In today’s edition:

⚡️ Rule change for Net-Zero Alliance members

🚜 Tesla & farm robots

🌳 Deep-sea mining faces a delay

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⚡️ Energy (1-minute read)

Net-Zero Alliance waters down membership rules

What happened: The Net-Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA) has ditched all requirements for members to set or publish greenhouse gas emission-reduction targets, the U.N. said on Wednesday, a major rewrite of its rules after U.S. political pressure led to a member exodus.

Details: The NZIA is one of several United Nations-backed alliances that are supposed to coalesce financial institutions to drive efforts towards reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But this year, the group has come under pressure from some Republican politicians in the United States, who accuse it of violating antitrust rules and pushing up insurance costs. More than half of NZIA's members, fearing a regulatory and litigation blowback, have quit since attorneys general from 23 Republican-led U.S. states threatened legal action.

Impact: Going forward, NZIA member companies have no obligation to set or publish targets: rather, individual member companies will be responsible. This watering down of the membership rules so heavily will alarm environmental campaigners convinced insurers are not doing enough to cut emissions linked to their underwriting fast enough.

🚜 AgriTech (1-minute read)

Ex-Tesla engineer turns hand to farm robots

Situ: The U.S. uses over 1bn pounds (450mn kg) of pesticide annually, which causes water pollution, soil erosion and human health issues.

Enter Aigen Element… An autonomous farm robot that identifies and removes weeds without pesticides. Using its advanced computer vision, the robot detects and removes weeds using its mechanical arm. While the robot's battery pack and lightweight solar panels mean it operates continuously for 14 hours without needing a recharge, even in the dark and rain.

Potential Benefits: Not only can the robots support more environmentally-friendly agriculture by reducing reliance on chemical inputs, but gathering data as it moves across fields provides farmers with valuable insights to make informed decisions for optimising farming practices.

🌳 Nature (1-minute read)

Deep-sea mining rush put on pause

Plans to mine minerals from the ocean floor will likely be delayed by the U.N. body regulating the sector, the International Seabed Authority (ISA), due to environmental and economic risks. Mining companies believe extracting minerals from the ocean floor, like nickel and cobalt for electric vehicle batteries, could support the global energy transition. While environmental groups warn that deep-sea mining could cause damage to marine ecosystems. The expectations are that the ISA will rule out immediate permission for deep-sea mining and discuss a moratorium to ensure proper safeguards are in place — raising doubts about the future of mining minerals from the ocean floor.

💭 Little Bytes

Quote: “Outside the farming sector, people do not understand how important soils are to the climate… changing farming could make soils carbon negative, making them absorb carbon.” Jacqueline McGlade, the former chief scientist at the UN environment programme.

Stat: It took 8 years to sell the first 1mn battery-powered cars, trucks and vans in the US, a milestone hit in 2018. The 2mn mark took 32 months, and the third million took 15 months. The accelerating pace brought the 4 millionth sale after just 10 months. — FT

Watch: Solar-powered robot helps plant trees in the Amazon

🗞 In other news…

• The presidents of Brazil and Colombia discussed regional coordination to fight deforestation and protect the world's largest and most biodiverse rainforest at a meeting in Colombia's Amazonian city of Leticia on Saturday.

• Would you show up for a beach holiday or a business trip with only the clothes on your back? That’s what Japan Airlines is suggesting, as it promotes its new clothes rental service to make travel more eco-friendly.

• Earth’s average temperature set an unofficial record for the third time this week, as the planetary average rose to 17.23C (63F). A big reason we see so many records shattered is that we’re transitioning out of an unusually long three-year La Niña (see article here), which suppressed temperatures, and into a strong El Niño.

• Improvements to agricultural soils around the world would store enough carbon to keep the world within 1.5C of global heating, new research suggests.

• On top of supercharging the US solar, wind and EV industries, incentives in President Biden’s landmark climate law are supporting emerging technologies, too, like sustainable aviation fuel, clean hydrogen and direct air capture.

• The International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO) revised strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from ships has been criticised by green groups, claiming vague commitments mean the organisation has “missed the boat”.

• The Dutch government has won a legal battle to reduce the number of flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport to curb air traffic on environmental grounds.

🎣 Gone Phishing

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

• Robots used to umpire tennis matches in China

• UK to begin offering ‘eco-friendly’ burial alternative

• McDonald’s offers a $200 wedding package

• Algae are making sea lions more aggressive in California

🌞 Climate meme of the week

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