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Solar-powered Tuk-Tuks and thermal clothing: The best green innovations of May 2022

Posted on June 6, 2022June 6, 2022 by dishanth

Every hour, the Earth is bathed in 430 quintillion Joules of energy from the sun. That is more than the amount of energy the whole of humanity consumes in a full year. These staggering figures show the true potential of solar energy for innovation. And the uses of sunshine go beyond solar farms and solar panels on domestic roofs.

Four of this month’s innovations use the sun as an energy source for applications as varied as urban mobility and water disinfection. A new tiny house achieves carbon neutrality through in-built solar panels, while an electric tuk-tuk can travel 10,000 kilometres per year on solar energy alone. Meanwhile, a cleantech startup has a bold vision to put super-efficient, digitally printed solar cells on every consumer device, and a social enterprise has developed a device that lets remote communities harness the UV rays in sunlight to disinfect drinking water.

Elsewhere, a materials science company has produced thermally efficient clothing that can help to reduce home heating and cooling emissions and costs, while a route-planning app and website makes it easy for travellers to find the greenest and most cost-effective way to reach their destination.

A new generation of self-powered carbon-neutral tiny homes

The average American home emits around 6,400 pounds (2,903 kilogrammes) of carbon dioxide per year according to NPR. By contrast, tiny homes typically produce around 2,000 pounds (907 kilogrammes) of annual CO2 emissions. Now, US startup Cosmic has produced a tiny home design that it claims is carbon neutral.

The company’s ultra-efficient homes start at just 350 square feet, but they come packed with high-tech features that allow them to function as both a primary residence and a getaway bolt-hole. The secret to the design’s success is its standardised frame, which includes built-in solar panels and batteries. Each tiny house also includes a built-in roof and floor, and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems.

The modular design means that the houses can be assembled quickly and easily, without the need for construction crews. And because they are optimised to be energy-efficient, they can be powered entirely by renewable energy sources. Lithium-ion batteries store energy from the solar panels, with the option to return any extra energy produced back to the grid.

Solar-powered Tuk-Tuks could be coming to a city near you

Increasingly, those interested in city planning and energy saving have been pointing out that it just doesn’t make sense to transport people or smaller amounts of goods around urban areas in traditional vehicles – even electric vehicles. Cars are large, heavy, and energy-intensive, and startup Infinite Mobility has developed an alternative – solar-powered tuk-tuks designed for last-mile deliveries, or to efficiently carry just one or two people.

The design for the streamlined solar tricycles incorporates solar cells into the vehicle’s body. And the diminutive size of the vehicles means they are cheaper to produce and buy than a four-wheeled vehicle. Moreover, the tricycles can travel up to 10,000 kilometres per year on solar energy alone – enough for the average urban user.

Infinite Mobility also points out that the tuk-tuks don’t need recharging from the grid, eliminating one annoyance of EV ownership. And there is another benefit – depending on where they’re based, many micro-mobility vehicle sales are now supported by subsidies from local, regional, or national governments.

Super-efficient solar cells are digitally printed to fit any device

Cleantech company Perovskia Solar combines inkjet printing with customised design to build solar cells that fit almost any product. Designed for seamless integration into existing devices, the Perovskia solar cells work exceptionally well even in low lighting conditions.

Perovskite is a calcium titanium oxide mineral that, when applied in a thin film as a semiconductor, converts solar energy to power very efficiently. Using green nanoparticle inks, the Perovskia solar cells are digitally printed in a variety of sizes and shapes to fit smart devices such as wearables, sensors, and IoT devices.

As well as being more cost-effective than current photovoltaics, the company’s production process is much healthier for the environment – producing far fewer emissions. Perovskia also provides bespoke designs to help businesses create solar cells that fit their projects technically and visually.

Disinfecting water with sunshine

Around the world, 1.8 billion people lack access to safe drinking water. To avoid water-borne disease, these people must treat the water available to them before they can drink it. But existing treatment solutions are associated with additional costs – both monetary and environmental. Boiling water, in particular, causes carbon emissions and air pollution.

