On that day, Steyer changed, too. The company he’d founded, Farallon Capital, had long invested in fossil fuels. But Steyer realized climate change was “happening much faster than most of us imagined,” he wrote of the experience. He started speaking out, lobbied politicians and established a family foundation to support alternative systems, such as organic agriculture. Tom and his wife, Kathryn, also endowed the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy at Stanford University, where young entrepreneurs are developing innovations such as hydrogen-fuel systems for heavy trucks, safer and more powerful lithium batteries, and fertilizers made of almond shells. 

In 2012, Steyer stepped down from Farallon. “I have a passion to push for what I believe is the right thing,” he told The Globe and Mail. Soon after, he founded NextGen America, a political action committee that mobilizes young people to vote. Steyer himself became the biggest donor in Democratic party history and helped convince Barack Obama to veto the northern section of the Keystone oil-sands pipeline. Disillusioned by politicians’ reluctance to act, he ran for president in 2020, promising to use executive power to enact a green new deal.

Steyer had little impact on the campaign and dropped out after focusing all his attention on delegates in South Carolina – who voted for Joe Biden. At that point, he might have vanished into the limbo that awaits most independent presidential candidates. But Steyer returned to his roots and founded Galvanize Climate Solutions, to use the power of finance to accelerate new climate technologies. The firm has raised more than US$1 billion. 

But Steyer still worries that Americans aren’t listening. Last year, he released a book, Cheaper, Faster, Better, that reframes this crisis as an opportunity. With renewable energy now cheaper than fossil fuels, he says, climate solutions aren’t just a last hope but our best bet. The journey to net-zero will give us cleaner air, more energy at a lower cost, better products for less money and improvements in just about every aspect of society, he writes. “It’s a fight we’re already starting to win.” 

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Today’s best photovoltaic cells can produce electricity only when the sun is up. But engineers at Stanford University are developing a solar cell that can also generate power at night. Writing in the journal Applied Physics Letters, the researchers say their solar collector incorporates a thermoelectric generator that harvests electricity from the temperature difference between the PV cell and its ambient surroundings. In other words, the device makes use of the heat leaking from Earth back into space – an energy flow on the same order of magnitude as incoming solar radiation. The scientists report that their process is simple, inexpensive and “can be used as a continuous renewable power source for both day- and nighttime in off-grid locations.” 

Lithium goes green-ish

As green mobility grows, industry will have to find better ways to mine lithium, the key element in today’s rechargeable batteries. Right now, mining it is a nasty, dirty business, centred in China, Australia and Chile. The good news: the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is testing a process that uses magnetic nanoparticles to capture lithium, and other rare materials, from briny wastewater produced in mining, fracking and geothermal energy projects. With lithium demand expected to grow 15-fold by 2050, the United States wants to bring lithium processing back home. Jian Liu, a senior research engineer at PNNL, says his team’s process could produce 34,000 tons of lithium per year in the United States alone, at lower costs than miners currently charge. Says Liu, “We believe that this thing can be big.”

Good moos for the planet

Ben & Jerry’s, the socially conscious ice cream brand now owned by consumer-products giant Unilever, has always stood for peace and love. Now it’s targeting climate change. Through “Project Mootopia,” it aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half on 15 dairy farms by the end of 2024. How do you keep carbon down on the farm? Ben & Jerry’s three-point plan includes reducing the methane produced by cow burps through higher-quality forage menus, using methane-reduction technologies to reduce the carbon footprint of cow manure, and growing more grass and other feed crops to maintain healthy soils, increase carbon sequestration and promote biodiversity. If those pilot initiatives prove effective, the company plans to expand these efforts across its entire global dairy supply chain – which produces more than 50% of the company’s total carbon emissions. 

No hiding place for poachers

Canada’s high-profile electronics company MDA (formerly MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates) built the country’s first Earth-orbiting satellite. Now it’s using satellite technologies to track poachers on the high seas for Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans. At a conference in Australia in May, MDA and two partners unveiled their process for tracking “dark” ships illegally fishing for southern bluefin tuna. Dark ships travel without broadcasting the required automatic information system (AIS) data that normally identify vessels’ course, speed and destination. MDA’s RADARSAT-2 surveillance satellite can identify dark vessels across thousands of square kilometres of ocean and generate the real-time data governments need to find and track offenders. 

