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Global climate institutions have embraced the primacy of capital, private firms, and markets—and in so doing have fatally undermined their own efficacy.
Relying on the private sector to decarbonize is a recipe for abandoning workers.
Ecological crisis, rural deindustrialization, and real estate speculation have created conditions in which the far right thrives.
Big trees, old trees, and especially big old trees have always been objects of reverence. From Athena’s sacred olive on the Acropolis to the unmistakable ginkgo leaf prevalent in Japanese art and fashion during the Edo period, our profound admiration for slow plants spans time and place as well as cultures and religions. At the same time, the utilization and indeed the desecration of ancient trees is a common feature of history. In the modern period, the American West, more than any other region, witnessed contradictory efforts to destroy and protect ancient conifers. Historian Jared Farmer reflects on our long-term relationships with long-lived trees, and considers the future of oldness on a rapidly changing planet.
Cows are a significant source of methane emissions, primarily due to their unique digestive system. Milk and beef cows are ruminants, which means they have a specialized stomach chamber (called the rumen), which houses billions of microbes that facilitate the breakdown of fibrous plant material. The process is called “enteric fermentation,” and as these microbes work to digest the cellulose found in the cows’ diet, methane is produced as a byproduct. That’s a problem: The EPA identifies methane as being about 25 times more potent as CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Alga Biosciences leaps to the rescue, creating a new feed for cows that dramatically reduces how much burping goes on.
“Enteric methanogenesis, also known as cattle burps — is the single biggest source of anthropogenic methane emissions in the world. During the digestive process of cows, sheep, goats and other ruminants, microbes in the stomach of these animals break down food into smaller components, such as carbohydrates, proteins and fats. As a byproduct of this process, methane is produced and released into the atmosphere when the animal belches,” explains Alex Brown, co-founder/CEO of Alga Biosciences in an interview with TechCrunch. “When we got into Y Combinator, we put all of our money at the time into academic live animal trials to test our product, and found that methane emissions from beef cattle were undetectable with our approach. This is the first time results of this magnitude have been observed in live animals.”
Reducing belching has a side effect beyond just the environment. Methane is full of energy, and Alga claims that roughly 12% of all the calories a cattleman feeds his cow end up being wasted in the form of methane burps. This is a massive hidden cost for farmers, and it poses a huge opportunity for re-directing those calories to meat and milk production. The theory goes that kelp-based feed additives provide a direct avenue to reduce anthropogenic methane emissions; it could also be a massive economic benefit for farmers.
The company raised a round led by Collaborative Fund, and the company now has raised a total of $4 million in funding. In addition to Collaborative, Y Combinator, Day One Ventures, Cool Climate Collective, Pioneer Fund, Overview Capital and others also participated. The company has also received a grant from USDA Climate Smart Commodities.
Caroline McKeon (co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer), Daria Balatsky (co-founder and Chief Technology Officer), Alex Brown (co-founder and CEO). Image credit: Alga.
“The best climate tech startups will build solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions while being cheap, scalable and safe. We are thrilled that cattle farmers, like us, believe that Alga’s solution hits that trifecta,” said Tomas Alvarez Belon, investor at Collaborative Fund. “We are thrilled to support Alga Bio in this journey to create a methane-free world.”
The company is working on producing its feed additive for larger commercial pilots, and the company tells TechCrunch it can already produce at a scale of tens of thousands of head per day. There’s plenty of scale for growth; some sources estimate that there are around 1.5 billion cows in the world.
Alga Biosciences wants to help climate change, one bovine burp at a time by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch
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Earlier this week, I was at a meeting to discuss the question whether my university should cut its ties with the fossil industry, or else impose additional conditions on working with partners from fossil industries. There was quite some agreement that the university should think hard about spelling out and endorsing a moral framework, and based on those values and moral principles work out what (if any) forms of collaboration would remain legitimate in the future. This led our vice-chancellor to ask the question what else such moral framework would imply for university staff. “Should we perhaps completely stop flying?”, he asked.