But there is one way to treat water that involves no emissions and uses a free resource found everywhere: sunlight. Solar water disinfection (SODIS) is a process where the sun’s natural UV rays eliminate pathogens—such as bacteria, viruses, and protazoa—from contaminated water exposed to sunshine. The difficulty is knowing when contaminated water has been exposed for a sufficient length of time for the UV rays to have rendered it safe.

This is where Austrian social enterprise HELIOZ comes in. The organisation has developed the WADI – a device that visualises the process of SODIS in water containers such as plastic and glass bottles. The WADI device, which can measure UV light, is placed alongside bottles of contaminated water exposed to sunshine, so that it receives the same dosage of UV rays. It can then be used to measure when the bottles have received sufficient exposure to render them safe – defined as the removal of 99.99% of pathogens.

Thermally efficient T-shirts reduce the need for heating and air conditioning

Photo source Parker Burchfield on Unsplash

In the US, 38% of greenhouse gas emissions from residential housing are produced as a result of heating and cooling rooms. In response, materials science company LifeLabs has developed a new generation of thermally efficient textiles.

Wearers of the company’s CoolLife t-shirt experience a continual reduction in body temperature of three degrees Fahrenheit, while the WarmLife jacket is billed as one of the warmest in the world. The CoolLife and WarmLife ranges can help to reduce reliance on cooling and heating systems – both of which contribute significant amounts of emissions. For example, continuous cooling of three degrees of body heat can make a huge difference throughout the day and night, making it easier to target the use of HVAC systems for limited amounts of time.

LifeLabs’ in-house manufacturing technology saves water, heat, steam, chemicals, and plastic. The brand’s initial product line is 74% recycled by fabric weight, and manufacturing improvements have reduced water consumption by 70%.

Route planning for green and cost-effective travel

Photo source Stefano Lombardo on Unsplash

While most people know that flying uses much more carbon than other forms of mass transit, they are likely to be less aware of the emissions to cost ratio of other modes of transport. To make things more confusing, at least in Europe, it is often difficult to book train tickets in advance when travelling through more than two countries, or to compare emissions on different services and routes.

To cut through this confusion, startup Green Tickets has developed an app and website that allows users to rank transport options by travel time, price, and CO2 emissions. The company’s goal is both to make it as easy to book a bus or train ticket as it is to book an airline ticket, and to provide transparency about emissions in a way that helps people make more informed decisions.

To compile its data, Green Tickets uses a variety of sources, including Google Maps for driving routes, open-source projects for European trains, and the back office of Skyscanner for flight information. The data allows users to quickly find the optimal itinerary for each trip, based on time of the year, availability, budget, carbon emissions, and personal preferences.

Springwise is the leading global innovation intelligence platform for positive and sustainable change. For the last 20 years, it has been uncovering and curating the most innovative thinking and ideas on the planet. Today, with a library of more than 11,000 global innovations, Springwise is trusted by thought-leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, educators, and tech disruptors as the leading source of inspirational ideas that matter. Springwise.com

Source Edie

Cruise gets green light for commercial robotaxi service in San Francisco

Posted on June 6, 2022 by dishanth

KEY POINTS

Cruise, General Motors majority-owned autonomous vehicle unit, has scored final approvals to operate a commercial, robotaxi service in San Francisco, the company announced on Thursday.
The California Public Utilities Commission granted Cruise its permit after the California DMV allowed autonomous vehicle deployments by Cruise, and Alphabet’s Waymo.

Autonomous vehicle venture Cruise, which is majority-owned by General Motors, just scored the final permit it needed to offer its robotaxi service to paying riders in San Francisco, the company announced on Thursday.

Cruise boasted in a blog post that the authorization is “the first-ever Driverless Deployment Permit granted by the California Public Utilities Commission, ” and makes the company that first to operate a “a commercial, driverless ridehail service in a major US city.”

The company’s cars are fully electric and battery-powered, which is also a potential win for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases that cause climate change. The company told CPUC in an Apr. 2021 letter that it aims to make California roads safer and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Earlier, the California Department of Motor Vehicles approved autonomous vehicle deployment permits for both Cruise and Alphabet’s Waymo.

Cruise was already offering nighttime rides to the public in San Francisco in its driverless cars, although it had not yet required passengers to pay a fare.