Gucci backs lab-grown leather

Leather may have fallen out of fashion in the movements against climate change and animal cruelty, but the US$400-billion industry is fighting back. In May, California-based VitroLabs Inc. raised US$39 million to develop lab-grown leather through tissue engineering (no dead animals required). The firm’s backers include a venture-capital firm focusing on cellular agriculture, vegan evangelist Leonardo DiCaprio and French luxury brand Kering, whose holdings include Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent. VitroLabs will open a pilot plant next year, with Kering’s fashion experts helping with testing, tanning and finishing. For Kering, it’s not just about fashion, a spokesperson said: “Without breakthrough solutions, we won’t be able to reach our sustainability targets.”

Making electricity out of compressed air

To provide more renewable power during peak-demand periods, China has just inaugurated its first commercial compressed-air energy storage plant. State-owned China Huaneng Group says the 60-megawatt plant is the largest plant of its type built in the world since 1991. In compressed-air energy storage, electricity produced at night (when demand is low) pumps air into airtight underground caverns. When demand rises the next day, the plant releases the air, which spins a turbine to produce new electricity. (A Toronto-based company is developing similar technology for use in Canada and around the world. Read up on Hydrostor in our Future 50 coverage.)

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The average baby will go through more than 5,000 disposable diapers – 92% of which end up in landfills. But NappiCycle is finding new uses for soiled nappies. The Welsh company turns used diapers into carbon fibres that bind with asphalt to create roads twice as durable as conventional surfaces. Rob Poyer, a director of NappiCycle, gives the government much of the credit: “The Welsh government setting such high recycling targets has produced some amazing innovation,” and £180,000 in funding helped transform 100,000 diapers into a 2.2-kilometre stretch of road.

Norway dreams of electric gold

Having won the most medals at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Norway is now vying for another record: the first country to make the shift to fully electric vehicles. In 2021, 65% of new cars sold in Norway were EVs, up from 50% the year before. Only 8% of new vehicles ran only on gasoline or diesel; the rest were hybrids. Why is oil-producing Norway all-in on electric? The Norwegian EV Association cites the country’s high gasoline prices, the elimination of sales taxes and toll fees for EVs, and raising taxes on conventional cars as reasons EVs have taken off.

Coming to a table near you: Meat made from air

“Making meat doesn’t have to mean deforestation, factory farming, or greenhouse gases harming our planet,” claims California start-up Air Protein. The company has raised more than US$30 million to develop what it calls the first “carbon-negative, earth-positive protein source.” The recipe: mix high-protein bacteria in a fermentation tank with carbon dioxide, oxygen, water and minerals. Within hours, you have a protein-rich flour with twice the amino acids of soybeans. Air Protein is targeting various products but will enter the market with faux chicken. Where’d they get the idea? The process was first proposed by NASA in the 1970s to feed astronauts.

Ammonia awaits its moment in the sun (or wind)

You know ammonia as a household cleaning product – but the pungent compound of nitrogen and hydrogen is also a fertilizer, a solvent and an ingredient in food and medicine. Now scientists are studying “green ammonia” – produced using low-carbon energy – as a versatile fuel for power plants and motor vehicles. With wind and solar costs tumbling, green ammonia could find a role on farms as a fertilizer, an affordable fuel and an energy-storage medium more efficient than batteries. “For deep decarbonization of agriculture, you switch to green ammonia,” says University of Minnesota energy researcher Michael Reese, who’s running a demonstration project in Minnesota.

Solar will power Glasgow Airport’s net-zero pledge

How do you make air travel more sustainable? Glasgow Airport, the U.K.’s ninth-busiest airport by passenger volume, has just broken ground for a 30-acre, 15-megawatt solar farm that should go into operation next year. The airport already buys its electricity from 100% renewable sources, but building its own generating capacity will enable it to control its future as it replaces its service fleet with electric vehicles and overhauls its parking areas with charging stations. Glasgow Airport will also sell energy to its neighbours. While the airport hasn’t yet said how it plans to tackle Scope 3 emissions (those of planes landing and taking off in Glasgow’s airspace), it does hope to be a testbed for hydrogen and electric flights.