And then there is, once again, a very depressing IPCC report and we must radically change our modes of production and consumption if we want to leave our children (and our older selves) a planet that will remain safe for the human species. And it’s not just about the future, but about the present: urgent action is needed to lower the number of the deadly climate-related events that we have seen over the last years, from increases in wildfires to deadly floodings – that led poor people, who have made almost zero contribution to this problem, lose their livelihoods, and many simply died. So to me it seems obvious that what we change in response to climate change is a very urgent moral question.
Hence the question: Do academics fly too much? Should we simply stop flying at all?
I’m using academics here in the sense of people employed as professors, postdocs, and PhD candidates at universities or other institutes of higher education and research. And it concerns flying for academic activities – most often, presenting one’s research at conferences or as an invited speaker to a seminar series or workshop. Of course, many of the thoughts that follow will apply to other professions too, but since this makes it easier for me to write down my worries, let me start there.
During the pandemic, it was easy: we couldn’t fly. I missed travelling. Frankly, I missed it a lot: I missed the interaction with other scholars working on related questions; I missed the inspiration from meeting the smart and creative people that one tends to meet on such occasions; I missed learning about the new work other people are doing; I missed the feedback on the work that I presented; I missed the intellectual joy of long conversations over breakfasts, lunches and dinners on matters academic, political, and otherwise; I missed the strengthening of my professional networks that travel brought me; I missed seeing friends far away; I missed the adventure of travelling to places; I missed the intellectual energy and inspiration such a trip could give.
Some have argued that the ‘normalisation’ of videoconferencing has taken away any reasons for travel. I love the new habits that are created by zoom, teams, and the other programs – the international paper discussions, seminars, reading groups. But no matter how wonderful these online events can be, many of the good things that come with travelling to workshops and conferences are not part of online events. Perhaps, some might argue, that is simply the price we should pay to stay within our fair emissions budget?
There are other reasons why academics want to travel long-distance by plane. Many want to travel because they feel they need to in order to build their scholarly networks or to strengthen their CV – in short, they feel they need it for their career. I’ve heard some colleagues say that this should be a reason why only junior scholars should be allowed to fly. This strikes me as self-defeating, since some of the most interesting conversations I had when I was a PhD student or postdoc was with older, more senior scholars who came to give a talk – I’ve always felt there is much I could learn from them too. Academia is international, and if we could only interact with our local peers that would be a loss. Moreover, I suspect that there are some very senior scholars who receive a lot of overseas keynote invitations: should they always decline invitations if those would require them to fly? What reasoning could they use that is genuinely sound, and not a form of self-deception?
There is no emissions-free alternative to flying long-distance, which makes travel-by-airplane a scarce good. There are, presumably, many more academics who would like to fly many more miles than would be good for the habitability of the planet. Should we have an open discussion about how much we should allow ourselves to fly, just like we have discussions about how much we should referee? Or should we just leave this, loosely libertarian and without causing offence to anyone, to everyone’s own judgement without a public discussion?
Once the discussion kicks off, there are various arguments one encounters. Here are a few of claims I’ve heard from others or considered myself, when trying to justify why travel by airplane is fine:
(1) It doesn’t make a difference at all whether I fly or not. It’s inconsequential to addressing climate change.
(2) I’ve been invited oversees as a keynote, so if I decline, the organisors invite someone else, and it doesn’t make a difference to total emissions.
(3) It’s bad that I fly, but I’m going to find a golden offset mechanism, and compensate the full damage that my flying does to planet – perhaps 150%.
(4) I wish I wouldn’t have to fly, but I must fly for my job; I commute by airplane. Yes, I could find a non-academic job closer by, but it’s not reasonable to ask from me that I give up my profession for the sake of lowering my emissions.
(5) Why would I have to stop flying if my North-American colleagues on average fly so much more than we [Europeans, Africans, Latin-Americans, …] do? When they limit their flying, I’ll limit mine too.
(6a) Why would I have to stop flying (whether for work or privately) if the really big pollutors, for example in Big Oil companies, keep earning millions destroying the earth? Why should I worry about adding one or two ton CO2 if the biggest polluters are not setting the right example?