Police previously pulled a Cruise driverless vehicle over in San Franciso, and a video of the incident went viral. The California DMV told CNBC that, despite that incident , as of late April the department had yet to issue a traffic ticket to any driverless vehicle operator.

Rodney Brooks, professor emeritus in robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, rode in Cruise driverless taxis recently and wrote favorably of the experience on his blog.

He said, in that post, “Cruise has put together an MVP, a ‘Minimal Viable Product,’ the lynchpin of successful tech.” He also specified that he does not believe mass adoption of driverless cars is near. He wrote, “We have a ways to go yet, and mass adoption might not be in the form of one-for-one replacement of human driving that has driven this dream for the last decade or more.”

Competitors of Cruise are also testing driverless vehicles in San Francisco.

Alphabet’s Waymo has offered free driverless rides to employees or members of a testing program in San Francisco. It has also completed “tens of thousands” of rides without a driver behind the wheel in Arizona.

Another driverless startup, focused on transporting goods instead of passengers, Nuro, has a deployment permit to operate driverless cars in San Francisco, too.

While Tesla CEO Elon Musk often touts the company’s ambitions to deliver cars that are “robotaxi-ready,” Tesla vehicles at a maximum feature its Full Self Driving Beta program, an experimental driver assistance system, which requires drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and remain attentive to the road at all times.

Source CNBC

Sustainability recruitment firm Acre launches in Asia

Posted on June 6, 2022 by dishanth

One of Asia’s first specialist sustainability recruitment firms has opened for business in Singapore as demand for jobs in the environmental, social and governance (ESG) space grows in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Acre, which was founded in London by British zoology graduate Andy Cartland in 2003, will use Singapore as its Asia Pacific base as it looks to service clients around the region.

Cartland said the time was right to launch in Asia, as the region is experiencing rapid growth in demand for sustainability talent and skills.

Acre posts candidates working in sustainability, impact investing, health and safety, and energy and clean technology, and will be compete with other firms that offer ESG recruitment services, such as NextWave, Formative Search, and Odgers Berndtson.

“Asia is arguably behind Europe and the United States when it comes to sustainability. But the region is moving at light speed to catch up. We want to be part of this transition,” Cartland told Eco-Business.

He noted that the business took a 20 percent revenue hit in 2020 as a result of the pandemic, but 2021 saw the business rebound and revenue and headcount grow by 100 percent, which has enabled the company to expand to Asia.

“We are on track for similar growth this year as well,” he said.

Singapore will be Acre’s third overseas launch, with it having established a European operation in Amsterdam and a North American hub in New York in recent years.

Acre’s Singapore launch will enable the company to service existing multinational clients with operations in the region, and also local companies in the global supply chain.

The company’s past work in Asia includes recruiting a leadership team for the Bangladesh Accord, a coalition of global brands, retailers and trade unions set up in 2013 to improve health and safety in Bangladesh’s garment industry.

Among the candidates Acre has placed recently include the global environment, health and safety director at Amazon, and the executive director of the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI), a Swiss non-profit working to tackle child labour in the cocoa sector.

Cartland, who will move from London to Singapore in August to oversee the launch, has appointed an executive director for the Singapore office, who has yet to resign from his current job and will relocate from Hong Kong.

Acre’s Asia launch comes a month after a report by business social network LinkedIn showed 30 percent growth in hiring for green jobs between 2016 and 2021, with a spike in sustainability recruitment between 2020 and 2021.

The report also highlighted a shortage of talent for ESG roles in the region.

Cartland said that while there is a large talent pool of sustainability professionals in London, candidates in Asia, where the sustainability sector is less developed, are harder to find.

“Asia faces a different candidate sourcing challenge, and we will need to help clients navigate the [ESG] skills gap,” he said. “Our role is to find people where they’re tough to find.”

This will may involve thinking creatively about transitioning people out of non-sustainability roles, he said.

Acre is aiming to double its Asia operation by its second year, following the growth trajectories of its European and American businesses, Cartland said.

Source Eco Business

The key to eco architecture is green space and floods of sunlight

Posted on June 3, 2022June 3, 2022 by dishanth

Architects in Australia have built an ‘eco-house’ with estimated bills of just €300 a year. BENT Architecture specialises in sustainable buildings, embracing passive solar design techniques to minimise both energy bills and the environmental impact of the spaces.

