Tuesday, November 12th - 2024

Author: Sam Rubinstein

Your weekly guide to Sustainable Investment

 


TBLI Radical Truth Podcast

How the invention of the espresso machine led to an Impact Investing Family Office

Luca Rancilio's grandfather invented the espresso machine. Cube is the family office founded by the Rancilio family in 2013, after the sale of the espresso machine company founded in 1927 by his grandfather Roberto.

He will share his journey towards Impact Investing, after the sale of that company.

Listen to the podcast
 
 

 

Meet the Changemakers: Join the TBLI Mixer


 

Date: November 16h - 16:00 CET
 
Join Us for an Extraordinary Networking Experience: TBLI Virtual Mixer.
 
Free to attend - no charge.
 
Imagine a networking event where you don’t have to sell anything – just be yourself.

Through our TBLI virtual mixers, we’ve reimagined how professionals can connect. This is where people who care deeply about sustainability, impact, and creating real change come together. Meet non-extractive, authentic eccentrics – people from diverse industries who think beyond the ordinary and act for a better world.

The conversation flows, the connections are meaningful, and every participant brings something unique to the table.
 
 Register Here and add to calendar.

Why Share This Event? Whether you’re looking to build partnerships, share your ideas with new minds, or simply want to meet people who get it – this is where you want to be. TBLI Mixers don’t just create connections, they spark movements. So share this with your network, and help create a world where real connections lead to real impact. Let’s redefine networking – together!
 


Energy 2024 


 

US climate envoy says fight against climate crisis does not end under Trump

a man in a suit speaks into a microphone at a podium
 in Baku and  in New York

Even if president-elect rolls back climate progress, John Podesta reaffirms commitment to a clean planet at Cop29

The US climate envoy John Podesta said the fight “for a cleaner, safer” planet will not stop under a re-elected Donald Trump even if some progress is reversed, speaking at the Cop29 UN climate talks on Monday as they opened in Baku, Azerbaijan.

“Although under Donald Trump’s leadership the US federal government placed climate-related actions on the back burner, efforts to prevent climate change remain a commitment in the US and will confidently continue,” said Podesta, who is leading the Biden administration’s delegation at the annual talks.

Trump has pledged to deregulate the energy sector, allow the oil and gas industry to “drill, baby, drill”, and pull the US from the Paris climate agreement, which committed countries to taking steps to avoid the worst impacts of the crisis. Yet while Trump will try to reverse progress, “this is not the end of our fight for a cleaner, safer planet”, Podesta said.

Last week’s re-election of Trump to the White House, which will see him inaugurated for a second term in January, has cast a shadow on the UN talks after the Republican defeated Kamala Harris. Harris had been expected to continue the climate policies of Joe Biden, who passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest down payment on the green transition seen in US history.

Experts say Trump’s second term could be even more destructive, as he will be aided by an amenably conservative judiciary and armed with detailed policy blueprints such as the Project 2025 document published by the rightwing Heritage Foundation.

Trump’s incoming administration is already reportedly drawing up executive orders to erase climate policies and open up protected land for ramped-up oil and gas production. “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world,” the president-elect said on Wednesday.

Staff at the US Environmental Protection Agency, which was targeted the last time Trump was president, are already bracing for a mass exodus. Swaths of work done by the EPA under Biden, such as pollution rules for cars and power plants, as well as efforts to protect vulnerable communities living near industrial activity, are set to be reversed.

A June analysis warned that Trump’s forthcoming rollbacks could add 4bn additional metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere by 2030 when compared with a continuation of Biden’s policies. That “would be a death sentence to our planet”, said Jamie Minden, the 21-year-old acting executive director of Zero Hour, the US-based youth-led climate non-profit, at a press conference about the election result in Baku on Monday.

Trump’s looming presidency could also place a damper on other countries’ climate action plans, said Todd Stern, who was the US special envoy for climate change and the United States’ chief negotiator at the 2015 Paris climate agreement – especially China, which is currently the top global contributor to planet-warming emissions.