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In 2020, the number of publicly available charging stations for electric cars in China far outnumbered those in other countries, but that could change soon. In early September, oil company Shell announced it plans to build 50,000 on-street charging stations in the U.K. over the next four years. And in October, governors from five different states (and different political parties) agreed to build a network of charging stations throughout the American Midwest. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has also unveiled plans to install the country’s first stretch of wireless charging roads. The inductive technology doesn’t require drivers to stop at a charging station, since it recharges your batteries as you ride.

Shipping goes green.

Now that electric cars are primed to take over the highways, what’s next? This summer, Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk, the world’s largest shipping firm, announced it would spend US$1.4 billion on eight new vessels that can run on “carbon neutral” methanol instead of the dirty “bunker fuel” used by container ships. Maersk’s head of decarbonization, Morten Bo Christiansen, said in a video message, “Once they are all out there sailing on green methanol, they will save a million tons of CO2 every year.” Of course, securing green methanol is the next challenge. So far, the company has commissioned enough e-methanol (to be made using renewable energy and carbon dioxide captured from agricultural waste) to run one prototype ship, but it plans to have all ships carbon-neutral by 2030.

Look to the skies.

Global courier company DHL Express has ordered 12 fully electric cargo planes. The supplier is Seattle-based Eviation, whose “Alice” line of commuter planes should soon become the world’s first commercially produced electric aircraft. Eviation, formed by a group of airplane aficionados from Israel, the U.S. and Canada, says the Alice cargo jet, flown by a single pilot, will carry loads weighing up to 1,200 kilograms, with a maximum range of 800 kilometres. Eviation expects to begin deliveries to DHL in 2024, hoping to kick off “a new era with electric aircraft.”

IKEA ramps up its clean energy business.

Solar panels produced almost a 10th of the EU’s electricity in June and July, and IKEA wants to sell some of that power. The retail giant already sells solar panels in 10 other countries, but as of September, it began selling renewable energy (similar to the way an electric utility would) to customers in its home market of Sweden. The power, generated by certified wind and solar parks, comes from Nord Pool, Europe’s leading power market. Homeowners manage their energy use with an app. Those with their own solar generating systems can also track their energy production, and surplus power can be sold back to the grid. IKEA Sweden’s head of sustainability says the retailer hopes to offer energy platforms – including the solar panels – in all of its markets by 2025.

Ich bin ein vegetarian.

Accounting for 15% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, the meat and dairy sector is overdue for disruption. The latest blow comes from Berlin university students, who petitioned their schools to offer more sustainable meals. Now, four universities that run 34 cafeterias across Berlin have announced they are cutting back meat dishes by 96%. Starting in October, the dining halls offer 68% vegan options, 28% vegetarian options and 2% fish options. They will offer a single meat option four days per week.

Beyond everything.

In less than 10 years, Los Angeles–based Beyond Meat has grown into a US$500-million-a-year giant selling plant-based alternatives to chicken, beef and pork. But what matters most is where the firm is headed next. Beyond has filed 108 trademark applications for the next generation of low-carbon protein products, including Beyond Crab, Beyond Shrimp, Beyond Eggs, Beyond Milk and even Beyond Jerky. Silicon Valley–based CB Insights reports that by mid-2021, investors in plant-based products had already poured more than US$1 billion into alternative protein companies, three times as much as was invested in all of 2020. Maybe one will finally crack the elusive plant-based filet mignon market.

The post What’s next: The latest green innovations and milestones that give us hope appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The prominent artificial intelligence (AI) researcher claimed that the company fired her after she declined to remove her name from a paper on the carbon footprint of language models in AI research. The paper also questioned whether this technology could harm marginalized groups. Two of Gebru’s colleagues rapidly quit over her treatment, a third resigned last month, citing the ongoing controversy, and many others have signed letters of protest. The now-notorious paper has been drawing new eyes to AI’s unintended social as well as environmental impacts.