The Olinda House is a bespoke eco-friendly design for the owners, in Victoria, Australia, who wanted a space which would sit harmoniously within the landscape and work with nature, rather than against it.

“Like all our projects, the Olinda House embraces the sun and uses passive solar design techniques to ensure the home is comfortable and efficient, year-round,” explains BENT Architecture director Paul Porjazoski.

“We can no longer afford to see the built environment as being separate to the natural world.”
Paul Porjazoski , Director, BENT Architecture

“The home is long and narrow, stretching from east to west to maximise the opportunity to capture northern light – which is perfect for the southern hemisphere! And windows on opposite sides of the home capture cooling breezes. This keeps the interior naturally warmer in winter and cooler in summer.”

By intelligently incorporating sunlight into the designs, the house is both economical and stunningly lit TATJANA PLITT

The design uses solar panels on the roof to meet any energy needs, meaning the property is not just aesthetically pleasing, but low-energy too with an estimated annual power bill of just €300.

“Olinda House celebrates and enhances the spectacular natural landscape of its site,” Porjazoski says, which is something at the heart of BENT Architecture’s ethos. Things like sunlight and wind are seen as fundamental parts of the design, as Porjazoski and his team seek to strike a balance between structures and nature, “we can no longer afford to see the built environment as being separate to the natural world.”

We must “embrace in a celebration of the site, where the position of the sun and prevailing breezes are treated as building materials equivalent to the bricks and mortar of the building,” he says.

Is sustainability affordable?

The team at BENT Architecture has seen that the overwhelming majority of their residential clients are keen to implement sustainable design principles, as they look to minimise their environmental footprint. But what about the people who can’t afford a bespoke housing design?

“Buildings should work for us, not against us, to create a meaningful link between us and the outside world.” TATJANA PLITT

Porjazoski argues that the fundamentals of sustainability shouldn’t require additional expense. By incorporating sunlight and prevailing wind into a project, an architect can minimise energy consumption without having to spend anything extra. “These gifts from nature are free, and we should use them,” he explains, our buildings should “work for us, not against us, to create a meaningful link between us and the outside world.”

The fundamentals of sustainability shouldn’t require additional expense.

Unfortunately, these aren’t necessarily principles which are being considered by every developer or architect, especially when it comes to mass-production of houses in Europe to meet rising demands.

However, one major developer in the UK for first-time buyers, Countryside Properties, does incorporate some green initiatives into their designs. While they aren’t harnessing nature in the same way as BENT Architecture, because the majority of their properties are large-scale developments, it is still something they are considering.

Countryside Properties was the first construction company to open its own timber frame facility, which helps make a house far cheaper to heat, thus minimising the carbon footprint. Associate Director Andrew Fox says that the frame facility is an asset in many regards, “but the biggest benefit is how much it reduces our environmental impact.”

The houses have other efficiency measures in place too, such as water-saving fixtures and low energy lighting, which are estimated to save buyers up to £1,723 (€1,970) a year on energy costs, when compared to a second-hand property from the 1930s.

While the work being done with Countryside’s properties is certainly a step in the right direction, we still seem to be a long way off eco-homes like the Olinda House being the go-to for first-time buyers.

Green non-residential spaces are on the rise

Although mass-produced residential spaces are yet to incorporate the techniques of BENT Architecture, it is becoming de rigueur in community spaces. This means the benefits of sustainable building design are being increasingly opened up to the wider public, not just those who can afford to commission a bespoke design.

Lister House Health Centre in Harlow, UK, uses an environmentally-friendly design to create a welcoming space CAMM Architects

The Lister House Health Centre in Harlow, UK, is an award-winning design by Paul Young at CAMM Architects. Because the purpose of the space is to be one of healing and wellness, Young harnessed the natural environment to create a more positive experience for patients.

Architects should always be aware of the need to use the environment: it’s in our DNA.”
Paul Young Architect, CAMM Architects

“We brought light and air into the centre of the building,” says Young, “as we aimed to make it a cheerful and uplifting experience. Using light colours and rooflights to connect the internal rooms with the sky: we wanted to make people feel well just by entering the building, which is something possible by using sunlight in a space.”

