A growing number of video games, such as Horizon and Terra Nil, have themes or plots related to the climate crisis. Researchers say that the medium has huge potential to educate gamers and help galvanize them to take action on the greatest threat to humanity.

A recent study by researchers at Yale University shows that video game players are slightly more likely than the general public to view collective action on climate action positively, ­busting the stereotype that gamers are merely apathetic teenagers sitting in their parents’ basements. They’ve even been pushing the emissions-intensive gaming industry to clean up its act.

Given that there are more than three billion people playing video games in the world, whether on consoles, computers or smartphones, the medium offers a vast pool to target for communications professionals working in the climate space. “Games create engaging and immersive worlds. So they’re a really great way to bring people in to start that conversation about climate change,” says Jennifer Carman, one of the study’s authors and a deputy research manager with the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

The social aspect of video games (whether they’re played with other people online or in person) can help start conversations about things portrayed in games that are actually happening in the real world. And that social aspect can also help galvanize action.

This can be seen in the world of video game streamers (online personalities who broadcast themselves playing games online), where influencers such as Jimmy Donaldson (also known as MrBeast) and Mark Rober have spread the word about the climate crisis and used their platforms to fundraise for environmental causes. For Donaldson, that meant launching fundraising campaigns that have raised more than US$23 million for a tree-planting initiative called Arbor Day Foundation and more than US$30 million for Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup.

Researchers say that players can also develop a feeling of control in games they don’t get from other mediums, as they make decisions that drive the narrative forward. “I think having that sense of agency in a game [and] looking at a real-world topic can give you the belief that you have made a difference in a game, and you can do that in the real world, too,” says Marina Psaros, a co-author of the study, who used to be the head of sustainability at Unity Technologies.

Video game studios have increasingly injected narratives about climate change into popular games. A separate Yale survey found that 22% of video game players surveyed had come across some kind of climate change–related content in games in the previous 12 months and that 63% of them said they feel a personal sense of responsibility to help tackle global warming. When it comes to taking action, 43% said they have refused to buy the products of companies that have opposed strong climate policies.

Pushing for corporate action

In turn, the industry is starting to take its own emissions more seriously. The data centres that support online gaming and the semiconductor chips used in video games eat up a lot of energy. In 2019, the gaming industry emitted an estimated 24 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in the United States alone – which was the carbon footprint of the entire nation of Mongolia that year.

Among the companies that have been working to lower their emissions is Epic Games. The company has made some changes in its popular game Fortnite that it says will reduce the global electricity use of the game by 200 megawatt hours per day. Many of the large tech companies that manufacture games and consoles, such as Microsoft, Apple and Google, have committed to reaching net-zero by 2030. Other companies have less ambitious targets. Sony has pledged to be net-zero by 2040, and Activision says it will reach that target by 2050.

While the industry’s carbon footprint is a work in progress, green themes are proliferating. So much so that the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has recognized the power of video games as a communications tool to spread environmental messages. Every year since 2020, UNEP has held what it calls the Green Game Jam that challenges video game creators to inject a particular environmental theme into their games. The developers of popular smartphone games like Angry Birds, Boom Beach and even Pac-Man participated.

Carman says that it’s important for communications professionals not to get stuck on the traditional audiences for climate messaging and that video gaming can at the very least prompt people to talk about the climate crisis. “It can start those conversations that can prompt people to take action, and that’s what we want people to do,” she says.

The post Could the video game industry be key to levelling up on climate action? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

A Canadian company called QScale is developing a $1-billion 130-acre data centre campus in Lévis, Quebec, and will use the warmth that emanates from its servers to grow more than 80,000 tonnes of produce in adjacent greenhouses every year.

Indoor farming, which is often hailed as the future of food production, is also very energy-intensive. So being able to recycle some of the heat from data centres could be a big win for both.

“Data centres consume something on the order [of] 4% of the planet’s energy. So if we could use that as a heat source, we could . . . kill two birds with one stone,” said QScale’s co-founder and head of strategy, Vincent Thibault, in an interview with Sustainable Biz Canada.

The size of data centres varies, but the largest have thousands of servers running 24 hours a day, sucking up a huge amount of electricity and giving off a lot of heat. The United States is home to the most data centres, with more than 2,600 (as of 2022). Canada has the seventh-largest number (behind the U.S., the U.K., Germany, China, the Netherlands and Australia), and those server farms use 1% of Canada’s annual electricity consumed. Just a handful of companies are behind most of the global energy used by data centres – Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, Facebook and Apple are all among the top users (although many of these companies are trying to curb their carbon footprints by tapping into renewable energy).

Some companies and governments have taken action to make data centres less energy intensive, so that less stress is put on the electricity grids that power them. The European Commission unveiled regulations in 2019 that set up technical standards to lessen the centres’ environmental impacts. And data centres must become carbon neutral by 20230 under the European Green Deal. The U.S. Energy Act (enacted in 2021) included several initiatives aimed at making data centres more energy efficient.

QScale, for its part, says it’s trying to make data centres more sustainable. It’s trumpeted the fact that its campus in Lévis will run on 99.5% renewable sources (thanks to Quebec’s hydro-heavy grid), and its waste-heat-recovery system will help make its energy use more circular. The company will also be able to grow a decent amount of veggies. QScale says that the greenhouses on its Lévis campus will be able to produce 2,800 tonnes of small fruit a  nd 80,000 tonnes of tomatoes per year.

Farming isn’t the only innovative solution to recycle all the heat waste that data centres generate. Last year, Microsoft announced that two of its data centres in Finland would heat homes and businesses in Helsinki. A Swiss IT company called GIB-Services is heating a public swimming pool in Zurich from a data centre that was built in an old military bunker.

QScale expects its heat recovery system to be up and running at its Lévis campus in early 2024. The company says part of its mission is to set an example for the industry so that other firms will follow.

“I think by giving the example that it can be done, we can force the Google[s], Amazon[s] [and] Microsofts of the world to put some effort into actually reusing all the heat that’s generated by those facilities,” said Thibault.

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In the United States, it’s easy to find prominent politicians condemning business for using ESG to impose what they call a radical left-wing ideological agenda on Americans. Recently, some state governments have moved beyond rhetoric to explicitly limit ESG-based investing.

