - critical to achieving this is ensuring investor confidence that green financial products are having the desired impact

EU planning ‘Net-Zero Industry Act’ under updated industrial plan, von der Leyen confirms

We spoke about it last week and now it’s here … European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen confirmed that a new Industrial Plan aligned with the EU’s 2050 climate targets is in development, including new state and private funding akin to the US’s Inflation Reduction Act.

Greater than sum of parts: UvdL emphasised the importance of US-EU collaboration to deliver sustainability incentive programmes that are “fair and mutually reinforcing”.

London’s tallest mass timber office block opens for business

The problem: 11% of annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are “embodied carbon” from buildings, referring to the emissions generated across the life-cycle of materials used and those generated during construction.

A popular solution: Replacing materials with high levels of embodied carbon, such as steel and concrete, with mass timber is becoming a popular method for cutting GHG emissions — we’ve spoken before about plans in Zanzibar for the world’s tallest mass timber building.

UK joins the mass-timber party: Shared office space company, The Office Group, have opened London’s tallest mass timber office building, reducing embodied carbon by 37% VS concrete

🤖 Future of Tech (1-minute read)

Fortescue Future Industries: Australian Mining Tycoon’s $6Bn Bet

What happened: Back in September, Fortescue Metals Group, one of the world’s biggest producers of iron ore, pledged to eliminate fossil fuels from its operations by 2030.

The challenge: Of the levers being pulled to decarbonise scope 1 and 2 emissions switching drive trains to Electric or Hydrogen is arguably the most challenging. Vehicles do exist but they are not yet available at scale and timelines for delivery of a full fleet are generally 2030+

Acceleration: In an attempt to accelerate timelines, Fortescue set up Fortescue Future Industries. Investments have included the acquisition of the former battery tech arm of the Williams Formula One racing team.

Importance: Zero emissions vehicles could reduce mining’s emissions by 25% - capital is critical to making e-mining vehicles reach price parity with gas guzzling counterparts.

Human hair used to clean waterways in Belgium

The Hair Recycling Project, led by Belgian non-profit Dung Dung, uses human hair clipping collected from hairdressers across the country to absorb environmental pollutants in waterways.

How? Hair clippings are turned into matted squares, which can absorb oil and other hydrocarbons polluting waterways. They are placed into drains and soak up pollution before it reaches rivers, with a single kilogram of hair absorbing 7-8 litres of oil.

What we love? A great example of human products being used in the circular economy to tackle environmental degradation — another example being London-based biomanufacturing company, Biohm, using human hair to produce wood-based building material.

💡 Start-up Spotlight (1-minute read)

Materials Nexus

One-liner: Accelerating the discovery and development process of new net-zero materials using artificial intelligence.

Problem: Materials are the basis of modern life - from housing to transport, technology to clothing - but contribute towards 50% of global CO2 emissions. New materials are required for a low-carbon world but take too long to develop (typically 20+ years)

Deep Dive: Material Nexus's platform combines the insights of quantum mechanics and artificial intelligence to come up with materials that have reduced greenhouse gas emissions. The platform suggests material formulations that is predicted to deliver enhanced material performance. This helps increase the effectiveness of Research and Development funding and enabled faster and more effective materials design.

Revenue model: Work with companies to accelerate development of their next-generation materials - The firm has successfully completed projects with two FTSE350 companies and recently received funding from InnovateUK to develop a new magnetic material to replace permanent magnets used in wind turbines and electric vehicles. Also selected for the Department of Transport's 2021 Transport Research Innovation Grants Programme

Founder/s: Jon Pillow , Jonathan Bean , Nic Stirk & Robert Forrest

Country: UK

Total funding raised: £700k Pre-Seed

Partnerships: Backed by Microsoft's AI accelerator, Founders Factory, G-Force, Katapult, InnovateUK, Google, Carbon13 and Rocky Mountain Institute

💭 Little Bytes

Quote: “Today, fossil fuel producers and their enablers are still racing to expand production, knowing full well that this business model is inconsistent with human survival.” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

Stat: 7.2% of the virgin materials extracted from the earth each year are reused or properly recycled, down from 9.1% in 2018 — Circle Economy’s circularity gap report for 2023

Watch: France requires every large car park to be covered in solar panels, which could generate equivalent power to 10 nuclear reactor