For Young, sustainability should be at the heart of every architect’s practice, no matter if it’s a mass housing development, or for a commissioned, luxury property. “I believe architects should always be aware of the need to use the environment: it’s in our DNA,” he says.

Source Euro News

Fry the friendly skies: Airports hope it’s sustainable to convert used cooking oil into jet fuel

Posted on June 3, 2022 by dishanth

Dallas Fort Worth International Airport is among the first major hubs to convert yesterday’s french fries to tomorrow’s jet fuel, in a supersize effort to boost sustainable energy efforts.

Used cooking oil, such as the greasy goodness coming from fryers at the DFW McDonald’s restaurants, is being repurposed and converted to fuel in a surprisingly efficient manner, airport officials said.

“If you are Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and you have a fryer in your restaurant — you’re recycling oil,” DFW McDonald’s franchisee Chalmer McWilliams said.

“When it’s no longer at the quality to make those great fries and we can repurpose it, why wouldn’t you do that?”

Pratik Chandhoke, the technical services manager for sustainable aviation fuel at Houston-based Neste US Inc., said the chemical compositions of cooking oil and jet fuel aren’t too far off.

The company strains out leftover fries and McNuggets, heats the oil and adds hydrogen — among other steps — to convert it to jet fuel.

“If you look at any oil, they all have these building molecules, hydrocarbons. We can take those atoms, and we then do some processing magic in our refineries, and we actually mimic the chemistry of a jet fuel,” said Chandhoke, who insisted that fryer-based fuel is exactly the same as all other petroleum fuels going into jets across America today.

“There’s no difference. It’s the same jet fuel that you are using right now.”

San Francisco International Airport said it’s committed to phasing out fossil jet fuel by 2050.

At DFW, about 32,000 pounds of cooking oil is recycled every month to be converted to sustainable aviation fuel, known in the industry as SAF.

The cooking-to-jet-fuel conversion rate is efficient, according to Neste, with 1 gallon of recycled cooking oil amounting to about three-quarters of a gallon of SAF.

The big drawback for now is the high cost of producing the recycled fuel, as the price of SAF is two to six times higher than traditional jet fuel.

But DFW officials said that as more airports covert cooking oil to jet fuel, the prices will bottom out.

“We already believe we have the infrastructure setup. We have fuel distribution systems,” DFW’s vice president of environmental affairs, Robert Horton, told NBC Dallas. “If we can get continuous supply at the right economic rates, we have a drop-in solution that can be applied right here.”

Source NBC News

A new underwater greenhouse could reveal the future of agriculture

Posted on June 3, 2022 by dishanth

One hundred and thirty feet offshore from the village of Noli in Italy’s Liguria region, six large clear domes, or biospheres, like a bloom of enormous jellyfish moored to the ocean floor are growing herbs, vegetables, and flowers.

The project is known as Nemo’s Garden, and it’s the world’s first—and only—underwater greenhouse. These biospheres utilize the ocean’s favorable environmental qualities like temperature stability, CO2 absorption, and natural pest control to create a habitat appropriate for producing a plethora of fresh produce, according to Euronews Green.

Nemo’s Garden has significant implications for the future of Earth, as it was specifically designed for regions where environmental, economic, or morphologic factors make plant development particularly challenging. The world will need to feed a global population of 9.3 billion amid increasingly unstable climate conditions by 2050, per United Nations, and the team behind the project believes that underwater farms could provide a supply of food for coastal populations where agriculture must be innovative to survive.

Inside the Nemo’s Garden

Nemo’s Garden came to be after Sergio Gamberini, president of diving equipment manufacturer Ocean Reef, was challenged by a farmer friend in 2012 to combine his experience building diving equipment with his love for gardening.

Since then, Nemo’s Garden has been investigating the idea of cultivating terrestrial plants under the sea. More than a hundred different plants have taken root in this subterranean garden, ranging from medicinal and aromatic herbs to food like salad greens, beans, and strawberries. They have not only successfully harvested a range of crops from the biospheres, but they have also determined that the plants produced in this environment were reportedly richer in nutritional content than those grown using traditional methods. It, of course, doesn’t stop there.