While often politically motivated, these criticisms have arisen from the fact that ESG (environmental, social and governance) criteria don’t have an agreed-upon performance standard, which can lead to debatable decisions in ESG rankings, measurement and reporting. ESG disclosure does not eliminate honest mistakes or even egregious cases of corporate fraud. It can also suffer from low-quality, out-of-date and unaudited data. These limitations can severely undermine ESG’s role in improving transparency and accountability, and leave it exposed to partisan political attacks that sometimes ring true.

While serious, however, the limitations in applying ESG factors can be overcome. As our research has shown, emerging technologies such as blockchain, digital twins, satellite imaging and cloud computing, to name but a few examples, can play a critical role in measuring and reporting on ESG. Many of these technologies are already being used, and there is room for new applications.

Blockchain – a decentralized, unalterable digital ledger – offers countless possibilities for improving ESG disclosure. Fishcoin, for example, uses blockchain to incentivize data sharing and improve traceability in the seafood industry. Repsol, a Spanish energy company, uses blockchain to improve product certification in its supply chain. Blockchain has also been widely used to support financial transactions, emissions certificate trading and contract management, which are some of the foundations of implementing ESG.

Advances in blockchain have been so rapid that regulators are still trying to catch up. Recently, the US–EU joint technology trade council began working on tracking and curbing carbon emissions with the help of blockchain and other technologies. The British Standards Institution (BSI) also recognizes blockchain-based carbon emissions tracking.

Digital twins are a virtual representation of real-world physical objects or processes, and they are already being used in agriculture, mining and other sectors. Applications vary, but digital twins can enable and can be used to streamline supply chains, optimize networks and respond to disruptions. A rapidly growing number of organizations believes that digital twins can catalyze transformation and help them achieve their sustainability agendas.

Satellite imaging offers a number of useful applications to ESG. Satellites already measure biodiversity, changes in water reservoir levels, water quality, air quality and land usage. They can even be used to identify supply chain hotspots for issues such as poor working conditions. Moreover, AI-assisted satellites can synthesize environmental data and convert it into environmental insights.

Cloud computing and analytics are also important ESG tools, particularly for their potential in automating data collection, standardizing data, reporting metrics and enabling greater transparency within and between organizations. A PwC survey of Fortune 1000 companies found that most C-suite leaders are committed to using the cloud for ESG: 60% are either using or planning to use it to augment ESG reporting, while 59% use or plan to use the cloud to refine their ESG strategies.

Emerging technologies can be used independently or as a part of a more integrated platform. But, they won’t solve all of ESG’s problems. Blockchain, for example, can be used to codify poor-quality data. Satellite imaging can identify hotspots for poor working conditions, but it may require on-the-ground verification. Risks to privacy and data security remain paramount, as many high-profile breaches attest. This is just the start of a long list of potential technological limitations.

As a part of a broader effort, however, technology can improve ESG measurement and reporting. It can improve the availability of high-quality, up-to-date, verified ESG data. This can provide a much-needed basis for improved transparency and accountability. There is no technical fix for all ESG issues – judgement is still required in deciding what to measure and disclose – but technology can help reduce or eliminate some of its clear shortcomings.

The increasing attention on ESG challenges practitioners, academics and policymakers to recognize its flaws and develop innovative solutions to address them. ESG focuses on big issues, but it hasn’t yet fulfilled its potential.  Emerging technologies can help it get there.

The post How emerging technologies can strengthen ESG appeared first on Corporate Knights.

These barriers to repair are no accident. Market power and intellectual property rights have enabled manufacturers to unilaterally determine when, where (and at what cost) and by whom their products can be fixed. This is why many were surprised last month when technology giant Apple announced that it will be launching its Self Service Repair program, offering customers the ability to access the company’s proprietary parts and tools. 

Long regarded as the primary villain against the “right to repair” for its aggressive lobbying, Apple’s announcement signals a sea change is coming. Though the details of the program are yet to be released, Apple now joins the likes of Microsoft, Samsung and other technology companies in making an industry-led commitment to better allow us to fix our own stuff.

But what to make of these commitments? Are they right-to-repair wins, or are there reasons for skepticism? There is undoubtedly good news contained within these commitments, but campaigners are wise to look beyond mere “permission to repair” and keep pressing for the right.

Apple’s announcement arrives as a burgeoning global movement of right-to-repair advocates has been fighting for legal and policy changes to enable us to take repair into our own hands. Increased repairability enables secondary markets for repair and servicing, extends product lifespan to reduce environmental impacts, and distributes technical knowledge throughout society. These benefits are increasingly relevant in the context of today’s growing wealth inequality, the importance of developing a knowledge economy, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s declaration of an environmental “code red for humanity.”

Promising grassroots efforts toward policy reform have also begun to materialize around the world. Hard-fought right-to-repair wins include an executive order signed by U.S. President Joe Biden this summer, a string of U.S. state-level repair bills, EU regulatory measures mandating access to repair information and parts, and Canadian provincial and federal bills targeting warranties and protections for digital locks under copyright law. Most recently, the Australian Productivity Commission has released a report wholly endorsing increased repairability and a suite of legislative and regulatory changes to enable it. 

If technology companies wish to embrace repair, they should not stand in the way of the legal and policy changes sought by right-to-repair campaigners.

While the winds are blowing increasingly in the direction of repair, Apple’s Self Service Repair program might not be as altruistic as it seems. Taken at their worst, these commitments may be little more than “repair-washing” – an attempt to shape the narrative around repair and technology manufacturers that is increasingly becoming a public relations liability for these companies. It remains to be seen whether the commitments will meaningfully address the economic, environmental and social costs of un-repairability.

Back in 2019, Nathan Proctor, the head of U.S. Public Interest Research Groups’ Right to Repair campaign, warned that the repair movement was being hijacked by the very companies that sought to preclude it. Citing efforts to increase the number of Samsung-authorized repairers at the time, Proctor wrote: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you … But then, as a last ditch effort, they co-opt you.” Right-to-repair campaigners would be wise to keep Proctor’s words front of mind these days.

It would be disingenuous to not grant these commitments some applause, though. Co-opting or not, there is reason for optimism. Industry norms can be as powerful as law and policy, and the market power wielded by Apple alone shows the potential for shaping those norms toward increased consumer choice and market competition in repair. No matter how you slice it, these commitments count as progress. 