(6b) Why should we stop flying if the number of superrich people flying in their ultrapolluting private jets keep flying? Let them stop flying first, and then we can talk about ordinary folks who should stop flying.
(7) I eat vegan, have no car, have put my savings in solar energy production, and have no kids. Given all this, I think I should be morally permitted to fly.
(8) I’m on the academic job market and need to go to any conference I can afford to travel to, in order to improve my chances at landing a job.
(9) I’ve joined Extinction Rebellion (or another group) and I’m making my contribution to addressing climate change there. We should only talk about political activism, not about consumption, such as flying.
(10) I’m only flying if I think it makes a difference not just to myself, but also that the trip is worthwhile for enough others too. And once I decide to fly, I try to get the most out of it in terms of contributing, e.g. by offering to give another talk in a nearby place.
(11) …
(12) … and so on, and so forth.
While I think some of these claims are dubious, others are less obviously so. But which ones are acceptable as reasons in our own deliberations whether to fly or not, and which ones should we reject? How do (or should) we deliberate with ourselves on those matters?
I’ve recently accepted an overseas invitation, and while the climate cost was immediately on the forefront of my mind, after some agonizing claims #2 and #10 made me, eventually, think it was OK to accept the invitation. But was it? I am not just, because of my love for academic travelling, simply fooling myself? And are those of us who keep travelling by plane not fooling ourselves most of the time? Or can a balance be struck without giving up on travel by plane completely?
So, friends, over to you. Given me claims/reasons #11, #12, etc. that you’ve had in your own mind, or heard, and let me know what you think of all these claims. And if anyone has a proposal for a decision procedure we should endorse, across academia globally, on when we are still permitted to fly (if at all), then let us know. Because, as you can can see, I have more questions than answers.
PS: Please be respectful of others’ point of views and arguments; many of us are unsure about these matters and trying to find out what we should think and do. If you’ve thought about this long and hard and made up your mind, good for you, but give others the time too to find out what they decide to believe. I’ll filter out rude or hateful comments.
Concrete is ubiquitous. A mainstay of the construction industry, over 10 billion cubic meters of concrete is used every year. It’s also responsible for up to 8% of CO2 emissions: one ton of ordinary Portland cement creates somewhere between 800 and 900 kilograms of CO2 emissions. Finnish startup Carbonaide has just raised €1.8 million (~$1.9 million at today’s exchange rate) in seed funding to knock down concrete’s carbon emissions, but not the construction industry.
“Our goal at Carbonaide is to create a more sustainable future with cutting-edge tech that doesn’t just reduce the carbon emissions of construction materials like concrete, but that traps more CO2 than they emit throughout their lifetime,” explains Tapio Vehmas, Carbonaide’s CEO. “It is very natural that the constructed environment becomes a CO2 sink, as it is the largest volume of man-made material.”
Carbonaide’s process binds carbon dioxide into precast concrete using an automated system at atmospheric pressure. By reducing the quantity of required cement content and mineralizing CO2 into the concrete itself, Carbonaide believes it can halve the carbon dioxide emissions of traditional Portland cement concrete. If it can introduce industrial waste products, for example, industry slag, green liquor dregs, and bio-ash into the process, it has the potential to produce concrete with a negative carbon footprint.
The next step for Carbonaide is to scale the technology into a production line at its factory in Hollola, Finland, which is where this seed funding round comes in.
“The goal for this funding round is to scale the technology into an industrial-scale pilot factory. With the funding, we can implement the technology into a precast concrete production line that allows carbon curing as a part of the industrial process,” says Vehmas. “When we have done that, we will know exactly the cost structure and needed parameters for effective curing,” because it does need to add up.
“Can we develop technical solutions that also make sense commercially? Low-carbon products have to have a lower price than normal products. Otherwise, we can’t be sure that our technology will prevail,” says Vehmas.
Carbonaide has calculated that a fully operational chain could mineralize up to five tons of CO2 per day and increase production by 100-fold of its carbon-negative concrete products, but it’s not just about making this type of concrete industrially scalable. Carbonaide also needs to bring the naturally conservative construction industry with it.