“Every year, we are discovering new possible applications for the biospheres,” says Gianni Fontanesi, project coordinator at Nemo’s Garden. Ecotourism, fish farming, seaweed farming, scientific research labs, and underwater wildlife research stations are some examples.

But can it be scaled?

When it comes to the engineering of it, approximately 20,000 liters of air are held over a body of surface water inside each dome. The sun’s light flows through the water outside the biospheres to reach and heat the air within. When there is less natural light in the winter, LEDs attached to the surface by a power wire give an extra source of light. The water outside maintains the temperature within the dome steady day and night, and evaporation and condensation inside the dome keep the plants supplied with fresh water.

Nemo’s Garden is supported by Siemens Digital Industries Software, which enables the team to monitor the biospheres remotely and hopefully accelerates the innovation cycles toward more rapid industrialization and scale.

The concept has already proven to be effective and successful, which means the team may now begin exporting the technology to other places. In fact, biospheres have already been built in Belgium and the Florida Keys, with more on the way.

“Theoretically, the project considerably increases the percentage of the world’s surface that could be used for growing crops, especially in countries where environmental conditions make growing plants difficult,” Gamberini explained to Modern Farmer. The team’s ultimate goal is to bring down the cost of their goods as much as feasible. “The price for our basil plants will never be comparable to what you pay in a supermarket. That being said, they come with a much reduced environmental footprint.”

Source Interesting Engineering

Qatar’s farming innovations: from vertical solutions to honey production

Posted on June 2, 2022 by dishanth

For seven decades, AGRICO has been supplying produce to more than one thousand outlets. As chairperson, Ahmed Al Khalaf says, the farming company has addressed climate challenges by learning from experts worldwide whilst demonstrating local solutions to teach emerging farmers.

We have a difficult environment to grow fruit and vegetables therefore to produce all year round, we concentrate on developing smart farming. – Ahmed Al Khalaf – Chairman, AGRICO

Al Khalaf encourages businesses in the region to shift their focus to food security and sustainability which he says is the key to self-sufficiency. AGRICO’s seasonal greenhouses are used for different crops all year round using cutting-edge agricultural technology. One of their most innovative approaches is aquaponics, a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics where bacteria help change excretions from fish tanks to fertilise the plants that then absorb extra nitrogen, putting purified water back into the tanks. For the very first time AGRICO has also taken aquaponics and vertical farming with LED lighting, to a grocery store in Qatar. The farm’s general manager, Dr Fahad Saleh Ibrahim, explains: “Carrefour is a good point to educate the public about this way of farming. The plants are extremely healthy, we use less water and get more produce, harvesting only what we need.” The technology is capable of growing various plants including herbs but also fruit like melons and tomatoes.

AGRICO’s General Manager Dr Fahad Ibrahim demonstrates the company’s vertical farming tech on show in supermarket chain Carrefour.© Euronews

From farm to table

Organic produce is gaining popularity in Qatar, and Torba Store is a haven for the health-conscious. It is also part of Torba Farms’ overall ethos of farm-to-table produce that includes two farmers’ markets. Founder, Fatma Al Khater, brought the concept to life, for the benefits of sustainable living, “We’re big fans of permaculture and the microbiome, so we’ve got fermented food ranging from kombucha to sauerkraut, and they really do help in fulfilling that holistic lifestyle that we try and educate people about.” Torba also seized the opportunity to connect people with food, which is what their Farmers’ Market aims to do, along with uplifting small businesses.

The buzz around honey farming

Since Qatar is well on its way to meeting its ambitious food self-sufficiency targets for 2023, honey production has been increasing over the past few years with local bees and their honey, beeswax and propolis, more popular than ever. There are thousands of bees at Umm Qarn Farm where beekeeper Arafat Hussain works, “I may be one of the first people to produce pollen in Qatar, royal jelly, propolis, and propolis products. Bees teach you sacrifice and sincerity in work.”

Honey tasting: Umm Qam Farm’s head beekeeper Arafat Hussain with Euronews’ Miranda Atty.© Euronews

Al Waha Farm’s, Samir Abadi, says they aspire to produce two tons of honey annually to meet the huge demand for the golden nectar. Part of this passion involves teaching future generations how to farm bees which are vulnerable to pesticides and natural predators, as well as climate extremes. In their role as pollinators, bees are responsible for one-third of the world’s food production. Globally, the insects are on the decline, but Qatar is making a real effort to focus on beekeeping, pollination, and honey.