But the “permission to repair” will never amount to a right. Right-to-repair goals cannot be meaningfully achieved through self-regulation alone. These commitments are effectively a type of charity. They amount to a promise by manufacturers not to rigidly enforce their intellectual property and contractual rights. That is extraordinarily helpful and important but not the whole story. As right-to-repair advocate Cory Doctorow wrote in a recent article for OneZero, campaigners would be right to “keep their eye on the prize.”

If technology companies wish to embrace repair, they should not stand in the way of the legal and policy changes sought by right-to-repair campaigners. To cultivate a meaningful and participatory repair culture, we need to create public-interest exceptions to the exclusive intellectual property rights and market power exercised by these firms. These allow them to keep their tight grip on repair, and far beyond mere permission, this is what would give us the “right” to repair.

At its core, the right-to-repair movement is rooted in an ethos that holds a deep belief in human potential. Repair is not merely about mending broken things or making them whole. It also enables inquiry, discovery, devising new solutions and the dissemination of collective knowledge. Having the largest technology manufacturers in support of repair is a good thing, but the keys to repair should be held by all of us.

Anthony Rosborough is a lawyer, doctoral researcher in intellectual property law at the European University Institute, and founder of the Canadian Repair Coalition.

The post Apple’s pledge to let consumers repair their own gadgets doesn’t go far enough appeared first on Corporate Knights.

This year’s negotiations are focused on securing more ambitious carbon-reduction pledges, or nationally determined contributions (NDCs, which must be ratcheted up every five years in line with the Paris Agreement). Earlier this year, Canada increased its NDC to cut emissions 40 to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030, up from the 2016 target of 30% below 2005. Canada’s plan for meeting its more aggressive NDC includes cutting energy waste, pricing carbon and decarbonizing transportation through zero-emissions vehicles, among other initiatives. This should significantly reduce energy demand and waste while boosting electrification of our economy with renewable energy production. However, my research on renewable energy transitions around the world suggests that for this plan to be cost-effective and successful, Canada will need to introduce policies that support the deployment of clusters of complementary low- and no-carbon technologies to the market.

Take Canada’s buildings, which are responsible for a large portion of the country’s emissions. Past building retrofitting efforts of EnerGuide for Houses and ecoEnergy programs provided incentives for multiple innovations, although homeowners tended to favour singular innovations, mainly natural gas furnace replacements. This yielded only about 20 to 30% average reductions of a building’s energy use. On the other hand, deep energy retrofits can achieve energy reductions of 50 to 80% through the clustering of technologies, such as insulation of basements, ceilings and walls; ventilation; and the adoption of new mechanical systems, such as heat pumps and solar panels for electricity and hot water. Clustering these technologies effectively drives down both energy use and costs of implementing building retrofits. 

Sources of renewable energy are often criticized for their lack of predictability. However, combining complementary renewable energy technologies that produce electricity at different times (i.e. the wind is blowing more when the sun is shining less, and vice versa) has been shown to smooth out renewable power production, integrate more renewable power into the grid, and drive down the size and costs of energy storage. Even so, policies to support combining these technologies are not present in Canada. 

Renewable power can be made more reliable by adding other innovations, such as allowing electricity sharing between consumers through “peer to peer trading” and encouraging consumers to change their demand when renewable power production is low or high (known as demand response and load balancing). Clustering renewable energies with these innovations not only improves the reliability of renewable power; it reduces the costs of implementation and provides resilience for local economic development. In addition, using electric cars as back-up power sources in people’s homes can help privatize and distribute some of the costs of the infrastructure support for clusters.

Canada will need to introduce policies that support the deployment of clusters of complementary low- and no-carbon technologies to the market.

While clustering technology effectively improves reliability and drives down both energy use and costs of implementation, in my 13 years of research I have yet to come across any jurisdictions in developed economies that have implemented policies that support the diffusion of complementary renewable energy sources. In Japan, the solar lobby prevented the widespread adoption of wind power that could have complemented solar power. Vietnam has one of the most successful solar energy programs in the world, but its almost exclusive focus on this type of renewable energy has disrupted the reliability of its electricity system.

The European Union is currently rolling out legislation to support the implementation of renewable energy with other innovations like energy storage, peer-to-peer trading and virtual power plants (VPPs are networks of decentralized, medium-scale power-generating units such as wind farms and solar parks). However, this legislation still does not explicitly support the diffusion of complementary renewable energy sources. 

The importance of the widespread adoption of renewable energy in NDCs is underscored again and again at COP26, by academics, environmental advocates, politicians and business leaders alike. The We Mean Business Coalition, which is hosting a pavilion at COP26, is calling for the ambitious goals of ending coal and scaling up renewables now. On November 2, the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet – which includes the Rockefeller Foundation, IKEA and the World Bank Group – launched a goal of reaching one billion people with renewable power. 

Canada is rightly investing $964 million in smart renewable energy projects, some of which will support VPPs, and this will need to be ramped up to successfully electrify  most of our transportation and energy systems. During September’s federal election campaign, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party promised a Dutch-inspired model of deep energy retrofits for buildings. Now is the time to re-examine how our economic and regulatory policies across federal and provincial jurisdictions can move toward supporting complementary low- and no-carbon technologies that can provide reliable, affordable energy to communities while achieving our NDC under the Paris Agreement with confidence. Lobbying and advocacy works, and those pushing for change can call for the rollout of clusters of innovations that support our collective future. 

Christina Hoicka is an associate professor of geography and civil engineering at the University of Victoria. She is attending COP26 as an observer. 

The post Dispatches from COP26: If Canada wants to meet its emissions targets, it needs to support clusters of innovations appeared first on Corporate Knights.

We’re also in the midst of an environmental crisis—the House of Commons drove this home when it declared a national climate emergency last month. With rising temperatures, the melting of polar ice sheets and catastrophic weather events, now more than ever, it’s crucial for governments and businesses to take drastic, meaningful steps towards sustainable energy use to combat these global issues before they become irreversible.

Unprecedented population growth is placing additional strain on green energy initiatives, however. By 2050, the world’s cities will be home to an additional 2.5 billion people. With this increased urbanization comes a standard of living largely reliant on technology. Another 50 billion devices – everything from smartphones to smart fridges to smart factories – will be connected globally within the next five years, which will increase our consumption by at least 50%. If our desire is to move towards a low-carbon economy, we must strive to reduce our carbon footprint by half. The only way to do this is to use energy three times more efficiently around the world. We’ll need technology to get us there.

