🌱 Deep Sea Mine? Norway says fine

Happy Tuesday and a belated Happy New Year. We’re kicking off 2024 with Norway’s plunge into Deep Sea Mining and the balancing act between green tech demands and environmental concerns.

In today’s edition:
⚡️ 130 countries agree to triple renewable energy capacity
🚜 EU pledges €70mn to help smallholders comply with deforestation regulations
🌳 Norway to start mining mineral stores at 1,500 to 6,000 meters below shore

🔋 Energy (1-Min Read)
Renewables expansion, everywhere, all at once

What happened: Renewables are growing so fast that the IEA has had to, again, revise its forecast - up an incredible 33% in 1 year. Analysts are having a seriously hard time keeping up with what's going on: an exponential expansion of renewables everywhere, all at once

Key factoids:

• Many countries saw strong growth in renewables in 2023. But China led the way — installing as much solar PV last year as the entire world did in 2022

• Renewables are on track to account for 41% of global power generation in just five years. This is driven by the fact that wind and solar are cheaper than fossil fuels in almost all circumstances.

• According to the IEA, the future of renewables is bright:

  • ✅In 2024, variable renewable generation surpasses hydropower

  • ✅In 2025, renewables will surpass coal-fired electricity generation.

  • ✅In 2025, wind surpasses nuclear electricity generation, and in 2026, solar PV does to

(Full story here).

 🚜 AgriTech (1-Min Read)
EU's Coffee Conundrum: Brewing Trouble?

What happened: The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) will ban the sale of goods linked to forest destruction and come into force in late 2024. However, the legislation has unintended consequences for importers, processors and producers of coffee in Africa.  

Details: To comply with the EUDR, importers must prove their goods did not originate from deforested areas by digitally mapping their supply chains down to the plot where the coffee is grown. However, this mapping is having unintended consequences:

1. It is costly in countries where production is smaller, so importers are dropping their orders from these nations and risking the increased poverty of small-scale producers. 

2. Land rights disputes, weak law enforcement and clan conflict can make it dangerous for smallholders to seek data on farm ownership for importers.

The bigger picture: The EUDR seeks to prevent deforestation linked to commodities like coffee, cattle, and timber. While the EU has pledged €70mn to help smallholders comply with EUDR, these unintended consequences highlight the complexity of balancing conservation goals with local livelihoods. (Full story here).

🐘 Nature (1-Min Read)
 Norway's plunge into controversial Deep-Sea Mining

What happened: The controversial practice of extracting valuable minerals from the sea bed has taken a step forward after Norway became the first country to allow exploratory deep-sea mining — disappointing scientists and environmental organisations who say the method will irreversibly damage biodiversity and ecosystems.

Why the deep sea?  Advocates say that sea-bed extraction is necessary to secure supplies of metals such as copper, nickel and cobalt, which are used in various green technologies from EV batteries to electricity grids.  Forecasts vary dramatically, but are fairly consistent that there will be shortfalls in supply of all three of these metals by 2030.

Concerns? Research on the ecological impacts of deep-sea mining is limited, and there is concern that mining could have unintended and far-reaching consequences. Ecosystems are complex machines like mechanical watches, where all the parts – species – function together and cannot apart.  Damaging 1 km2 of a 100 km2 seabed does not necessarily translate to a 1% biodiversity loss; over time, if a critical component, it could negatively alter the biodiversity of the entire sea floor (100%). Check out our recent deep dive on Nature data and AI here.  (Full story here).

💭 Little Bytes (1-Min Read)

💬 Quote: “Following the current trajectory, in a few years time the record breaking year of 2023 will probably be remembered as a cool year.” Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus climate change service.

📊 Stat: A rapid surge in the rollout of renewable energy last year has put the world within reaching distance of a goal to triple global capacity by 2030 - IEA

📺️ Watch: The AI that can spot wildfires as soon as they start

🛗 Snippets for your lift conversations (1-Min Read)

• Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest in 2023 halved from the previous year to its lowest level since 2018, government data showed on Friday, a major win for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in his first year in office. (Full story here).

• Supermarket Sainsbury’s has launched a new electric vehicle (EV) charging business to “provide an exciting new service” for shoppers in tandem with the electrification of its fleet. (Full story here).

• The US treasury unveiled new battery sourcing requirements for the EV tax credit, aimed at weaning the U.S. electric vehicle supply chain away from China. (Full story here).

• The New York share listing of Brazilian meat company JBS SA would expose investors to risk. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission should closely scrutinise the company's criminal and environmental track record, a bipartisan group of senators said in a letter to the agency on Thursday. (Full story here).

 🎣 Gone Phishing (1-Minute Read)

Three of these stories are true, one we've made up. Guess which:

• Tasmanian garden wins prize for world’s ugliest lawn

• Mouse secretly filmed tidying man’s shed every night

• Local Grandma's living room voted most eccentric in a contest

• Cat saves dog from Coyote attack