Source Euro News

How big finance can scale up sustainability

Posted on June 1, 2022 by dishanth

Addressing the ever-worsening climate crisis will require the largest sustained movement of capital in history. At least $100 trillion must be invested over the next 20-30 years to shift to a low-carbon economy, and $3-4 trillion of additional annual investment is needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and stabilise the world’s oceans.

Mobilising these huge sums and investing them efficiently is well within the capacity of the global economy and existing financial markets, but it will require fundamental changes to how these markets work. In particular, traditional financial institutions will need help in sourcing the right projects, simplifying the design and negotiation of transactions, and raising the capital to fund them.

Many sustainability ideas are small-scale, which partly reflects the nature of innovation, whereby ideas are developed, tested, and, if successful, eventually copied. But the disconnect between those developing sustainability projects and the world of traditional finance means that scaling such initiatives is not straightforward.

At the risk of oversimplifying, sustainability advocates may be suspicious of “Big Finance” and its history of funding unsustainable industries. Investors, on the other hand, may be wary of idealistic approaches that ignore bottom-line realities, and might not be interested in small-scale transactions.

Given this disconnect, how do we scale up sustainable projects from small investments to the $100 million-plus range that begins to attract Big Finance and thus the trillions of dollars needed to make a global difference?

The disconnect between those developing sustainability projects and the world of traditional finance means that scaling such initiatives is not straightforward.

Three steps, in particular, are necessary. First, securitisation techniques should be employed to aggregate many smaller projects into one that has enough critical mass to be relevant. Securitisation got a bad name in 2007-08 for its role in fueling the subprime mortgage crisis that brought the developed world to the brink of financial ruin.

But when properly managed, joint financing of many projects reduces risk, because the likelihood that all will have similar financial and operational issues simultaneously is low. For the resulting whole to interest investors, however, the numerous smaller projects need to have common characteristics so that they can be aggregated. This cannot be done after the fact.

For example, we need to develop common terms and conditions for pools of similar assets, as is already happening in the US residential solar market. Then, we need to explain the fundamentals of securitisation to more potential grassroots innovators through regional conferences that bring together financiers and sustainable-project developers.

Second, we must reduce the complexity of key transaction terms and make it easier to design and negotiate the specifics of instruments used to invest in sustainable projects. In established financial markets, replicating significant parts of previous successful deals is much easier than starting from scratch for each transaction. This approach works because many of the terms and conditions for subsequent deals have already been accepted by key financial players.

Making successful innovations more visible to investors is therefore crucial. To that end, we should establish a high-profile, open-source clearinghouse of previous sustainable projects, including those that have been successfully funded and those that failed. This would be similar to many existing financial-sector databases but freely available, with reputable third-party oversight to ensure accuracy.

Third, the range of funding sources for sustainable projects needs to be expanded and made more transparent. Because sustainability investments may offer lower returns according to historic financial-market metrics, traditional asset-allocation practices, against the backdrop of “efficient markets,” would imply reduced attractiveness.

But historic benchmarks do not sufficiently factor in the exploding field of impact investing, which embraces different return and time thresholds and now accounts for about $2.5 trillion of assets. Securitising tranches of different kinds of impact investing could prove to be a game changer for sustainability financing.

It would thus make sense to create an open-source database of investor appetite – similar to the project database mentioned above – that is searchable by innovators and designers of new sustainable projects. This would make it easier to identify investors – equity, credit, or some hybrid – who might commit funding. The database could be housed in an organization such as the International Finance Corporation, the United Nations, or the Global Impact Investing Network.

There are encouraging precedents. The green bond market started just over a decade ago, and total issuance already could reach $1 trillion this year. And a critical mass of the financial world attended the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow last November. Under the leadership of UN Special Envoy Mark Carney, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) has made $130 trillion in climate-finance commitments.

In 1983, Muhammad Yunus founded Grameen Bank in order to provide banking services, and especially loans, to individuals (primarily women) previously considered to be “un-bankable.” By the time Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, “micro-lending” had become a global phenomenon, with traditional financial institutions involved in securitizing these loans.

