In today’s edition:

🤖 Google, AI and Indian agriculture

⚽️ Green Football Weekend

🌞 Gains for nuclear fusion startup

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💼 Big Business (1-minute read)

Google + Artificial Intelligence (AI) = powering agriculture sustainability in India

The agriculture industry is critical to India as over half the population depend on it for their livelihoods. India is also critical to global food systems — being a leading producer of rice.

The challenges: More efficient crop yields are needed to feed India’s 1.4bn population, while climate change disrupts farming systems and is exacerbated by unsustainable practices.

How AI is helping: Google and agri-tech partners in India are using machine learning and satellite imagery to develop “landscape understanding”. This separates farmland into field segments to provide a detailed picture of current performance and future needs by determining field size, distance to water, the type of crop being grown, and harvest dates.

The importance: An accurate understanding of field performance in changing environmental conditions mean farmers can make more informed decisions to reduce waste while increasing yields.

EU unveils Green Deal Industrial Plan to boost Europe's clean tech competitiveness

• The effort sets some lofty goals: The first climate-neutral continent by 2050; At least 55% fewer emissions by 2030; 3 billion additional trees to be planted in the EU by 2030

• Regulatory Environment: Faster permits to manufacturers of technologies key to climate goals. Likely to include carbon capture and storage, renewable energy, renewable hydrogen, batteries, etc.

• Financial Incentives and Support: A monster pool of subsidies - 225 billion euros ($245 billion) of loans and 20 billion euros of grants. Longer term, the EU will propose creating a Sovereign Wealth Fund to invest in emerging tech.

• Skills Gap: A bunch of big industry partnerships for job creation and funds for training

• Trade: A broad increase of the EU's network of trade agreements, with countries like Chile, Mexico, New Zealand and Mercosur and one it aims to agree with Australia. And the establishment of alliances with like-minded partners on raw materials and clean tech.

UK's Green Football Weekend

Sports broadcasters, BT Sport and Sky, spearheaded a sustainability communications drive over the weekend, leveraging the reach of over 80 football clubs to promote “greener” behaviours to fans. Fans were encouraged to pledge to make 1+ changes to their lifestyle for the weekend through the Pledgeball Platform and, by doing so, score three virtual “green goals”, which are added to their team’s tally. A dedicated website has been set up to track pledges.

What we think: A simple but effective way of leveraging the power of sport to get people talking about their impact on the planet while encouraging behavioural change.

💰 Deals of the Week (1-minute read)

🛵 NT-Tao, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based nuclear fusion energy company, raised $22M in Series A funding for its proprietary ultra-fast plasma heating method will enable more energy-efficient fusion.

🍎 Canada’s New School Foods Raised $12M for its proprietary, scalable technology that can produce “raw” whole-cut fish alternatives. Beginning in 2023, the company will launch its whole-cut salmon through a chef-only pilot program in North America.

🚗 Kelpi, an English startup, has secured more than £3 million in fundraising to help develop its unique compostable packaging from seaweed.

☀️ Paris-based Ever Dye, a deep-tech startup, has raised €3.4M in a Seed round of funding to scale and commercialise its sustainable dyeing process and help the textile industry to lower emissions

💭 Little Bytes

Quote:   “At a time when the US is rolling out the biggest green subsidy programme in history, it is imperative that Europe keeps up and stays the course… The EU bank will do its part to finance home-grown innovation that will lead us to net-zero.” EIB Group president Werner Hoyer

Stat: Planting more trees in urban areas could reduce premature deaths in European cities by a third

Watch: Chickens turning foot waste in carbon-neutral eggs

🗞 In other news…

• Unilever is one of 15 organisations joining a new collaborative effort to scale carbon capture and usage technologies in the UK, with a view to using carbon captured from flue gases in new consumer products.

• An $11trn investor group will start disclosing carbon emissions linked to its private and sovereign debt investments for the first time, opening up new avenues for scrutiny of lending decisions to oil and gas-rich nations.

• Barcelona’s city council incentivises residents of the metropolitan area to ditch their cars by offering free, three-year travel cards for use on public transport within the city.

• UN-backed report concludes that 10% of the most polluting people in society are responsible for almost half of the annual GHG emissions behind climate change, creating a “strong incentive” for policies targeting the elite.

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