Gebru and her colleagues are not the first to address this topic. “Green AI” research – AI research that’s more environmentally friendly and inclusive – explores AI’s carbon footprint and ways to reduce it. Green AI researchers see a trend in machine learning (ML) toward programs that require increasing power and that favour accuracy over efficiency, resulting in big experiments run many times without attention to their digital carbon footprints. This is not only bad for the environment; it also makes ML research prohibitively expensive for under-resourced researchers. While green AI addresses many applications of ML, Gebru and her colleagues focused on natural language processing (NLP) models, which improve machine interactions with human languages. In order to train one of the NLP tools powering Google Search, computer scientists run programs that can expend the same amount of energy as a trans-American flight.

Those of us who aren’t computer scientists may have a difficult time disentangling this carbon-footprint revelation from claims about the carbon-saving potential of AI in smart grids, emissions monitoring or precision forestry. The answer is that AI is neither “all good” nor “all bad” for the environment. There are a few core, simple lessons at the heart of this issue: methods matter; hardware, cloud storage providers and regional energy sources matter more; and – as Gebru and her colleagues point out – it’s worth weighing the social and environmental impacts of digital activity against its benefits. 

Methods matter

There are many ways for a machine to learn something new. A machine designed to generate English text could be given the rules of grammar, or it could self-educate from a data set of English writing, find patterns and apply what it has learned. The self-educating machine could train itself on a limited data set, such as movie scripts, or researchers could tell it to search the entire English-language internet. If the machine was carefully designed and debugged, perhaps the process could be finished – if not, the researcher might need to repeat their work, with a significant carbon cost. After the machine has processed its data set, another researcher could use the machine as is or re-educate it with a new data set or modified instructions. 

Unsurprisingly, the amount of energy it takes to train a machine depends significantly on all these choices, and on hardware. Like with other notable digital carbon footprints – such as Bitcoin mining – green AI research tells us to consider what we’re trying to achieve, and whether the same goal could be reached more efficiently.

Operational decisions matter more

Some programs, like many used to power Google Search, are so large that they can’t be run quickly on a personal computer, so NLP researchers often outsource them to big cloud computing centres. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are the three largest cloud infrastructure providers worldwide, followed by Alibaba and IBM. 

A cloud computing centre’s efficiency and regional placement significantly impact its emissions. North America alone has a huge range: one server in Quebec (which is dominated by low-carbon hydroelectricity) emits an equivalent of 20 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour, while another in Iowa (where, after wind energy, coal is the most common electricity source) emits almost 737 grams – more than 35 times more. Electricity sources are the biggest drivers of these differences: low-carbon energy infrastructure can significantly reduce the environmental cost of electricity in a region. Accordingly, where major cloud-storage providers build data centres has a big impact on their climate-friendliness.

Technology users might lack control over the type of energy in their region, but they can select their cloud provider carefully. In 2017, of the top three cloud providers, Google was estimated to have the highest proportion of renewable energy integration (56%) followed by Microsoft (32%) and Amazon-AWS (17%). The same companies have each set carbon neutrality targets, though they all still have data centres that rely on fossil fuels and purchase varying quantities of renewable energy credits (RECs) in atonement.

Social impact endgame matters

It’s notoriously difficult to foresee the social impact of new technology. Like the recruiting algorithm that learned to downgrade women’s resumés because of biased training data, AI can reinforce and worsen human inequality, in the guise of scientific objectivity. Alternatively, it can identify those biases and help us solve them. Gebru and her colleagues discuss language models that have learned racism and the issue of focusing only on dominant, well-resourced languages. They note that the negative impact of climate change is most likely to reach speakers of Dhivehi (the official language of the Maldives) or Sudanese Arabic long before speakers of English.

Researchers in other fields that impact humans, such as social or medical sciences, have long had to balance social benefits and harms in their research design. Some AI conferences and publications have begun to require social impact analyses, but greening AI research asks further: What are the environmental impacts of the experiments being run? Do the experiments improve the lives of those whom climate change will hurt the mosFinally, how does a consumer make an informed choice about what digital tools and infrastructure will minimize their carbon footprint online? While digital carbon footprints are becoming better understood, we need broader public education and open access data from companies that develop and provide AI-powered tools and cloud infrastructure. That way customers can make informed decisions about the social and environmental impacts of the technologies we use daily. 

By Faun Rice, senior research and policy analyst at Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC). Figures by Akshay Kotak, senior economist at ICTC.

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