The financial revolution that Yunus started transformed retail lending, streamlined how such transactions are structured, and tapped a new source of scaled investment capital. To help address today’s existential sustainability challenges, capital markets and their major players need to be more innovative still and open the door to non-traditional, even disruptive, voices and ideas.

J. David Stewart, a former managing director at JPMorgan, is a sustainable-finance consultant. Henry P. Huntington is an Arctic researcher and conservationist.
© Project Syndicate 1995–2022

Source Eco-Business

51 floors up in Singapore, the world’s highest urban farm produces surprises for its restaurants

Posted on June 1, 2022 by dishanth

Fresh-out-of-the-ground produce is every chef’s dream, and here in urban Singapore, that’s usually a bit of a challenge.

But now, in the middle of the Central Business District, there’s an urban farm in the sky working with two connected restaurant concepts to bring herbs and vegetables directly through the kitchen and onto the plate.

1-Arden is a multi-concept development by 1-Group comprising Kaarla Restaurant and Bar, serving coastal Australian cuisine and helmed by chef John-Paul Fiechtner; Oumi, a modern Japanese kappo restaurant headed by chef Lamley Chua; and a 10,000 sq ft Food Forest where a multitude of edible plants are cultivated, all on CapitaSpring’s 51st floor.

In the same building, other 1-Arden concepts include Spanish-Italian-French-Portuguese bistro Sol & Luna and the cafe Bee’s Knees Urban.

The Food Forest is overseen by 1-Arden’s head farmer, Christopher Leow of Edible Garden City. Leow works closely with Fiechtner, who is also 1-Arden’s executive chef, to grow crops that the restaurants and bar can use across the Food Forest’s five themed gardens: The Singapore Food Heritage Garden, the Wellness Garden, the Mediterranean Potager Garden, the Japanese Potager Garden and the Australian Native Garden.

Whatever’s in season or ready to be harvested on any particular day will go to the chefs for their creations. And, in return, food waste from the restaurants, such as fish trimmings and vegetable scraps, get turned into different targeted fertilisers to keep the garden lush, healthy and biodiverse.

While the fresh herbs and vegetables are used in most of the dishes, the Kaarla Closed Loop Salad showcases the best of the garden, featuring the day’s harvest of more than 20 edible leaves and flowers. You might find, for instance, red shiso, warrigal greens, hyacinth bean leaves, wild watercress or French marigold on your plate.

Kaarla Closed-Loop Salad (Photo: May Seah)

“Having a garden at our fingertips is inspiring every day,” said Fiechtner, who has worked all over the world and was previously V-Dining’s executive chef. “To go out at any time of day and pick something fresh from the garden – it’s really exciting for the guys in the kitchen to see something grow from scratch, and then to the final product that we get to serve.”

One of the things he wanted to grow was the tiger nut, a superfood from Africa dating back thousands of years, he shared. “It’s amazing for the soil, the reward in terms of yield is amazing, and the flavour suits the menu very well.”

Arden-grown Tiger Nut Ice Cream (Photo: Kaarla)

At Kaarla, he uses tiger nuts in various ways, from a curd for the salad to an ice cream to top a dessert of tiger nut nougatine, white Chitose corn, calamansi jelly and poached oranges.

As for the produce he imports from Australia, such as beef and seafood, sustainability is at the forefront as well. “We know all the producers’ names, how they harvest and how they grow,” Fiechtner said.

“If not for the 1-Arden Food Forest being just steps away from Oumi, we wouldn’t have been exposed to the micro-seasons and micro-climates, and discovered the use of plants in the different stages of their life cycle,” said Lamley Chua, head of Japanese Culinary Development.

“For example, when available, we use bua long long buds in our Gyutan Yaki dish; otherwise, to lend the same citrusy flavour, we add thinly sliced bua long long leaves. Without the Food Forest, only the fruits are usually used. The Food Forest continues to inspire us every day as it’s up to our imagination what we can grow and what would thrive in the farm.”

“Potentially, what we can achieve here has no limits,” Fiechtner said.

1-Arden is at 88 Market Street, CapitaSpring #51-01. For more information, visit https://www.1-arden.sg.

Source CNA Lifestyle