Policy changes, both global and domestic, will play an important role in our efforts to find energy efficiencies and combat climate change. Many nations, including Canada, Australia, France and Denmark, have implemented a tax on carbon emissions. France and the United Kingdom plan to eliminate gas-based vehicles by 2040, and Norway by as early as 2025. And in British Columbia, discussions are in place to ensure that all new cars, SUVs and light-duty trucks are zero-emission starting in 2040.

However, it isn’t exclusively up to the world’s governing bodies to drive these improvements. Business and industry must also lead the charge. And they have more opportunity than ever in our digital age to make sustainable and profitable shifts.

When businesses embrace digitization and connected solutions to automate how they use energy and analyze data for smarter decision-making, this drives a more productive, profitable and sustainable economy. Digital transformation could help the electricity, logistics and automotive industries alone avoid 26 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions between 2016 and 2025.

At Schneider Electric, we’re on track to shift our global operations to 80% renewable energy by 2020. At the Clean Energy Ministerial conference in Vancouver in May, we announced our commitment to support the Electric Vehicle Initiative’s EV30@30 campaign and its goal to reach 30% sales share for electric vehicles by 2030. Schneider Electric plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 and have a fleet of at least 30% electric vehicles.

Partly through consumer demands for green initiatives and partly through internal business priorities, global businesses are already making the transition to sustainable energy. In 2017, corporate leaders like Google and Wells Fargo met their goal to use 100% renewable energy. As of January, 122 multinational companies, including Schneider Electric, joined RE100 and committed to becoming 100% renewable.

Despite these initiatives, government and industry face a daunting task. To reduce our carbon footprint and ensure a healthy planet for generations to come, we must leverage the technology, initiatives and capabilities we have today, and continue to support the innovations that will make increased efficiencies possible tomorrow. Only when government, industry and citizens prioritize the same end goal will we have a chance at a clean energy future.

Susan Uthayakumar is President and CEO of Schneider Electric Canada.

The post Digital solutions can help tackle global energy dilemma appeared first on Corporate Knights.

So what’s next for the old icebox? Environmental concerns, shifting demographics, and changes in how we shop, cook, and eat are driving a push for new technologies that will make tomorrow’s fridge greener, smarter, and, above all, more connected. Your future fridge will join the “internet of things,” the world in which devices (25 billion by some estimates) interact with each other and a growing network of infrastructural systems.

What does that mean, exactly? To put it simply, your fridge will talk—to you, to its manufacturer, to your utility company, and even to other appliances. (What do you think a fridge and a toaster chat about all day?) By doing so, it will help you save energy and money and cut down on food waste, too. It might even make you a better cook.

Got milk? Text your fridge

Using new technologies, like internal cameras and weight sensors, fridges will take inventory of what’s on hand and send mobile alerts when you’re out of butter or running low on eggs. Software like LG’s HomeChat will allow you to text your fridge from the grocery store for a virtual shopping list of what’s needed—and, just as importantly, what’snot, curbing unnecessary food purchases that significantly contribute to Americans throwing out 25 percent of the food they buy.

Goodbye to the bad apple

New technologies, like built-in ethylene detectors that track the decay of produce, and food storage containers that monitor freshness, will help you keep track of what perishables are, in fact, perishing. You fridge will even suggest customized recipes for using up what’s on hand. Leave the door open accidentally? You’ll get a text alert (“Hey, big spender!”), or a notice if the temperature inside rises to unsafe levels during power outages—all of which will go a long way toward reducing spoilage.

The on-the-grid fridge

With “smart grid” technology, refrigerators will engage in a constant conversation with utility providers to reduce the demands on national power grids and save you money. After chatting, so to speak, with computers at your local utility company, your social fridge will know to wait until off-peak hours—when rates are cheaper and electric grids are far less stressed—to run certain functions, like the defrost cycle. The result? Lower electric bills for you, and fewer power outages for all.

Home repair 2.0

Imagine an appliance that could tell you what was wrong any time it coughed or sputtered. New technology, like LG’s Smart Diagnosis, allows refrigerators to troubleshoot issues by communicating data to the manufacturer via your phone. If a problem is easy to fix, you’ll be told what to do. If a service visit is necessary, a technician will arrive with the right parts, ensuring repairs are made in a single visit, cutting down on the costs—environmental and other—of travel.

The kitchen that cooks together

Designers are dreaming up next-generation kitchens with touchscreen cooktops, backsplashes that allow for live “chats,” and ovens that can be preheated remotely. The modern mess will be fully connected, with app-controlled appliances that “talk” to one another. At the helm will be the refrigerator-cum-sous-chef, which—in addition to taking inventory of its contents and suggesting recipes—will also perform tasks likeprogramming the oven and setting timers. An unnecessary luxury? Perhaps for some. But for those more inclined to cook when there’s an extra hand (of sorts) to help, it could mean more ingredients used for dinner and less destined for landfills, which are already filled with what we don’t eat—as much as 40 percent of all food produced in United States.

Other ways your fridge will flourish

Cool Runnings: Keeping today’s iceboxes icy requires a churning system of compressors and environmentally hazardous chemical refrigerants working 24-7. One new technology that could replace all that is magnetocaloric refrigeration, which uses magnets and a water-based fluid to create food-friendly temps. This technology, which GE predicts may be used commercially as early as 2020, could make fridges up to 20 percent more efficient, as well as easier to recycle at the end of their functional lifespan. Meanwhile, another clean technology known as thermoelectric cooling—which modulates temperatures by moving a current between two conductors, without the need for refrigerants—is starting to show up more and more in things like wine fridges and “air-conditioned” car seats. While it can’t compete currently with today’s methods of refrigeration in terms of cost or efficiency, according to Bolin Liao, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, “many efforts have been devoted to this technology in the past few years and a lot of progress has been made.”