“The two biggest players in the ring are the US and China, and China is extremely aware of that. It has just got a guarantee that the US president won’t be bringing up climate change with them for the next four years and that means something,” he said. “It will make things easier on China and that can’t help but have some impact.”

Yet “the fight is bigger than one election, one political cycle in one country,” said Podesta. The UN climate conference in Baku represented a “critical opportunity to cement our progress”, he said.

At Cop29, activists are pushing the Biden administration to file a bold climate plan under the Paris climate agreement – known as a nationally determined contribution – and to make big pledges to support global climate finance efforts.

And the president “still has critical opportunities to cement his climate legacy” on the domestic level as well, said Allie Rosenbluth, co-manager of the climate NGO Oil Change International, including by rejecting pending permits for fossil fuel projects.

Read full article 

Will Hydrogen Hubs Be a Clean Energy Boom or Boondoggle?

By Rebecca McCarthy 

As part of a $7 billion investment in hydrogen, the U.S. Department of Energy is committed to building a network of hydrogen facilities and pipelines centered in southeast Pennsylvania. Critics are questioning the project’s expense and its net savings in carbon emissions.

In the fall of 2023, the Biden administration announced $7 billion in funding for seven hydrogen hubs, slated to be built across the country over the next eight to 12 years. If all goes as planned, one of those hubs, the Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub (MACH2) — a network of more than a dozen interconnected hydrogen production centers, storage facilities, pipelines, and new solar farms that will power these operations — will stretch from southeastern Pennsylvania and neighboring southern New Jersey into Delaware. Expected to receive $750 million in federal funding, MACH2 is projected to create roughly 20,800 jobs in the Delaware Valley region, of which 6,400 will be permanent.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) says that a sufficiently robust buildout of hydrogen production could power steelmaking, cement production, and other energy-intensive heavy industries, which account for more than a fifth of national carbon emissions and have been notoriously hard to decarbonize, as well as fueling ships, airplanes, and trucks. But some environmentalists and energy experts question whether investing so much money in hydrogen could siphon funding from more effective decarbonization strategies. Even a so-called “green” hub, which runs entirely on renewable energy, they say, might not provide the promised carbon-reduction benefits and could potentially even increase emissions.

And residents of potential host communities — particularly the hard-pressed city of Chester, Pennsylvania, where some of the MACH2 facilities are planned — are concerned that they will bear the brunt of the potential risks and health hazards that hydrogen production and transport could bring.

Scientists discovered how to extract usable hydrogen from water molecules using electrolysis in the 1800s, and as far back as 1874, novelist Jules Verne predicted it would someday be “the coal of the future.” Hydrogen is, after all, the most abundant element on the planet, and it produces no carbon emissions when burned. The United States already produces 10 million metric tons of hydrogen a year — but most of it is derived from natural gas and is largely used in petroleum refining and in making ammonia for manufacturing fertilizer. Every ton of ammonia produced generates 2.6 tons of lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report published in Green Chemistry.

Still, scaling up low- or zero-carbon hydrogen production wasn’t considered financially viable until passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which offer substantial tax credits to producers of clean hydrogen.

Today, some proposed hubs are planning on producing “blue” hydrogen — that is, hydrogen created using natural gas but with the resulting carbon emissions captured and stored underground. Representatives of the MACH2 hub say that 82 percent of their production will be “green,” meaning powered by solar and wind; 15 percent will be “pink” — powered by the Salem and Hope Creek nuclear plants, in southern New Jersey; and the remaining 3 percent will be “orange” — powered by biogas, which is produced when organic matter decomposes in an anaerobic environment.

Read full article 

Invesco to pay SEC fine of $17.5 million over exaggerated ESG claims

By Steve Kerch - Equities.com

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday charged Invesco Advisers, Inc. with making misleading statements about the percentage of company-wide assets under management that integrated environmental, social and governance factors in investment decisions.