“The technology must fit in perfectly, otherwise, it won’t make a change,” says Vehmas. “The industry is very conservative, but there is a good reason for that. We build structures that are meant to last, and by being conservative, we can ensure that they will remain in the future.”
It’s easy to say that if something isn’t broken, it doesn’t need to be fixed, but Vehmas recognizes how the carbon footprint of concrete is breaking the Earth, and it does need to be fixed: “I want to see how a low-carbon industry can become a reality in highly conservative markets. If we can make this happen, maybe our generation will have some hope to pay our carbon debt for future generations.”
Importantly, Vehmas has experience in the construction industry that he can bring on this quest, and he believes that the investment that Carbonaide has raised validates both its necessity and viability.
“I also have 20+ years of experience working with concrete, meaning I have dealt with industry my whole adulthood. I basically live and breathe concrete. That helps a lot when introducing new technology into a highly conservative industry,” says Vehmas. “This investment is a sign of good progress for us because we’ve received the support and backing of players in the industry already.”
Backing for Carbonaide comes from Lakan Betoni and Vantaa Energy, which led the seed funding. The round was completed with public loans and in-kind contributions from Business Finland and other Finnish concrete companies and strategic investors.
The concrete and energy companies supporting Carbonaide are doing so in more ways than just financially. They are also able to provide CO2 for Carbonaide’s processes, because believe it or not, while too much carbon dioxide is fizzing its way into the atmosphere, the captive kind that we need for everything from concrete to soda is in short supply.
If Carbonaide’s pilot factory goes to plan, Vehmas hopes that it can have a planet-saving impact on the construction industry.
“After the piloting, our goal is to commercialize the technology. We want to make this process easy to implement by packing the technology into a modular unit that is easy to install and enables easy implementation of the technology on-site,” says Vehmas. “If everything goes as I dream, our technology will start a process where the constructed environment becomes a carbon sink in the future, not a source of massive emissions.”
When life gives you carbon, make Carbonaide by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch
Enlarge (credit: Walter Zerla via Getty Images)
Say you are a maker of computer graphics cards, under pressure from investors questioning your green credentials. You know what to do. You email your various departments, asking them to tally up their carbon emissions and the energy they consume. Simple enough. You write a report pledging a more sustainable future, in which your trucks are electrified and solar panels adorn your offices.
Good start, your investors say. But what about the mines that produced the tantalum or palladium in your transistors? Or the silicon wafers that arrived via a lengthy supply chain? And what of when your product is shipped to customers, who install it in a laptop or run it 24/7 inside a data center to train an AI model like GPT-4 (or 5)? Eventually it will be discarded as trash or recycled. Chase down every ton of carbon and the emissions a company creates are many times times higher than it first seemed.
Enlarge / If this road is your only route to the outside world, it might not matter that your house didn't flood. (credit: Maurice Alcorn / EyeEm)
Climate change produces lots of risks that are difficult to predict. While it will make some events—heatwaves, droughts, extreme storms, etc.—more probable, all of those events depend heavily on year-to-year variation in the weather. So, while the odds may go up, it's impossible to know when one of these events will strike a given location.
In contrast, sea level rise seems far simpler. While there's still uncertainty about just how quickly ocean levels will rise, other aspects seem pretty predictable. Given a predicted rate of sea level rise, it's easy to tell when a site will start ending up underwater. And that sort of analysis has been done for various regions.
But having a property above water won't be much good if flooding nearby means you can't get to a hospital or grocery store when you need to or lose access to electricity or other services. It's entirely possible for rising seas to leave a property high, dry, but uninhabitable as rising seas cut connections to essential services. A group of researchers has analyzed the risk of isolation driven by sea level rise, and shows it's a major contributor to the future risks the US faces.
Enlarge / Magnified view of Vibrio vulnificus bacteria. (credit: Smith Collection/Gado via Getty Images)
Cases of a potentially fatal infection from a seawater-borne pathogen have increased off the US Atlantic coast as ocean waters warmed over the last 30 years and are expected to rise further in future because of climate change, according to a study published on Thursday by Scientific Reports, an open-access journal for research on the natural sciences and other topics.
