Happy Tuesday. T-minus one week till COP26 and we’ve given you the need to know in the run-up.

In today’s edition:

💰 Google’s £1bn investment in Africa

🍺 A green hydrogen brewery 

🔍 COP26 watch

 Big Business (2-minute read)

Google confirms $1B investment into Africa, including subsea cable for faster internet

The challenge: 4 billion people around the world remain disconnected from the internet. Tackling the digital divide is critical to sustainable development (Think remote education and healthcare), where available prices remain crippling high (see below)

Google just announced it would invest $1 billion to support “digital transformation” across Africa. This will include landing a subsea cable into the continent to enable faster internet speeds whilst driving down prices, low-interest loans for small businesses, equity investments into African startups, skills training and more.

Why? There will be nearly half a billion new subscribers to mobile services by 2025, predominantly from Asia and Africa = a significant opportunity for large tech firms.

TCFD updates highlight executive pay as a priority

The Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) published a status update on how companies are reporting their sustainability creds. Headlines include:

• Over 2,600 organisations have now expressed support for recommendations. They include 1,069 financial institutions responsible for assets of $194 trillion.
• The insurance industry significantly increased its disclosures and now leads all business sectors in publishing climate risk management processes.
• Executive pay is an increasingly important reporting standard. Best practice = companies that link executive bonuses to performance against climate goals.

At COP 26… a International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) is set to release a global sustainability reporting standard, built from TCFD’s framework. This is critical to enable comparison of organisations’ sustainability creds and to tackle greenwashing. 

Plant-based food companies team-up to accelerate dietary shifts

The Government’s own advisor, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), has recommended that the UK’s daily red meat and dairy consumption is reduced by 20% per person by 2050 to support emissions reductions. Alpro, Oatly, and others have formed a coalition to create a charter that engages businesses, policymakers and individuals to drive the transition to more sustainable diets.

🤖 Future of Tech (1-minute read)

Budweisier plans first Green Hydrogen Brewery 

Brewing beer is an energy intensive process. It takes 0.2 kilowatt (or enough to run a 40” TV for around 3 hours) per bottle and globally approx. 300 billion bottles are drunk annually. Traditionally, energy for brewing beer is provided through fossil fuels, however Budweiser Brewing Group have announced the development of a green hydrogen generation system at one of their largest breweries. Green hydrogen will be produced using Budweiser Group’s existing wind and solar infrastructure, and the hydrogen fuel will be used to power the brewery’s production system, saving 15,500 tonnes of CO2 per year from 2027. 

Mini-homes helping rough sleepers get off the streets

Homelessness is rising in England – reaching a peak of 219,000 in 2019. A new study has provided an innovative solution for tackling homelessness. The study showed providing small, self-contained and easy-to-construct houses (called “mods”) reduced substance abuse, boosted physical and mental health, and provided stability for jobs. The mods themselves cost around £36,000 – equivalent to the estimated public spending on a person sleeping rough in the UK (NHS and other care services) 

What next? The hope is that the findings will encourage expansion of the mod scheme nationwide, so more people can experience the benefits.

💡Start-up Spotlight (1-minute read)

What is it? The Conference of Parties (The 26th!) Is an annual climate summit convened by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a climate body of the UN. 

What happens? Setting rules and expectations for global collaboration to forge and improve climate game plans. The Paris agreement actually came out of COP21.

What’s the latest?

• UK fundraising fanatics: The UK Government announced its Net Zero strategy – including a goal for £90bn investment & 440,000 green jobs by 2030. On the first day, they raised £9.7bn of new green investment (400mn from Bill Gates).

• Washington gridlock: Biden’s $3.5tn climate agenda is in doubt after a West Virginia senator pushed back on the Clean Electricity Performance Program, a $150bn measure incentivising power companies to shift from fossil fuels.
• Will go, won’t go:  India and China are among the major emitters that have not come forward with stronger pledges to cut emissions. Indian PM Modi has confirmed he will attend, however China’s Xi Jinping is expected to be a no show.

💭 Little Bytes

Quote: “That’s why a transparent value of carbon is so important, that it is a durable mechanism, that it is agnostic to what kind of technology that goes… and that it works across borders because emissions do not know any borders” ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions President, Joe Blommaert

Stat: COP26 will source 80% of food from Scotland for its sustainable menusSee: How climate change could drown landmarks around the world

🗞 In other news…

• UK chancellor Rishi Sunak announced new standards to limit “greenwashing”, as part of a set of green finance safeguards ahead of the Budget release.
• The Global Cement and Concrete Association announced a road map to net zero emissions, with the backing of the world’s largest cement companies.
• By 2023, China will have the capacity to deploy solar power at the same price as coal nationwide
• Eat Just’s key ingredient in its popular vegan Egg substitute has received European Safety approval
• Sustainable aviation fuels given a boost through support by more airlines and United Airlines flies its first 100% SAF commercial flight.

💰 The Deal Room

• Enpal, Germany-based ‘solar as a service’ startup raised $174m in Series C funding

• Vegan meal delivery startup Allplants has nabbed £38 million (~$52 million) in Series B funding led by Draper Esprit to serve up more tasty plant-based, heat-at-home meals direct to U.K. consumers.
• Shipping platform Ankeri, which also calculates carbon emissions for maritime logistics, closes €2M round
• Saildrone catches a $100M C breeze to build its fleet of autonomous science vessels which collect sustainability data about our oceans

🎣 Gone Phishing

Three of these stories are true, one we made up, can you guess which?

• Australia trials chlamydia vaccine for koalas
• Robotic bee hives “swarm” the market
• “Big John” the largest triceratops dinosaur ever discovered sold at Paris auction
• RoboDogs supporting on the trading floors of Wall Street