Sleek & Streamlined… As housing becomes more compact and urban, refrigerators will adapt accordingly, boasting a smaller footprint and a more integrated design—all of which bodes well for reduced food waste and improved energy efficiency. One vision, put forth by GE’s tireless futurists, is for an all-in-one kitchen amenity that combines the functionalities of a refrigerator, a freezer, and a pantry; the temperatures within its adjustable, thermally sealed shelves would be set individually to maintain optimal coolness for frozen foods, fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy, and dry goods. Meanwhile, Virginia Tech’s Center for Design Research has introduced its own streamlined fridge, which would seamlessly blend into the surroundings of a compact “cartridge” kitchen.

…Or Bigger & Better? So long as big box stores are around, large capacity fridges for housing bulk items will be, too. Fortunately, manufacturers are developing ways to organize all those goods and reduce the time it takes to find the milk—a good thing, as leaving the door open while you mindlessly browse accounts for up to 7 percent of your refrigerator’s overall energy consumption. New door-in-door designs allow you to store the foods you grab most in compartments that can be easily accessed without opening the refrigerator’s main chamber. (According to LG, this one feature alone can reduce cold air loss by 47 percent, keeping food fresh longer.) In the same vein is a still-in-beta door scheme that boasts a see-through touchscreen display, enabling you to look inside your fridge without opening it. Further pushing all things possible is a fridge with no doors at all, efficiently cooling whatever foodstuffs are placed inside it using—believe it or not—sound waves.

This article was originally published by onEarth.

The post Hey, your fridge is calling appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“With resource-saving notions like ‘the paperless office’ and ‘telecommuting,’ the digital age holds great environmental promise,” it said. “But have digital technologies really helped improve global sustainability?”

In raising this question, the institute referred to its latest book, State of the World 2014: Governing for Sustainability, and specifically to a chapter in which Pomona College professor Richard Worthington looks at emerging digital systems with a skeptical eye.

Worthington writes that studies directly linking digital technologies to environmental benefits have yielded ambiguous results. Such benefits are difficult to measure, he contends – for example, isolating and tracking the Internet’s energy efficiency as other changes related to appliances, buildings, vehicles and energy generation unfold at the same time.

Then there’s the much debated “rebound effect” – the idea that any gains in efficiency offered through technology are offset, at least partially, by cost savings that can stimulate more consumption, and therefore more energy use. Worthington writes that this further complicates how to measure the benefits of digital technology. Those studies that claim such benefits, he adds, are questionable because they tend to be sponsored by global technology corporations.

He also takes shots at so-called digital democracy, challenging the notion that the Internet and other information technologies are creating new democratic practices. Acknowledging that falling technology and communications costs have allowed more people to become engaged citizens, by participating in campaigns or policy development, Worthington suggests results so far have been limited and that technologies may be exacerbating undemocratic tendencies.

In the U.S., for example, he argues that such technologies have made things worse by helping to reinforce biases and erode the quality of political communications – that is, bombarding people with impersonal, easily ignored appeals or shifting citizen engagement toward event-driven, short-term responses.

Worthington brings up many good points, but as is usually the case, technology cuts both ways on this issue. Yes, we do risk “amusing ourselves to death,” to use a term coined by the late Neil Postman, who argued in the mid-1980s that the growth of cable television was creating an oppressive addiction to amusement and detachment from our surroundings. The same argument can extend to the Internet and smart phones, as easily observed by anyone riding a bus during rush hour.

But Worthington seems to gloss over all the good – and potential for good – that has so far come from emerging digital technologies.

The Web We Weave

Two years ago, for example, Corporate Knights ran a package of stories called “Web of Sustainability,” which detailed how the Internet in combination with wireless, satellite and other digital technologies is empowering a new era of sustainability advocacy, behaviour and action. Here’s how I framed it in our introductory feature:

We take it for granted, but the reach and accessibility of the web we have spun have enhanced global sustainability efforts in a way that few could have anticipated in the pre-Google era. The ubiquity of wireless communications and the falling cost of data-gathering sensors have fed the trend and inspired a new generation of innovators determined to turn the “Internet of things” – a virtually unlimited mix of web-connected, information-collecting objects – into a force for good.

The story spins far beyond heightened transparency and accountability. And it builds on older, but no less important, notions of telework and telecommuting. There’s little doubt that web-based e-mail and video conferencing can shrink our environmental footprint by reducing the need for travel and paper. But something much bigger is going on. The web is enabling more sustainable business models, smarter buildings and cities, and our ability to deploy low-carbon energy systems. It is giving us better ways to measure and understand the planet’s health, while also helping us adapt to our changing climate.

The story talks about how digital technologies are enabling the collaborative or “sharing” economy, which includes services such as Car2Go, RelayRides, Airbnb and Uber. As author and economist Jeremy Rifkin told us, “We’re moving from ownership to access, and from markets to networks. You pay for the time you share a product.” The reduction in ownership leads to a reduction “stuff” and the use of resources needed to make it.

Digital technologies are also enabling citizen science, crowdfunding and crowdsourcing, the power of which can all be (and is being) harnessed to enhance local, regional and global sustainability. Through instant knowledge sharing, communities threatened by resource-extraction projects are taking a more informed and effective stand, and doing so with great efficiency. As the president of the Mining Association of Canada once said, with the Internet “there grew a far greater ability of networks of people to shine a light on an industry that was largely out of sight, out of mind.”

Technology has empowered Chinese environmental protests, forcing their government to acknowledge and address an increasingly crippling pollution problem. The recent U.S.-China climate deal arguably would not have happened if not for the digital democratization of Chinese citizens. The same argument can be made for the Arab Spring, during which mobile phones and Twitter became the de facto tools of communication and organization.

And the “Internet of things” is helping us take the pulse of cities, forests, oceans and climate in a way never before imagined, while also being used to improve the efficiency of business, buildings and cities, and planning of more sustainable communities.

Corporate Knights is currently doing research on global tree loss and forest gain using a recently launched online tool called Global Forest Watch, a collaboration between the World Resources Institute and Google. Detailed and previously inaccessible satellite data is now at my fingertips. In a sense, we all have the potential to become environmental watchdogs.

And as I write this, I just received a press release from IBM and the University of Alberta, which are working together to monitor climate change with more speed and accuracy than ever. They’re using software that performs real-time analysis of more than 10,000 data points per second. The data, ranging from CO2 levels to humidity to temperature, are gathered through more than 500 sensors located in some of the world’s most remote ecosystems.