The incidence of infections from Vibrio vulnificus, a pathogen that thrives in shallow, brackish water, was eight times greater in the Eastern US in 2018 than it was in 1988, and its range shifted northward to areas where waters were previously too cold to support it, according to the paper, “Climate Warming and Increasing Vibrio Vulnificus Infections in North America,” by academic researchers in the US, England, and Spain.
By the middle of the 21st century, the pathogen is expected to become more common in major population centers, including New York City, and by the end of the century, infections may be present in every US Atlantic coast state if carbon emissions follow a medium- to high-level trajectory, the report said.
The World Economic Forum says that so-called “Scope 3 emissions,” — or CO2 in supply chains — can make up as much as 90% of a company’s carbon footprint, and worldwide more than half of all emissions can be traced back to only a handful of supply chains. Tracking and reducing these emissions are easier said than done; and if you can’t track it, you can’t improve it. Berlin-based startup The Climate Choice closed a $2 million round to help companies cut a chunk of their carbon out of that part of their emissions, too.
“In 2014 I experienced the problem firsthand when I attempted to reduce the climate impact of my first company, Resmio, by sourcing products from climate-friendly suppliers. The task proved impossible for someone who was not a climate expert,” explains The Climate Choice CEO and co-founder, Yasha Tarani. “Following the sale of Resmio, I took a sabbatical and witnessed the catastrophic effects of climate change firsthand. In Delhi I arrived to 122-degree temperatures with people sleeping on the streets, in Thailand my hut was lost to floods and in New Zealand I saw the glow of bushfires on the horizon. I decided then to dedicate my life’s work to reversing the degradation of our planet.”
Tarani combined forces with co-founder Lara Obst, who had built what she refers to as the EU’s leading climate innovation program. Together, they decided to focus on decarbonizing corporate supply chains, along with a third partner — data scientist Dr. Rey Farhan, who had most recently been working on data-heavy products for the financial industry.
The $2 million equity financing round was led by Gutter Capital.
“We believe the world is at a turning point. Starting in 2024, approximately 49,000 companies will be required to disclose Scope 3 emissions data in compliance with the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. We believe that The Climate Choice is positioned to be the partner of choice to help these companies rise to the moment,” explains Tarani. “We have already seen the success of our platform with our customers in simplifying data collection and collaboration with suppliers, and we are excited to empower companies around the world to make climate-relevant procurement decisions.”
The company has built a platform that helps companies understand the emissions of their suppliers, acquire audit-ready data and take actions to decarbonize the supply chain. The product is currently in use by several early customers, including O2 Telefonica and HiPP. The company says it is actively monitoring thousands of suppliers.
“Our mission is to empower every company to be a climate champion. We believe that now more than ever that mission is in reach. Today about half of European companies have a climate transition plan in place, but less than 5% of those companies show the readiness required to achieve those plans. We believe that TCC will fundamentally change this,” says Tarani. “Ten years from now our platform will automate supplier engagement for the world’s largest companies, and all companies will have access to real-time supplier data to empower informed decision making.”
The company is adamant that it isn’t a carbon accounting platform, but something different altogether.
“Traditional carbon accounting practices rely on averages and assumptions to calculate supplier emissions. This approach is helpful to infer a rough carbon footprint and understand hotspots, but because every supplier within a category looks the same, it is useless for actually making choices to decarbonize,” Tarani explains. “TCC starts where the carbon accounting typically ends. Our platform automates supplier outreach and generates real primary data profiles on supplier emissions and practices. Supplier profiles are shared openly within our network, so that work is not duplicated across firms. Armed with comprehensive supplier data, companies can compare suppliers, and make informed procurement decisions to decarbonize their supply chain.”
The Climate Choice wants to make supply chain emissions more visible and more green by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch
Join us for a thought-provoking conversation between two Hugo award-winning science fiction authors, Becky Chambers and Annalee Newitz. Known for challenging classic science fiction tropes such as war, violence, and colonialism, both authors create vivid and immersive worlds that are filled with non-human persons, peace, and a subtle sense of hope. The authors will discuss what it means to take these alternative themes seriously, delve into their writing & world building process, and explore how science fiction can help us imagine new futures that can make sense of our current civilizational struggles.
