In today’s edition:
⚡️ A global biofuel alliance seeks to help India’s 50 million sugar farmers
🚜 World’s top meat company asks for government help
🌳 A fresh guide to support financial flows towards nature-positive outcomes
⚡️ Energy (1-minute read)
India Global Biofuel Alliance: Transforming farmers from food producers to energy producers.
What happened: India announced the launch of a global biofuel alliance at a G20 summit in New Delhi to boost the use of biofuel as part of a blueprint to lift the livelihoods of tens of millions of farmers.
Details: Nineteen countries signed up to the India-led coalition. These included the United States and Brazil. The alliance will encourage global biofuels trade and develop concrete policies on lesson-sharing.
Years in the making: India faced a mounting problem six years ago. Sugar overproduction and declining prices meant the country’s nearly 50 million sugarcane growers were not paid in time by sugar mills, which collectively owed billions of dollars to farmers. The government’s plan to ease the pressure on farmers was to divert increasing quantities of the crop from food supply chains to bioethanol production.
Tightrope: As the overwhelming majority of biofuels continue to be produced from traditional crops like sugarcane, corn or vegetable oils, the question of how best to use limited land is sensitive. If it’s being used to produce energy crops, then it’s not used to grow food or restore carbon-rich ecosystems. Biofuels from waste or other sources like algae do not bring these land conflicts, but high production costs limit their scale. Some have raised concerns about whether a country ranked 101 out of 116 on the World Hunger Index can talk about a surplus it can use to make biofuels? (Full story here).
🚜 AgriTech (1-minute read)
JBS CEO’s call for a beefy solution to Brazilian deforestation
What happened: The head of JBS, the world’s largest meat company based in Brazil, called for a mandatory government program to track cattle raised for beef to combat deforestation.
Details: Cattle ranching and land clearing for timber and crops are significant drivers of deforestation in the Amazon, imperilling global climate targets. The CEO of JBS has emphasised the need for a national mandatory traceability system to track individual cows and their owners and deter criminals that the beef industry blames for causing deforestation.
The bigger picture: JBS’s push for government intervention comes as the company seeks to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. However, environmental groups continue to oppose the plans for JBS’s IPO due to the company’s alleged connections to deforestation. While JBS is already trying to enhance its specific corporate transparency standards, a government programme will improve the entire Brazilian beef industry’s transparency and could support JBS’s effort to list shares in New York. (Full story here).
🌳 Nature (1-minute read)
TNFD releases final recommendations
What happened: The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) released its final recommendations to guide corporates to report on their nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities.
Details: The recommendations are intended to enable business and finance to integrate nature into decision-making, ultimately supporting a shift in global financial flows away from nature-negative outcomes and toward nature-positive outcomes.
Early movers: Glaxo-Smith Kline, Hong Kong-headquartered developer Swire Properties and Columbia’s largest petrol company, Ecopetrol, are “getting started” with TNFD disclosures, while other companies will join them over the coming weeks. GSK has committed to publishing its first TNFD disclosures from 2026 based on 2025 data, the task force said. (Full story here)
💭 Little Bytes
Quote: “There’s no going back. The world needs to move on from internal combustion engines.” Nissan’s chief executive Makoto Uchida
Stat: The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank plans to triple annual lending for projects to fight climate change by 2030 to around $7—8bn annually — FT
Watch: The world’s first container ship fuelled by green methanol
🗞 In other news…
On Wednesday (13 September), the European Parliament proposed to mandate sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) usage targets for airlines in Europe. The approved ReFuelEU Aviation Regulation will require airlines to increase their use of sustainable fuels for flights departing from EU airports (known as the blending mandate) from 2025. (Full story here).
AP Møller-Maersk and the founding family of the container shipping giant have set up a new company to produce green methanol to increase the fuel supply the Danish group views as essential to decarbonise the pillar of global trade. (Full story here).
The Department of the Interior announced more than $40.6 million in grants through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to 10 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands to support land acquisition and conservation planning projects on over 7,200 acres of habitat for 65 listed and at-risk species. (Full story here).
High-tech surveillance tools, such as drones, trap cameras and GPS locators, are being deployed in the Amazon rainforest to prevent deforestation and other illegal activities that damage ecosystems. (Full story here).
ClimateAi is a startup aiming to help farms and other businesses prepare for a hotter, more disruptive climate using artificial intelligence. Using machine learning models, customers can anticipate and prepare for climate risks to their supply chains and operations over weeks to seasons. (Full story here).
In a crackdown on the greenwashing of consumer products, the EU plans to ban “climate neutral claims” or “eco” by 2026 unless companies can prove the claim is accurate. (Full story here).
🎣 Gone Phishing
Three of these stories are true, one we’ve made up. Guess which:
Herd of sheep eat 100kg of cannabis in Greece
Scientist saves snake choking on fish the size of its head
Raccoons outsmart security system, cause havoc in a Canadian diner
Boot throwing record broken at National Plowing Championships
