Happy Tuesday. Yes there’s a day for everything. Global Wind Day … to celebrate its power and the possibilities it holds to reshape our energy systems.
In today’s edition:
🚜 McCain’s support regenerative farmers
🚁 Drones making demining safer
💰Bitcoin in El-Salvador
Big Business (2-minute read)
McCain commits to regenerative agriculture
Over one-fifth of global emissions are attributed to the agri-food sector, one solution is regenerative farming, which focuses on improving soil health and its ability to sequester carbon. McCain, the UKs largest manufacturer of frozen potato products, has committed to ensuring every potato grown uses regenerative practices by 2030. The Potato Farmer Pledge provides a pot of £25 million to support farmers adopting regenerative farming.
Why this is important: 75 billion tonnes of soil is eroded every year, making it unusable for crop growth, with losses of $400 billion. The adoption of regenerative practices is crucial to ensuring farms remain profitable and McCain continues to have a productive, resilient supply chain.
TCFD is the one for me say Global 7 Nations
You’re probably sick of us discussing the need for two things regarding companies environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting:
- A consistent approach to prevent investor confusion and greenwashing
- Clear policy to mandate, audit and monitor companies reporting
We saw a bit of both at the G7 summit this week as seven of the world’s leading nations endorsed mandatory reporting following one standard: the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
The big picture: The proposal would see any company with over £500m in annual turnover disclose potential risks associated with climate change into annual reports. Shining a spotlight on progress and further actions required to achieve net-zero.
The big questions: are how and when? Also what will the TCFD framework look like, some of the key players in reporting are working on the ‘Global Sustainability Standards’ – a common reporting standard which is expected to be launched at COP26.
Unilever announce first project as part of their €1bn Climate & Nature Fund
The Dove Forest Restoration programme will aim to protect and restore 20,000 hectares of humid in North Sumatra, Indonesia. The initiative will conserve a wealth of biodiversity and could benefit 16,000 local people. The Climate & Nature fund is part of Unilever’s commitment to improve the health of the planet, fight climate change and protect nature – so this latest programme is an important first step.
🤖 Future of Tech (1-minute read)
Making Farming Digital:
Minneapolis startup, Sentera, provides farmers with data on their crops through soil and weather sensors, video-recording from drones and satellite imagery. Insights are given to farmers through Sentera’s app with features like weed maps, nutrition reporting and sustainability scoring. Using this tech means growers can move towards precision farming – applying fertilisers and pesticides only to areas where they’re needed. This reduces input costs and means less chemical run-off that impacts nature and biodiversity. Senetra just raised $25million to scale their tech among existing customers by encouraging broader use of the platform across their farms.
Drones making Demining efforts safe in Chad
The problem: The presence of landmines in post-war nations continue to impede social and economic development of post-war nations. In Angola an estimated 33% of the country remains inaccessible including large areas of fertile farmland. Manual techniques to clear mines remain hazardous, labour intensive and costly.
Eye in the sky: In Chad, aid organisation HI achieved a world-first when they used a thermal sensor flown on a drone to locate buried landmines. This provided field teams with a clear mapping of hazardous areas without setting foot in them, at a fraction of the time and cost. The technology is simple to operate – critical for local teams to continue efforts to convert minefields into farmland, without fear of accident.
💡Start-up Spotlight (1-minute read)
Bitcoin’s bright side: El-Salvador
Recent months have seen Bitcoin’s environmental credentials in the spotlight – due to its reliance on energy-intensive ‘mining’ processes. Yet, this week the El Salvador President announced plans to adopt bitcoin as legal tender meaning all businesses will have to accept it as payment.
Bright side: In El Salvador, roughly 70% of people do not have bank accounts and money sent home by migrants account for more than 20% of the nation’s gross domestic product. Current services can charge 10% in fees for international transfers, which can take days to arrive. In theory, Bitcoin can offer a quick and cheap way to send money across borders and increase financial inclusion of Salvadorans via partners like Strike.
Climate concerns: The country’s state-run geothermal energy will use power from volcanoes for Bitcoin mining, with plans to offer ‘clean’ crypto mining to other nations.
💭 Little Bytes
Quote: ‘Dramatic ambition gap’ Was how new research co-authored by UN Global Compact described the fact that none of the G7 leading industrial nations’ main stock indices are aligned with Paris Agreement climate goals
Stat: Investing 0.1% of global GDP could avoid the breakdown of ecosystems – UN Report
Watch: A startup that offers financial security to world’s lowest paid workers
🗞 In other news…
- Japan proposes meat alternatives to reduce emissions
- Kingfisher (owners of B&Q) sign £550m credit deal linked to sustainability targets
- UK businesses aiming to secure major government contracts need to pledge to be net-zero by 2050
- Alaska airlines uses AI to save time, fuel and money
- Drax announces world’s largest carbon capture project
🎣 Gone Phishing
Three of these stories are true, one we made up, can you guess which?
- Mount ‘Recyclemore’ made out of e-waste in UK for G7 summit
- New mask tech has arrived – not for covid but to trap cow burps
- Jeff Bezos releases plans for ‘space brewery’ off back of first trip to space
- Dolphins intentionally ‘get high’ on Pufferfish
