Articles on or after 5/19/2023: Greenbiz
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Battery-swapping is back in business - Greenbiz (May 23) |
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May 23 · Can the next generation of battery-swapping succeed where others failed?
Ample co-founder Khaled Hassounah displays the company's next-generation battery swapping station at an unveiling last week. Ample claims the station can remove a depleted battery and replace it with a fully charged one in five minutes. Photo by AJ Artis/GreenBiz
Battery-swapping is back, but can it work this time? The idea of changing out a vehicle’s battery in five minutes or less, mimicking the speed and convenience of a gas station, has long been the white whale of the electric vehicle industry.
It sounds easy, but there are challenges:
No standardization: Battery packs are not ... | By AJ Artis Read more ...
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ESG bowties: A tool for assessing climate risks - Greenbiz (May 22) |
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May 22 · Sponsored: ESG bowties are an analytical method that can help organizations improve their identification and management of ESG risks and opportunities.
ESG bowties help companies identify and control climate-related impacts on business. Image courtesy of Getty Images.
This article is sponsored by VelocityEHS.
As regulators, shareholders, boards of directors and consumers demand better ESG performance and transparency, the pressure is on for businesses to adapt. But many businesses struggle to develop mature ESG programs because they lack an effective way to engage stakeholders in identifying and controlling their most material ESG risks and opportunities. A risk ... | By Phil Molé Read more ...
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Geoengineering is gathering momentum - here’s why you should care - Greenbiz (May 24) |
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May 24 · Climate geoengineering proposals are bringing the story of sci-fi novels to the desks of world leaders.
Photo via Pexels/Andrew DeGarde
Have you ever seen the movie "Snowpiercer"? The one starring Hollywood’s second-greatest Chris (Chris Pine will ALWAYS be No. 1)? The general premise of the entire movie - and the graphic novel upon which it was based - is humanity’s attempt to reverse global warming by engineering the atmosphere. Only, they don’t do it correctly and instead the world becomes one great ice cube. Ah, another cautionary tale about our species’ tendency for self-destructive hubris.
The basis of the plot - the dire need to slow and reverse the ... | By Leah Garden Read more ...
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Google extends AI-enabled Flood Hub to 80 countries - Greenbiz (May 23) |
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May 23 · App provides flood data and forecasts up to seven days in advance to regions where more than 460 million people are exposed to severe flood risk.
Google on Tuesday announced the extension of its Flood Hub platform to scores of additional countries, providing early flood warnings to hundreds of millions of people living in some of the regions exposed to the highest levels of flood risk.
The AI-enabled app was first debuted in India in 2018 before being expanded to cover Bangladesh, one of the countries most exposed to worsening levels of flood risk as climate impacts intensify.
Google announced it was extending the service to 80 countries, with the addition of 60 ... | By James Murray Read more ...
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How a global treaty could solve the plastic waste crisis - Greenbiz (May 22) |
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May 22 · Can plastics achieve par with climate and biodiversity as critical issues worthy of a global treaty? We’re about to find out.
Next week in Paris, a United Nations-sponsored gathering of nations, business groups and activists will gather to advance a treaty aimed at curbing plastic pollution worldwide.
If done thoughtfully and comprehensively, the treaty could be a game-changer. But that’s a two-liter-sized "if." The open question is whether the measures being considered are sufficient to stem the still-growing tide - or is it a tsunami now? - of plastic waste, including the empty packaging and other detritus already overwhelming the world’s landscapes and ... | By Joel Makower Read more ...
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How companies become allies for environmental justice - Greenbiz (May 23) |
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May 23 · It is not a big stretch for corporate policy teams already dealing with community relations to keep track of environmental justice battles in the surrounding frontline communities and speak up as an ally.
Environmental justice belongs at the core of our efforts to address climate change. Frontline communities - those most directly and often brutally affected by the effects of climate change - must be central to our efforts to mitigate this crisis. Then why does it seem companies too often give lip service to environmental justice and little more? The corporate sector is falling further out of step with where the climate movement is headed - a direction more closely aligned ... | By Bill Weihl Read more ...