The Atlanta-based registered investment adviser agreed to pay a $17.5 million civil penalty to settle the SEC’s charges.

According to the SEC’s order, from 2020 to 2022, Invesco told clients and stated in marketing materials that between 70 and 94 percent of its parent company’s assets under management were “ESG integrated.” However, in reality, these percentages included a substantial amount of assets that were held in passive ETFs that did not consider ESG factors in investment decisions.

The SEC’s order also found that Invesco lacked any written policy defining ESG integration.

“As stated in the order, Invesco saw commercial value in claiming that a high percentage of company-wide assets were ESG integrated. But saying it doesn’t make it so,” said Sanjay Wadhwa, acting director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, in a press release announcing the charges.

“Companies should be straightforward with their clients and investors rather than seeking to capitalize on investing trends and buzzwords.”

The order charges Invesco with willfully violating the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. Without admitting or denying the order’s findings, Invesco agreed to cease and desist from violations of the charged provisions, be censured and pay the $17.5 million civil penalty.

An Invesco spokesperson told WealthManagement.com that the firm was pleased to resolve the matter.

“The SEC order makes no allegations or findings related to disclosures about specific funds or investment strategies. Invesco has not issued public reports of firmwide ESG integration levels since late 2022,” the spokesperson said. “Invesco Advisers, Inc. cooperated fully with the investigation and will continue to take a client-led approach of offering investment strategies tailored to the specific investment objectives of its clients.”

The SEC’s investigation was conducted by Jonathan T. Menitove of the Asset Management Unit and Richard Rodriguez of the Atlanta Regional Office with assistance from Robert K. Gordon. It was supervised by Ruth Hawley of the San Francisco Regional Office, Stephen E. Donahue of the Atlanta Regional Office, and Andrew Dean and Corey Schuster of the Asset Management Unit.

Full article 

Global Climate Pledges: A Progress Report

Workers repair a damaged wind turbine bladeWorkers repair a damaged wind turbine blade

Wri.org

In the last few years, coalitions of countries, businesses, governments and other actors have announced increasingly ambitious commitments to address the climate crisis. These have included plans to dramatically ramp up renewables, phase down fossil fuels, green the financial sector, halt deforestation, reform food systems and agriculture, and more. A number of new pledges are expected to be unveiled at the current climate summit in Baku, such as those under the COP29 Presidency’s Action Agenda. 

But are parties actually following through on their promises? Here, we track progress towards some of the world’s biggest collective climate commitments:

Energy

What was promised?

As part of the 2023 Global Stocktake, which took place at COP28 in Dubai, countries collectively agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, accelerate the phase-down of unabated coal power, and, by 2030, triple the world’s renewable energy capacity and double global annual rates of energy efficiency improvement.

Also during COP28, Clean Energy Ministerial countries announced the launch of the Supercharging Battery Storage Initiative to enhance international cooperation, drive development and deployment of stationery battery storage, and reduce battery technology costs.

These promises built on previous commitments, such as 46 countries pledging to phase out unabated domestic coal and the Powering Past Coal Declaration, launched in 2017 to phase out existing unabated coal and place a moratorium on new coal without carbon capture and storage.

Where we stand

A recent IRENA report found that while renewable energy is the fastest-growing source of power capacity — gaining a record 473 gigawatts (GW) in 2023 — the world is at risk of missing its goal to triple renewables over the next seven years. Renewables capacity increased 14% in 2023; while unprecedented, this is lower than the 16.4% growth rate necessary for renewable energy to triple by 2030.

The IEA’s 2024 Energy Efficiency Report affirmed for both 2023 and 2024 that efficiency rates remained at a mere 1% improvement per year. When the doubling energy efficiency goal was set, rates were estimated at 2%, so hitting the doubling goal requires an annual improvement of 4% globally. 

Similarly, an October 2024 report from IRENA and the COP28 Presidency found that “across almost all metrics — excepting solar PV capacity growth — the world has fallen further behind” on goals to triple renewables and double energy efficiency. For instance, improvement in energy intensity in 2022 was around 2% — about half the rate needed by 2030 to meet the goal set at COP28.