The Levelling Up White Paper makes explicit reference to the Net Zero agenda, stating that the transition “could have large and long-lasting effects on virtually every aspect of the economy, including jobs and skills, infrastructure and technology, and investment and innovation”.
While there are fears that this transition could impose a considerable cost both on society more broadly and also on those individuals and communities that are least able to bear those costs, there is also a very clear opportunity for a so-called “Green Industrial Revolution” to advance the levelling up agenda in profound ways.
Making the transition
The impact can be profound in a number of ways. Firstly, the transition from fossil fuels to clean fuels can produce good-quality jobs in previously deprived areas. Research from the University of Michigan shows that there is a good crossover between the skills required to perform jobs in fossil fuel-based industries and to do jobs in renewable energy sectors.
For instance, they highlight how transferable jobs are in fossil fuel industries to those in renewable sectors. The research evaluated the career options for the approximately 80,000 coal-fired generator workers in the US in case of closure. The results showed that their skills are applicable in renewable energy industries, such as solar. They do find, however, that government interventions are necessary to direct solar investments toward former coal communities.
This was also evident during our research, where participants from deprived communities in France were given the chance to develop skills in vital renewable energies, such as solar power. Not only did these programs provide participants with valuable skills but the resultant solar energy also helped to provide clean, sustainable, and affordable energy to the local community.
Green jobs
The potential for the net zero economy to support deprived communities was reinforced by a recent report from the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit. The report, which was based on data from the CBI, highlights that many of the 20,000 businesses currently operating in the net zero economy are spread throughout the United Kingdom. What’s more, the jobs provided by these businesses are high quality, with an average wage of £42,600. This compares to £33,400 for the average UK employee.
“The economic activity of these businesses brings substantial impacts across the UK,” the report explains. “Areas such as the North East, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the South West have a higher concentration of businesses within the net zero economy, compared to traditional concentrations of activity in London and the South East.”
What’s more, the economic impact of the net zero economy was found to be stronger in each of the regions of the United Kingdom than it was in London. The net zero economy has proven to be highly productive, even in areas with historically low productivity. In the Midlands (East and West), for instance, it’s more than 2.5 times more productive compared to the regional average.
Constituency-level economic modeling reveals the potential for net zero hotspots throughout the UK, with the researchers identifying 20 areas where the net zero economy made a significant contribution to the local economy as measured by GVA. These include a number of areas covered by our own research.
“From insulation fitters to heat pump engineers and agritech pioneers, businesses in the net zero economy are adding £70 billion to the UK economy,” Peter Chalkley, Director of ECIU, explains. “Billions of pounds of private sector investments are being made in net zero with the hot spots of activity being outside of London in places like Tyneside, Merseyside and Derbyshire.”
Part of the solution
A paper for the Economy 2030 Inquiry reminds us that net zero isn’t going to solve the regional inequalities that are at the heart of the levelling up agenda on its own. The report is nonetheless positive about the impact that targeted investment could have to communities that are so often deprived of the support they so desperately need.
“Smart net-zero investment should be embedded in a wider economic strategy – especially as it could have the additional benefit of bolstering the government’s Levelling Up agenda,” the report states.
The broad range of businesses in the net zero economy indicates that as the UK moves towards net zero and more businesses become part of this sector, it will further diversify economic activity.
Currently, regions like the North East, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the South West have the highest concentration of net zero businesses relative to total businesses in the area. Hence, the expansion of the net zero economy holds great promise for regions throughout the UK to drive growth and narrow regional disparities.
We’ve seen firsthand in France how investing in green jobs can provide not only employment but also energy security to deprived communities. If they can form part of the 20 “hotspots” identified by the ECIU then that would help to build some welcome momentum behind the levelling up campaign.
This article was co-written with Professor Zografia Bika
Image credit: Bill Mead via Unsplash
After more than half a century of dependence on Russian oil and gas, the war in Ukraine has forced German officials to reconsider their reliance on fossil fuels entirely.
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