What's Happening in Sustainability? (Week Recap 20.06 - 26.06) 🌎

This week’s read time: 6 minutes

Welcome to this edition of Green Digest, where you will get updated about everything happening in the sustainability & ESG space in less than 10 minutes 🌎We go through tons of articles and data from the most reliable sources, filter & simplify them and serve them to you in bite-sized chunks every week. 🍀

The week’s most important news:

🌎 The IFRS Foundation’s International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) has launched new global sustainability and climate disclosure standards, which will form the basis for emerging sustainability reporting requirements by regulators around the world. The new standards include “IFRS S1 General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information,” and “IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures,” and will begin applying for annual reporting periods beginning as of January 2024, with companies beginning to issue disclosures against the standards in 2025. The ISSB said that it will work with jurisdictions and companies to support the standards’ adoption, starting with the creation of a Transition Implementation Group to support companies applying the standards.

🌎 World leaders, including U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, met in Paris to reform post-war financial systems, boost crisis financing for poor countries, and free up funds to tackle climate change. Yellen suggested that the World Bank and multinational development banks could unlock an additional $200 billion over a decade. She also proposed adding climate-resilient debt clauses to loan agreements to ease pressures on countries if a natural disaster strikes. French President Emmanuel Macron stressed the need to mobilize the private sector, while U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres criticized the failure of the international financial architecture to provide a global safety net for developing countries. Wealthy nations also pledged $100 billion in climate finance to developing countries and created a fund for biodiversity and forest protection. The pledge falls short of poor nations' needs and has become symbolic of wealthy countries' failure to deliver promised climate funds.

🇪🇺 The European Council has agreed on a range of nature restoration measures, including the protection and restoration of at least 20% of EU land and sea areas by 2030 and all areas in need of restoration by 2050. The agreement forms the basis for the Council’s negotiating position on the Nature Restoration Law proposed by the European Commission, aimed at enabling a sustained recovery of degraded ecosystems and contributing to the EU’s climate objectives. The Council’s position softens several of the EU Commission’s proposals, including reducing the burden for renewable energy projects and allowing more flexibility in the use of indicators to monitor forest ecosystems.

💡 More interesting news:

• US President Biden announced nearly $2.9 billion in investments to protect coastal communities and electrical grid infrastructure from the impact of climate change. The investments include $2.3 billion over five years to bolster grid resilience and a $575 million Climate Resilience Regional Challenge to support coastal resilience and adaptation solutions. 🇺🇸

• The World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2023 finds that while gender parity has recovered to pre-pandemic levels, the pace of change has slowed. Iceland remains the most gender-equal country, followed by Norway, Finland, New Zealand, and Sweden. The economic participation and opportunity gap has closed by 60.1%, and the political empowerment gap by just 22.1%. At the current rate of progress, it will take 169 years for economic parity and 162 years for political parity. Women continue to face higher unemployment rates than men, and the share of women in senior leadership positions is nearly 10 percentage points lower than men. ⛔️

• The Government of Canada has invested C$350 million in the Initiative for Sustainable Aviation Technology (INSAT) to support research and development into sustainable aviation technologies. The INSAT investment aims to establish a pan-Canadian, industry-led network focused on funding R&D projects in four key technology areas, including hybrid and alternative propulsion, aircraft architecture and systems integration, the transition to alternative fuels, and aircraft support infrastructure and operations. The goal is to accelerate the green industrial transformation of Canada’s aerospace industry, generating high-value jobs while strengthening supply chains and supporting the transition to a net-zero economy. 🇨🇦

• The US Federal Trade Commission has accused Amazon of enrolling millions of consumers into its paid subscription Amazon Prime service without their consent and making it hard for them to cancel. The FTC alleges that Amazon has used "dark patterns" to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically renewing Prime subscriptions. Amazon Prime is the world's largest subscription program, generating $25 billion in revenue annually.

💭 Spotlight on:

🧐 What are companies doing?

• Ford is set to receive a $9.2 billion loan from the US Department of Energy's Loan Program Office to build three EV battery factories in collaboration with SK Innovation. The factories are expected to generate 129 GWh of battery cells annually to support Ford's planned EV production ramp. The loan is the largest since the US auto bailout in 2009 and will enable Ford to compete globally while putting the US on a path to reduce GHG emissions. The funding comes at a critical moment in Ford's EV ramp-up, as the automaker expects its EV unit to lose $3 billion this year as it scales production. 🔋

• Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has signed a five-year purchase agreement with Direct Air Capture (DAC) company CarbonCapture for 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide removal credits, marking one of the largest announced DAC offtake deals to date and the largest yet in the professional services industry globally. The agreement also includes an intention for BCG to provide management consulting services to support CarbonCapture’s business strategy. 🟢

• Mastercard has launched a global project to recycle credit and debit cards, starting with a pilot scheme with HSBC in the UK. Under the plan, Mastercard will provide shredding machines to HSBC, each capable of holding 10,000 cards. Banks worldwide can join the program to help build economies of scale. The Nilson Report estimates total cards in circulation at nearly 26 billion in 2022, with around 600 million produced each year and a life span of around five years. 💳

• Boeing has launched the SAF Dashboard, a tool that tracks expected sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) capacity over the next decade, based on data collected by BloombergNEF. The Dashboard aggregates total SAF capacity announcements by suppliers on a global scale and can filter anticipated supply by production pathway, location, and other metrics. The tool is accessible on Boeing’s new Sustainable Aerospace Together hub and aims to support discussion and action among industry stakeholders regarding the existing SAF footprint as well as future production levels required to meet the commercial aviation industry’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. 🛩️

👀 Where is cash flowing?⛏️ Mineral exploration company KoBold Metals has raised $195 million in funding, bringing its valuation to over $1 billion and making it Silicon Valley's newest climate-tech unicorn. The round was led by T. Rowe Price and included existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, BOND, and others. The company uses AI and cloud computing to explore metals used in EVs and clean energy technologies.

💡 Hamburg-based climate tech startup 1KOMMA5° has raised €430M in a Series B round, reaching a valuation of €1B in just 23 months. The funding will be used to expand the vertical integration of its energy management technology, make its IoT device Heartbeat compatible with existing energy devices, and expand into new markets. The startup aims to make sustainable energy solutions available to a wider customer base across Europe and make cleaner energy a mainstay in these markets.

🟢 Swedish start-up ClimateView has raised €14m in a funding round led by French firm 2050, with participation from 115K, Sandwater, Polar Structure, and previous investors. ClimateView's ClimateOS platform collects all emission-related data from cities onto a single platform, facilitating the green transition through improved financial reporting and better public outreach. The latest investment will support ClimateView in developing its climate finance platform further, with the goal of assisting cities in their climate investment planning requirements under the EU's '100 Climate-neutral and Smart Cities program.

⎔ Fero Labs, an AI-focused manufacturing process optimization software company, has raised $15 million to reduce emissions in manufacturing industries such as steel, cement, and chemicals. The company's AI-driven software has already reduced over 100,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions and enabled savings of over $20M for customers. The funding round was led by Climate Investment, and Fero Labs' total funding to date is now $30 million. The company's goal is to reduce at least 800,000 tonnes of emissions by 2025.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for making it to the end, your attention span is absolutely impressive 💪.

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