“The technology provides researchers – and eventually policy makers – with an unprecedented ability to predict environmental events, such as forest fires and drought, and to apply insights to more accurately forecast how boreal and tropical forests are returning after deforestation and disturbances,” according to the release.

I know – it’s easy to get caught up in the “wow” factor. Marketing and public relations departments rely on this reaction, and culturally techno-optimism seems to be our default position on such things. But these technologies and their potential to make the world a more sustainable place are real. The impact they have depends on how we choose to leverage them.

Jevons Paradox

Concerning the controversial “rebound effect” – also known as the Jevons paradox – there is no shortage of differing opinion on this. The Breakthrough Institute, an energy think tank based in California, believes the rebound effect can erase a majority of the gains achieved through energy efficiency. In an October blog post, Breakthrough analyst Alex Trembath argued that such a position is supported by a recent report from the International Energy Agency. The agency’s report “concludes that efficiency rebounds can and do reach at least as high as 60 per cent, with rebound in developing countries likely much higher than in rich countries,” Trembath wrote.

The American Council for an Energy Efficiency Economy (ACEEE) used its own blog to publicly take issue with Trembath’s assertion, restating research that suggests the rebound effect averages about 20 per cent. “The truth is that for 40 years energy efficiency has had a dramatic effect on worldwide energy consumption,” ACEEE executive director Steven Nadel wrote. “In the United States, if we were to use energy today at the rate we were in 1974, we would be consuming more than twice the amount that we are actually using.”

The Breakthrough Institute may be exaggerating, but the honest answer is that we don’t really know for sure, which is essentially Worthington’s point. If I drive a more efficient vehicle am I likely to drive more? If I save money on energy efficiency measures, am I going to take that luxury cruise? Tough to say – depends on the person and the socioeconomic context.

What I do know is there’s a good chance I’ll leave the lights on more if I’m using LED lighting, but I probably won’t do more laundry if my washing machine and dryer are more efficient, or wash more dishes if my dishwasher is more efficient. If power plants or the grid get smarter and more efficient, does that affect how much electricity I use? Not if it doesn’t lead to lower prices or if there’s a carbon tax in places, both of which can be controlled.

A consortium called GreenTouch announced two networking equipment innovations this week that, according to a statement, “will reduce overall energy consumption in wireline access networks by an impressive 46 per cent.” Is that going to lead to more Internet use? I’m guessing it won’t, or at least not much.

That said, we know that e-mail technology has led to an unprecedented increase in communications that never existed 20 years ago, much of it spam. That, some argue, makes it no better – and possibly worse – than traditional snail mail. All those massive data centres, after all, consume vast amounts of energy.

Where I do agree with The Breakthrough Institute is that more sophisticated research is needed. Modeling efforts, wrote Trembath, “should aim for highly disaggregated estimates of rebound effects, from end-use consumption to economy-wide effects at various levels of development. Models must also consider the dynamic relationship between different types of rebound responses – take-back effects, spending effects, investment effects, macroeconomic price responses, etc. – and other energy and climate policies, including emissions pricing.”

In the end, it’s fair to say that Worthington isn’t trying to downplay the potential that digital technologies have to make the world more sustainable, he’s questioning our often blind love of and obsession with emerging digital technologies, which too often escapes the scrutiny they deserve.

“There is little choice about engaging digital systems in environmental governance, but naïve attachment to them will perpetuate distorted patterns of investment and other features of the socioeconomic model that has generated the environmental crisis,” writes Worthington. “Critical engagement, careful strategizing, and most of all a commitment to profound change are preconditions for using these systems for different ends.”

Not an unreasonable conclusion.

The post Is the Internet helping or hurting the planet? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But the lowly pallet is an essential link in the global supply chain. One could say the global economy rides on its ubiquitous back.

By 2017 it’s estimated there will be nearly 10 billion shipping pallets in global circulation, half being newly purchased each year. Between now and then, the market is expected to grow by an average of 5 per cent annually and reach a value of $52 billion (U.S.), according to The Freedonia Group.

Needless to say, what those pallets are made of, how often they’re reused, and how they’re managed will become increasingly important in a low-carbon economy. That’s what attracted auto parts executive Richard MacDonald to the market.

In 2010, after 23 years working his way into senior roles at auto parts giant Magna International, MacDonald decided to take what he learned in the car manufacturing business and apply it to the art of skid making.

“We basically did automotive engineering on a pallet,” said MacDonald, one of three co-founders of Vaughan, Ont.-based Axios Mobile Assets, where he is president and chief executive. “

For example, Axios makes its pallets out of calcium carbonate – that is, common chalk – the same material that Magna uses to manufacture some of its composite car parts, such as fenders and hoods for Vipers and Corvettes. The non-toxic calcium carbonate is mixed with a soy-based resin and biofibres to create a kind of “eco-pallet” that Axios says is 30 to 40 per cent lighter than wood pallets.

Currently, slightly more than 90 per cent of all pallets produced today are made from wood, while about 4 per cent are manufactured from plastics and 1 per cent from metal, such as aluminum. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses.

How they stack up

Wood pallets may be the cheapest, but they don’t last very long, are susceptible to insects and rot, represent a fire hazard, can carry contaminants that pose a risk to health, and are difficult to clean. They absorb water when wet, adding weight – and cost – to shipping. Nails and splinters also have potential to harm workers, tear packaging and damage product.

There’s also an ongoing debate over the contribution of wood pallets to deforestation and climate change. The Union of Concerned Scientists, for example, cites the fact that 30 per cent of total hardwood produced in the United States each year is used to make wood pallets and containers that are typically used once and then discarded, often in landfills. It estimates that wood pallets represent up to 3 per cent of all waste that ends up in U.S. landfills.

However, groups like the Canadian Wood Pallet and Container Association counter by pointing out that pallets are largely made from otherwise unmarketable lumber that’s left over after trees are harvested for building materials, furniture and flooring. “Trees are rarely harvested with the sole purpose of making pallets,” the association says.

A single wood pallet is said to represent about 27 kilograms of carbon. What happens at the end of its short life determines its impact on the climate. Sending it to landfill is worse than recycling it into other wood products or even burning it for energy. One example: Viridian Wood Products of Portland, Oregon, reclaims and upcycles wood from shipping pallets and crates that have been discarded at local shipyards, turning them into high-value flooring, decking and panelling products.

