Greenify #86: Waste, Refurbishment & Green Pirates
November 10, 2023
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📌 Fact of the week
South Africa is on the way to miss its 2030 emission target as it keeps coal plants burning 😷
Hottest news of the week…
Regulation 🗃 – Greenpeace Pirates
What happened: Entertaining news this week, as oil giant Shell has sued Greenpeace for about $2.1 million as some members of the latter organization boarded a Shell oil vessel back in January this year. In a pirate style move, four Greenpeace activists had used ropes to climb their way to the vessel from inflatable boats that were chasing the ship at high speed, near the Canary Islands sea.🚢
Zoom out: The “Just Stop Oil” movement has been front and centre of the news, as protesters are getting involved in all type of activities (some of them illegal) to make a statement against fossil fuels. Shell, who sued Greenpeace for an “unlawful and extremely dangerous” act, offered to reduce the damage claim to $1.4 million if Greenpeace activists agree not to protest again at any of Shell’s oil and gas infrastructure. Greenpeace instead fired back, saying it would only accept the new deal if Shell committed to cut its emissions by 45% by 2030, in line with a 2021 Dutch court order. Looks like this claim is going to be a long one. ⌚
Business 💰 – Blackrock backing up Direct Air Capture (DAC)!
What happened: BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, has invested in one of the most contested technologies in the climate tech space: Direct Air Capture (DAC). Indeed, the fund invested ~€500 million in Occidental Petroleum Corp’s DAC plant in Texas. The project, called Stratos, is set to become the largest facility sucking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere! While BlackRock is new to the technology, Occidental Petroleum is not, as it has been investing in this for years, having also acquired leading DAC technology developer Carbon Engineering this summer.👌🏻
Zoom out: In simple terms, Direct Air Capture (DAC) consists in machines filtering air and capturing the contained CO2. It seems like the solution to global warming, but unfortunately it comes with various flaws, mainly high costs and low efficiency. Indeed, a €500 million plant seems extraordinary, but in reality it removes just an unquantifiable little fraction of what the planet would need. However, it is always good to see finance giants like BlackRock getting into these risky technologies… it shows that these are becoming more mature and that a major breakthrough might be expected soon! 💣
Innovation 💡 - Creating green hydrogen and storing CO2 together!
What happened: Axios reported a very innovative partnership between start-up Equatic and carbon capture technology manufacturer Deep Sky to develop a plant that produces green hydrogen from sea-water and stores CO2. How does it work? Electricity generated from renewables passes through sea-water, splitting the H2O molecule in Hydrogen and Oxygen. At that point atmospheric air is pumped in the CO2 depleted sea-water, where CO2 will be trapped in minerals and other substances. The process will ultimately use the ocean and its properties as a storage for CO2. 👍
Zoom out: Very cool idea… let’s try to break it down: 1) Using ocean as a CO2 storage is not something humans have invented, as the ocean does it naturally, and it is actually the planet’s largest storage of carbon dioxide; 2) The ocean is not super efficient at storing CO2 compared to underground storage, as CO2 could get back to the atmosphere at some point due to currents. Hence, everything comes down to how much hydrogen they will be able to produce and how much CO2 they will be able to pump in the water for a certain cost. Although economics are not public yet… we estimate this could be very expensive project!😬
Deep dives of the week…
Chart of the week - Waste Recap
We take a step back and look at one of our planet’s biggest problem: waste. Data from the World Bank tells us that, at a global level, only 13.5% of waste gets recycled, with more than 25% of it going to landfill. Very cheap landfill prices is what normally causes such a small degree of recycling. Indeed, in those countries where governments made landfill relatively expensive, such as European countries, recycling rates thrive.♻️
Check out the “deal of the week” to find out about the best alternative to waste💪
Source: World Bank
Deal of the week - Refurbed, making electronics function again!
Who said refurbishing stuff is not sexy? Not us for sure, and neither European VCs Evli Growth Partners and C4 Group, who have just invested ~€50 million in Refurbed, a leading company specialised in refurbishing electronics. The start-up, headquartered in Vienna but with operations across most of Europe, focuses on reducing the environmental impact of the electronics industry and making used technology function again. The company has recently achieved €1 billion in sales and is already profitable in both Austria and Germany! 👏 Most importantly, Refurbed has already saved 160 tonnes of CO2e, 34 billion litres of water, and kept 495 tonnes of e-waste out of landfills. Impressive! 💪
👋 See you next Friday, for the best sum up of this coming week!
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