In today’s edition:

🌳 A reforestation push

💰 Cryptocurrency goes green

🗽 Climate Week NYC

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💼 Big Business (1-minute read)

Salesforce launches a marketplace for carbon emission offset

The American software company’s “Net Zero Marketplace” will provide a digital platform for initiatives eliminating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the atmosphere to sell credits (measured in tons of carbon) to companies producing pollution.

Potential solution: The new platform creates a one-stop shop to link players across the value chain (project developers, carbon credit rating providers, data providers).

Importance: This will greatly increase accessibility for Salesforce's 150k+ customers to easily buy and sell credits. In turn, this will increase liquidity within the carbon markets. In doing so, it should act as an effective mechanism to up the quality of credits offered as they come under increasing scrutiny

New alliance launched to boost reforestation

The issue: Globally, companies have committed to planting over 3.6bn trees. Yet, this target is impossible without investment in seed banks - which store and supply a range of seed species needed for large-scale reforestation projects.

A solution: Terraformation (a startup focused on reforestation) has launched the ‘Seed to Forest Alliance’ to bring together NGOs, big businesses and charities to contribute research, finance and expertise in support of developing seed banks.

How? The Alliance will initially focus on a lack of seed supply through improving national seedbanks and connecting forestry groups leading the reforestation projects with funding, tech and training.

The importance: Mass reforestation could capture two-thirds of human-made carbon emissions. Investment in seedbanks is an important part of the puzzle for reforestation at scale.

Air Canada electric flights galore

After its 2021 pledge to hit net zero greenhouse gas emissions before 2050, Air Canada has purchased 30 new ES-30 electric-hybrid aircraft, which generate zero emissions when flying on battery power. The new planes only carry 30 passengers and won’t be available until 2028 but will be destined to support lower-impact regional and commuter flights - seeing as 39.6% of aviation fuel use is for domestic flights, this could still have a big impact.

🤖 Future of Tech (1-minute read)

The world's second-biggest cryptocurrency just got a lot greener

Challenge: We’ve spoken before about the controversy that surrounds the energy intensity of cryptocurrencies - a single Ethereum transaction is equivalent to the weekly power consumption of an average US household.

The change: Ethereum, the world's second most valuable cryptocurrency, has completed a massive software upgrade, "The Merge," that will reduce its energy consumption by nearly 99.95%. Until now, Ethereum was running on a mechanism called "proof-of-work" under which high-powered computers solve complex puzzles. The merger moves Ethereum to a mechanism called "proof-of-stake," which is much more energy efficient as it doesn’t require computers to compete against each other.

Impact: The co-founder said the upgrade would reduce worldwide electricity consumption by 0.2%. Likely to be equivalent to the electrical energy consumption of a country like Portugal.

Reusable packaging startup, Olive, creates a new model to keep clothes out of landfills

Reusable packaging company Olive is relaunching as a business-to-business logistics operation. Olive’s initial model delivered shoppers’ orders from multiple retailers in reusable packaging. Now, products will be shipped directly from a retailer’s warehouse in an Olive-branded reusable box. The package will later be picked up from a consumer’s doorstep to return to the cycle. The company’s new iteration will stand apart from the crowd because it matches retailers’ costs on whatever they pay for current shipments. To make the best use of that return journey, Olive will also provide a new service to customers: Instead of picking up the reusable box empty, they will also have the option to donate (or potentially resell) used clothing.

💡 Deep Dive (1-minute read)

Climate Week NYC an international fossil fuel treaty

Climate Week NYC was in full swing last week - the summit takes place alongside the UN General Assembly and brings together international leaders from business, government and civil society to showcase global climate action.

One topic was discussed at length - the push for an international fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty.

The idea… is to fill some of the gaps left by the 2015 Paris accord. While the Paris agreement commits signatories to make efforts to keep global warming below 2 degrees, it gives them discretion on how they will do so and makes no explicit mention of fossil fuels. Neither did the final text of last year’s Glasgow climate pact. The proposed treaty would create new restrictions on fossil fuels, binding under international law. Most radically, it would suspend the development of all new oil, gas and coal reserves. There would also be limits on the extraction of fossil fuels from existing reserves.

Gaining momentum… About 200 health groups, including the World Health Organisation, supported the concept just before Climate Week kicked off and by the leader of climate-vulnerable Vanuatu.

Our take: There are limits to what can be achieved through voluntary corporate action in the absence of mandatory measures imposed by governments. This treaty would apply the same logic to governments themselves — locking them into binding requirements rather than relying upon good faith and best efforts = political support for it will probably be far tougher than any international climate agreement.

💭 Little Bytes

Quote:  “We have no time to waste. The need for global coordination to tackle the plastic pollution crisis has never been more urgent.” WWF vice president, and head of plastic waste and business, Erin Simon.

Stat: For the first time, clean energy jobs outnumber fossil fuel jobs - WEF

Watch: Students build a car that captures carbon

🗞 In other news…

• The Mercedes F1 team has trialled hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) as a diesel treatment. HVO was used to power 16 of the team’s trucks for the 1,400km journey from the Dutch Grand Prix to the Italian Grand Prix. The team claims that the fuel generated 89% fewer freight emissions due to the change.

• London-based community energy organisation Energy Garden has launched a community share offer to enable people to invest in its work to bring rooftop solar to urban neighbourhoods.

• HSBC Asset Management launched a new thematic fund on the circular economy. It intends to use the fund to back around 60 businesses working on circular economy solutions.

• The chirps of crickets are being researched as an essential indicator of ecosystem health in landscapes facing change caused by global warming.

Written by Colin and Ollie - Drop us a message!