Plastic pallets, on the other hand, are more expensive but have gained favour because, compared to wood, they’re pest resistant, lighter, longer-lasting, recyclable, and often made from recycled materials. They can also be cleaned and sanitized fairly easily, though because they are made from a fossil fuel they are a fire hazard. This is why the plastic used must often be embedded with fire retardant chemicals such as decabromodiphenyl ether, which has caused concerns about the potential for contamination in the food industry.

And metal pallets? They have most of the benefits of plastic with the added advantage of ruggedness. Problem is, they’re significantly more expensive and typically heavier, which leads to increased transportation costs, fuel consumption and associated emissions. This is why they are used mostly for the heaviest cargo and niche markets.

Striking the right balance

MacDonald believes his company’s calcium carbonate-based pallets strike the best balance between cost and benefit. Like plastic pallets, they tend to last 10 to 12 years compared to up to a few years for wood – assuming the wood pallets aren’t prematurely discarded. And they’re 30 to 40 per cent lighter than comparable wood pallets, which translates into lower cost and a reduction in transport-related emissions.

Bugs and water can’t penetrate them, they’re easy to thoroughly wash after each cycle of use, and they can be recycled. Where they part with plastic, however, is that they are inherently fire resistant, meaning no chemical additives are needed – appealing to food and produce shippers and buyers. “We’re less cost with higher value,” MacDonald said.

From a greenhouse-gas emissions perspective, however, what the pallets are made of is only part of the story. A core part of Axios’ business is a service called pallet pooling. In essence, it rents out its pallets as part of long-term contracts. Through such contracts, it manages and tracks the movement of the pallets, cleans them, and stores them when necessary.

Each of its pallets contain four radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and a bar code that allows the company to track the pallets – and the goods loaded onto them – through every step in the supply-chain cycle. Sensors that measure temperature, shock, and even CO2 exposure and humidity can also be added to both the pallets and the trailers used to transport them. Handlers equipped with electronic wands simply scan each pallet as they’re unloaded and loaded.

“We’re the Internet of things as it relates to the $12 billion (U.S.) pallet market,” said MacDonald.

With this ability to so closely and accurately track pallets as they move through the supply chain, Axios says there’s room to drive logistical efficiencies. The software behind its pallet management service can also calculate what the reduction in GHG emissions would be relative to using wood pallets that aren’t tracked. This calculation takes into account such metrics as distance travelled and pallet weight, and translates them into a carbon credit value.

In its first pallet-pooling project earlier this year, Axios supplied 4,000 pallets to Trillium Farms of Ohio and Centrum Valley Farms in Iowa, which used the system to manage and track egg shipments destined for retailers such as Walmart. After four months, they calculated that the carbon-equivalent of 26.6 tonnes of GHGs had been offset, the equivalent of not burning nearly 29,000 pounds of coal.

“For retailers or vendors who use millions of pallets and transport their products millions of miles over the course of business each year, significant verified carbon reductions can be applied against a business’s carbon footprint and in some cases monetized,” the company said in a statement after releasing its findings.

Consider if this approach was applied to the billions of wood shipping pallets in circulation around the world. The U.S. egg industry, which transports 90 billion eggs annually, requires on its own more than a million pallets handling 15 to 20 shipment cycles a year. The carbon benefits would quickly add up.

Sylvain Charlebois, a business and economics professor who researches food safety and traceability systems at the University of Guelph, was briefed on the Axios pallet system earlier this fall and walked away impressed.

“It’s a great product and they have a sound strategy,” said Charlebois, adding that the approach makes good sense from a sustainability perspective. “That said, it will be a challenge for Axios to change entrenched habits in the industry, particularly in the food industry where traditions are king.”

But the interest is there. MacDonald said his company now has contracts in place to put 30,000 of its pallets into circulation, assuming he can overcome one substantial barrier. “We’re having trouble raising the capital to expand our pallet fleet,” he said, pointing out that over the next year up to 150,000 pallets will need to be manufactured to meet expected demand.

The problem? The $3 million Axios is looking for is a lot of money, and investors don’t get very excited about pallets, even those based on the same materials used to make Corvettes. Mention “pallet” in your pitch and venture capitalists yawn. Banks tune out, even if the payback on each pallet is under a year.

But they may well want to pay attention. As Charlebois said, more non-food retailers such as Walmart and Costco are doing well in the food space. “They are more inclined to embrace new technologies which may be consistent with their core competency, which is logistics,” he said.

The post Making climate-friendly pallets palatable appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Use of “coffin nails,” as they’re sometime called because of their known contribution to lung and heart disease, is even on the decline within the companies that make them. Just this week, cigarette maker Reynolds American, the second-largest tobacco company in the United States, told its employees they can no longer smoke at work. The company said the new policy was “the right thing to do.”

The trend may be positive for our collective wellbeing, but it has left North American tobacco growers scrambling to find new markets and uses for their crops. Part of the answer, according to one Canadian company, is not what you’d expect: using tobacco plants to help fight the spread of the Ebola virus.

According to one report, health agencies in Canada and the United States have asked Guelph, Ontario-based Plantform to develop preventative vaccines for Ebola strains by genetically engineering tobacco plants. The company’s use of tobacco plants as a living pharmaceutical factory isn’t limited to Ebola. Plantform is also using the plant to make drugs for treating breast cancer, protecting against nerve agents, and fighting HIV/AIDS.

Tobacco plants are known for having unique properties. For example, when bugs land or crawl on a plant its leaves release chemicals that paralyze and kill parasitic insects. For Plantform, tobacco plants are ideal because they grow fast. On its website, the company says it can produce its plant-based vaccine or other drugs in as little as eight weeks, and at a fraction of the cost of using cells from animals or bacteria.

Indeed, even Reynolds American is getting into the business. Its subsidiary, Kentucky BioProcessing LLC, is working with San Diego-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical on a tobacco-derived drug for treating Ebola, using a cocktail of antibodies developed at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory and licensed to Toronto-based Defyrus.

That experimental drug, called ZMapp, was given to Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, two aid workers who became infected by the virus this summer while in Liberia. Both have made a full recovery, which is probably encouraging to the doctor in New York City who reportedly tested positive Thursday for Ebola.