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IEA: Global clean energy investment 'significantly' outpacing fossil fuel spending - Greenbiz (May 26) |
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May 26 · Investment in clean energy is gaining momentum but is still off the pace required to meet the 1.5 Celsius goal, according to a new IEA report.
The IEA highlighted solar as the 'shining example' of the scale and scope of the clean energy transition, with Investment in the technology projected to be about $380 billion. Image via Shutterstock/ABCDstock
Global investment in clean energy technologies - from renewables and electric vehicles (EVs) to nuclear power plants and heat pumps - is "significantly" outpacing spending on fossil fuels, with the energy crisis having accelerated momentum around the global green energy transition, according to the latest update from the ... | By Michael Holder Read more ...
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JPMorgan commits $200 million to carbon removal projects - Greenbiz (May 23) |
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May 23 · The U.S. bank is backing multiple carbon removal projects in a bid to address its own operational emissions.
JPMorgan Chase said Tuesday it will spend $200 million to remove and store a total of 800,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or the equivalent of 896 billion pounds of coal burned.
Among other things, the company is signing big contracts with two high-profile startups: Climeworks, which operates the largest direct air capture site in the world; and Charm Industrial, which sequesters CO2 by turning biomass into an oil.
Acknowledging an "insufficient supply of high-quality credits and low trust in many of the credits that have been ... | By Leah Garden Read more ...
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Less waste, more value for food - Greenbiz (May 25) |
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May 25 · Two models for reducing waste at scale in food and beverage supply chains.
A startup, True Essence, is figuring out how to keep flavor and reduce waste. Image courtesy of True Essence.
We all should channel our inner improv comic to invest in the power of "yes and" to solve the array of challenges in the food system. One of the more egregious challenges we face is the issue of food loss and waste.
In case you need a reminder:
OK, that last one uses some shabby statistical reasoning, showcasing why I stopped pursuing a Ph.D. in economics. The point remains that wasting the emissions and resources used to produce and transport food that ultimately ends up in ... | By Seth Olson Read more ...
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LinkedIn’s head of sustainability on unlocking its 'superpowers’ - Greenbiz (May 19) |
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May 19 · Peggy Brannigan discusses her plans to leverage the LinkedIn platform’s "superpowers" to help protect the planet and support green economic growth.
As director of global environmental sustainability at LinkedIn, Peggy Brannigan has an ambitious remit: to help protect the planet and support green economic growth. Having previously worked with the likes of Google, Apple and even the U.S. Department of State on their sustainability strategies, Brannigan knows more than most about how to put an ambition like that into action.
Shannon Houde: What does a global head of environmental sustainability do every day in a tech company?
Peggy Brannigan: In the simplest terms, I ... | By Shannon Houde Read more ...
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Pricing nature: Can 'biodiversity credits’ propel global conservation? - Greenbiz (May 23) |
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May 23 · Backed by the UN, an alliance of conservationists and policymakers is devising new ways to finance the preservation of biodiversity by placing economic values on ecosystems. Some analysts say such schemes have the potential to boost conservation, but others are skeptical.
In 2009, as global financial markets shuddered, David Dorr became interested in the possibility of putting a price on nature. Dorr is a Cayman Islands-based global macro trader, attuned to what he calls the "butterfly effect" of geopolitics and other international forces on financial markets. The economic crisis, Dorr had realized, paled beside the looming environmental one. "Nature, holy [cow], is in severe ... | By Zach St. George Read more ...
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Science-based targets for nature come for businesses - Greenbiz (May 24) |
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May 24 · LVMH, Nestle, and 15 other companies to test new science-based criteria for freshwater, land, and biodiversity.
The nonprofit has expanded guidance to help companies set targets for nature. Image by Jesse Klein/GreenBiz.
The Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) today published the first formal framework meant to help companies set goals for preserving nature and biodiversity.
The new guidelines build on the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), started in 2015, to help companies set goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with keeping global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming. More than 2,000 companies have already set ... | By Jesse Klein Read more ...
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