Meanwhile, investments in energy storage are increasing rapidly, growing more than nine-fold between 2020 and 2024. The IEA finds these investments need to grow 25% each year, among other efforts to enhance storage capacity.

The latest UNEP Emissions Gap report also reveals that the shift towards renewable energy and electrification isn’t happening fast enough. Per the report, “none of the major fossil fuel-producing countries or companies have committed to … fully transition away from fossil fuel extraction or production.” According to IISD, the global oil and gas exploration licenses awarded by governments between late 2023 and late 2024 could lead to an estimated 2 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions over the lifetime of the projects.

One bright spot came in October 2024 when the United Kingdom officially closed its last coal-fired power plant, marking the end of 142 years of coal-generated electricity in the country. However, in data through 2022, coal remains responsible for more than a third of electricity generation globally; progress needs to increase seven-fold to reach near zero by 2030 and align the power system with Paris Agreement goals.

Read full article 

‘Mass deportations would disrupt the food chain’: Californians warn of ripple effect of Trump threat

A long line of people wearing long sleeves and face coverings stand in a rows of low green plants, with hills in the distance under a blue sky.
By: Cecilia Nowell - The Guardian

Take a drive through the Salinas or Central valleys in California and you’ll pass from town to town advertising its specialty fruit or vegetable: strawberries in Watsonville, garlic in Gilroy, pistachios in Avenal and almonds in Ripon. More than 400 types of commodities are grown in the Golden state – including a third of the vegetables and three-quarters of the fruits and nuts produced in the United States.

Much of that food is grown by immigrant farm workers – many of whom are undocumented. According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), about half of the country’s 2.4 million agricultural farm workers do not have legal status in the US. But farm worker advocates say the number is much higher in places like California, where it can be “as high as 70% in some areas”, according to Alexis Guild, vice-president of strategy and programs at Farmworker Justice, a non-profit based in Washington DC.

Donald Trump’s campaign promise to “launch the largest deportation program in American history” by targeting millions of undocumented immigrants could upend the lives of the majority of these agricultural workers who grow and harvest our food – which would dramatically hit California’s communities and economy, with ripple effects that would touch every table in the country.

“Without undocumented immigrant labor, we wouldn’t be able to sustain a food supply at the capacity that we have right now,” said Ana Padilla, executive director of the Community and Labor Center at the University of California at Merced.

Farm workers already perform dangerous and often underpaid labor. In the fields, they are vulnerable to pesticide exposure and workplace injuries doing work that is exempt from federal overtime laws. Trump and his allies have repeatedly said that undocumented immigrants have “taken” jobs from Black and Hispanic Americans, but farm worker advocates say these are not jobs US citizens are eager to hold.

“Rather than thinking about how immigrants ‘took’ jobs that existed, the historic wave of migration from Mexico that began in the 1970s is really a story of the growth of an industry and a very large and profitable one at that,” said Edward Flores, a sociologist and faculty director of the Community and Labor Center, who compares the size of California’s agricultural industry to Hollywood.

“The fact that there were so many people working in agriculture meant that the nation exported much more produce than it otherwise would have – that it opened up opportunities for people all along the supply chain.”

In 2023, California’s agricultural exports totaled more than $24.7bn, according to the USDA. The state was the nation’s sole producer of many specialty crops – including almonds, artichokes, figs, olives, pomegranates, raisins and walnuts – and the leading producer of other staples, such as lettuce and celery.

Read full article 

https://mail.tbligroup.com/emailapp/index.php/lists/cm138dw4qa9f1/unsubscribe

 
TBLI Group Herengracht 450, 1017 CA Amsterdam, The Netherlands
To receive our free TBLI Weekly Subscribe here

This email was sent to [EMAIL] You are receiving this email because you have signed up on our website, TBLI Weekly or subscribed to our email list.
Unsubscribe from this list
Privacy Policy and Cookies Policy