On its own, it’s a good news story. But the plant-derived Ebola treatment is symbolic of a new area of science that isn’t immune to controversy. Its critics consider it the antithesis of sustainability, while proponents paint it as a more sustainable path to drug development in a growing world filled with pain and poverty.

Health and Social Benefits

Manipulating plants to produce pharmaceutical compounds is a relatively new technique called plant molecular farming, and the results of early experimentation date back about 25 years. More colloquially, the practice is referred to as “pharming” – and it’s not limited to tobacco. Corn, rice, canola, alfalfa, safflower, tomatoes, and potatoes have all been used in laboratory settings as hosts in drug production, tackling everything from cystic fibrosis to tooth decay.

In essence, scientists isolate or synthesize a specific gene that creates certain proteins, such as those in insulin. This DNA is then inserted into a seedling plant, which as it grows creates the proteins as if it were their own. The plants can also be modified so that the target proteins become concentrated in leaves or seeds. The leaves, for example, can sometimes be dried and taken orally, or the proteins can be extracted, refined and used in the production of pills or liquids that can be injected.

In 2012, the first plant-derived drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for human consumption was produced from carrots, which were genetically modified to carry an enzyme that alleviates painful symptoms related to Gaucher disease.

Plant pharming not only allows for faster turnaround of vaccines and other drugs. Biotech companies are lured to its promise because the process is relatively low-tech and, as a result, much less expensive. It doesn’t require the costly and complex bioreactor vessels typically used when working with bacteria and yeast.

This holds great promise for the research of pharmaceutical products for illnesses that, because they are so rare, don’t represent an attractive market for drug developers. The potential for lower-cost manufacturing of drugs would also benefit poorer countries that lack affordable access to medicines and vaccines.

It’s also easy to scale production up or down as demand requires. “It has been estimated that 250 acres of greenhouse space would be sufficient to meet all of South Asia’s requirements for hepatitis B virus vaccine,” according to the Pharming the Future research project, conducted through the University of Calgary. A 2011 study from microbiology researchers at the University of Central Florida contended that an “acre of tobacco could yield up to 20 million daily doses of insulin per year.”

Finally, in the case of vaccines and other temperature-sensitive drugs, the end product can often be in the form of a freeze-dried, edible plant that doesn’t require refrigeration. Its natural “packaging” can be in the form of seeds and fruit, not capsules or vials. The fact it can be stored without needing to be kept cold is a huge benefit in the developing world where electricity is unreliable or non-existent.

Environmental Question Mark

When it comes to genetically modifying any organism, however, there’s always a tradeoff that many are not willing to make. We’re stuck with an enduring question with no easy or obvious answer: Do we take advantage of fairly certain social gains, such as better access to medicine and potentially more affordable drugs, knowing there are environmental and health uncertainties we may regret over the medium and long term? Do we accept what risks exists or fall back on the precautionary principle, as Europeans have when it comes to genetically modified foods?

The controversy came to a head in 2002 when it was revealed that a corn crop engineered to make a protein for a pig vaccine was plowed into the soil, which was used a year later to plant 500,000 bushels of food-grade soybeans. The soybeans became contaminated, and while the problem was discovered before it could affect food supply, it still fed the fury of environmental and food-industry groups strongly opposed to pharming.

Friends of Earth accused the U.S. Department of Agriculture of “endangering the U.S. food supply.” The Grocery Manufacturers of America warned there was “no room for trial and error.” A consumer, environmental and farmer coalition ended up suing the government, calling its subsequent attempts to strengthen regulation too weak and ineffective.

The biotech industry didn’t think so. The new rules proved too heavy-handed – many clinical trials were discontinued and startups working in the area collapsed. “That ended most entrepreneurial interest in biopharming,” Henry Miller, a molecular biologist and fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, wrote in a recent column on Forbes.com. It created a chill north of the border, too. To this day, pharming still hasn’t been approved in Canada on a commercial scale, though more tightly controlled research trials have been permitted in recent years.

The risk to food-grade crops was and is real, and potentially serious. But Miller dismissed this fear as “overblown” and easy to avoid with certain measures. “Production in a non-food crop is an obvious one,” he wrote, pointing out that one developer of a Norwalk virus vaccine used tomatoes at first but then switched to tobacco plants to avoid tussling with regulators and environmentalists.

“The risk of plant-made drugs getting into food products is now virtually non-existent because the companies involved have switched to production in facilities with rigidly controlled environments, using mainly tobacco,” Miller added.

The move toward highly controlled facilities, such as greenhouses and labs, is crucial. The use of open-air fields doesn’t just risk contamination of nearby food or animal feed crops through the spread of pollen and seeds, it also threatens wildlife or livestock that might be grazing in the area. It could also harm or negatively alter organisms that live in the soil, not to mention pollinating and plant-eating insects – and it’s not like bees and butterflies don’t have enough problems with which to deal, such as insecticides sprayed on “normal crops.”

“Compounds from plants developed for plant molecular farming purposes may have physiological effects on humans and other organisms,” warns the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on its website. And while research so far shows no significant behaviourial and reproductive impacts on the pollinators and other organisms that have been studied, it’s still early days. The Canadian government will eventually allow commercial pharming – it seems all but inevitable – but currently it will only say it is “investigating policy options.”

A Net Gain?

Nuclear power. Genetically modified food production. Manipulation of algae to create biofuels. All carry risks. It comes down to what risks we are willing to accept in exchange for the known benefits, such as preventing an Ebola pandemic. It also comes down to the trust we have in the people in charge of limiting those risks.

Clearly, much can be done to minimize any health or environmental threats posed by plant-derived pharmaceutical production. Crops can be grown in specially constructed greenhouses that prevent entry by rodents and insects and stop pollen and seeds from escaping. Such structures can have air-lock entry systems for workers, who can be made to wear protective suits and required to shower down when departing.

There has even been talk of building these facilities in underground caverns and mines, and work has been done to grow sterile plants that can’t reproduce, even if seeds somehow enter wild fields or the food system.

As environmental journalist and Cornell University fellow Mark Lynas once wrote, “this application of modern technology to agriculture need not be remotely scary.”

Some precaution and good old common sense can go a long way. But like the GMO controversy generally, the debate seems destined to continue indefinitely. When it comes to pharming specifically, crisis is what will likely drive us – in one direction or the other.

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