Talking Climate Tech 033

Summer Holidays for the kids a almost here, all parents are braced for impact!

Feeling like a dip in the pool, come on in...💦

🔦 Startup Spotlight

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink, or water the garden. As we are in hosepipe ban season in the UK, and baking hot European sun, plus chaotic weather systems elsewhere - see last week's 🌍 Climate Watch 032 - let's take a look at who is doing something interesting with water.

For new readers, we have dipped our collective toe in water before, briefly in 009 and in 💸 Startup News x3 organisations in 013.

Water scarcity is already and will continue to be one of our biggest challenges - the impact of climate change will only accelerate that challenge.

I came across Watermarq at a pitch session a couple of years ago - very interesting analysis technology and proposition. There isn't much public information to share unless you are a data user on their platform. 🙄

Water is chronically undervalued across the world and therefore underinvested; security is at risk - they analyse water basins with geospatial data, computer vision and machine learning for insights.

Combine this with locally measured data, add societal, economic, and environmental information from multiple sources, and you have detailed context to water basin use, stakeholders and investors.

...three main vectors: water availability (supply and demand), water quality and water access (or WASH), providing an in-depth understanding of the present and future water-related risks facing water-stressed basins...this information feeds into our novel water valuation framework, which will set basin-specific shadow water prices, based on the investment required to enable water security, and differentiated by users depending on their demand profiles and capacity to pay. These prices will provide a signal to public and private investors on how best to mobilise financial resources towards water security.

The first pilot - assessing high-resolution supply and demand dynamics in the Zambezi basin - was part of the pitch at the Oxfordshire Greentech session.

Quite big, quite complex!

When considering such large-scale analysis - high and low density populations, use cases, land variables, mining, agriculture, etc. - the complexity of the challenge is quickly evident, as is the necessity to monitor, manage and mobilise investment in water basin management and infrastructure.

The second pilot in Chile considers aspects as desalination, mine tailings dam risks and water basin competing demand pulls from agriculture, industry and residential purposes.

Water scarcity and security of supply are already and will become an increasing challenge. This is not only in traditionally challenged regions such as Africa, think a little closer to home.

The 100 priority basins is a list of worldwide basins which includes those with the highest level of opportunity for collective action from an economic and shared water risk perspective.

8 / 100 are in Europe, and you won't be surprised to hear that the Severn & Thames Basin is included in this list.

As an aside, all those Data Centre developments planned in the USA - they have 7 basins on the list. Deeper insights on that resource challenge here.

🔎 Deeper Dive

A selection this week - pick your own deeper dive, whatever your flavour. 🍭

UN Climate Finance Push ✈️

Not before time, multi-nation push on taxing private jets, further aviation levies, maritime shipping etc. More on that here.

innovative tools such as taxes on extreme wealth, levies on polluting transport and debt swaps to raise more money to tackle the climate crisis.

Blue Marlin 🦈

Electrification of shipping update from Europe this time, makes a change from China! Full read here.

Dutch solar technology company Wattlab and Germany’s HGK Shipping have unveiled the world’s first hybrid inland cargo vessel powered by solar energy.

Wattlab here. I was surprised by how much shipping, just by HGK alone, goes inland - scale this up with other providers and global fleets, will have a huge impact:

HGK Shipping is a major player in European inland waterway shipping, operating a fleet of 350 vessels and transporting around 43 million tonnes of goods every year. The company specialises in the transport of dry bulk, gas, and chemicals across Europe.

Google Deepmind Useful AI 🌀

Those pesky cyclones that keep destroying everything in their path, frequency and intensity accelerated by global warming. 😵‍💫

Some useful AI from Deepmind, then, more AI for good to model better predictive behaviour, save lives and reduce losses. And they are big losses, and it's only going to get worse:

UK Clean Energy Map 📍

Sometimes we don't take a moment to pat ourselves on the back to see how far we have come. With over 50% of the UK grid generaiton now decarbonised we are on our way.

Here is a handy Gov. map to see what's what since July 2024, so only progress in this Parliment, but interesting anyway. Full interactive map here.

💥 Trump Watch

Welcome back to MAGA Town! What a week it's been for Don. Climate policy has barely registered this week because of the Epstein Files 💣

Not much else has had time to gestate on climate this week, it's been all hands on deck as they scramble to make it make sense. Before we dive into that...

OBBB + IRA Receipts 🧾

Biden's teams managed to push out a lot, and obligated into law what they could before the big shutdown, the net results are in, courtesy of Heatmap:

Trump clawed back a third approximately, which is still massive and will have a huge impact, $31.7bn is a big number! Could have done a lot of good with that money - jobs, growth, suply chain, clean power, emissions reduction, community regeneration. 😠

Congress rescinded the unobligated funds from 47 of the law’s more than 80 climate and environmental programs. According to scores from the Congressional Budget Office, $31.7 billion of the $93.4 billion for those programs, or about 34%, was left.

Let's hope they can hold onto the 'obligated' funds, which are committed to law. Concerningly, 'law' isn't necessarily enough under the current regime. 🤔

MAGA Mayhem 🧨

Now this is a very sensitive issue, and the Epstein files include all sorts of horrific crimes against women and children. But it's important, as Don campaigned on releasing the files, and the onward implications are massive.

If you hadn't heard, Don and Elon recently split up, and Elon dropped the 💣 about Trump being in the files. And we know he is, it's just to what extent - they were best buddies for many years - he even introduced Melania to him - and they consummated their wonderful relationship on the Lolita Express, Epstein's plane.

Pam Bondi made it worse. Someone else made it even worse when they hacked 1 minute, then 3 minutes, out of the security tapes from Epsteins prison wing, using Adobe tools, taken before his suicide. More here.

Trump made it even worse, with confused rambling posts in the middle of the night, and then started blaming it on everyone else as a conspiracy.

He has shot himself in the foot with that one - Maxwell is now considering appealing her sentence based on his claims that the files are 'fake' and 'the list doesn't exist'. Oh dear indeed.

Musk is going all in on this with a posting frenzy; it would certainly clear the way for his new party.

One of those Chinese finger puzzle boxes you get fingers stuck in and can't get out of. The MAGA base is demanding the files; there will be blood!

Get a handle on this is via this report, but it is also worth watching the full Jordan Klepper take-down here.

Could this be the tipping point? Could this break the MAGA base and end this Presidency? Could the families and people involved finally get some justice for these crimes - no one 'friend' or 'client' of Epstein has been prosecuted. 😕

Golf Watch ⛳

He's dropping back, kind of busy with wars and keeping the MAGA base on side:

40 days out of 179 days - 22.3% of the presidency spent golfing. Estimated cost to taxpayers, $56 million

Public record sources here.

🏡 Konfab News

Content Frenzy

I've been working on the final draft this week for the new guest article - it's a debut piece from Matt Bleasdale, a UK-based Offshore Wind Consultant.

And it's a meaty piece of work - Part 1 of 2 will be heading your way in the next few days! 📥

With the revision to CfD for AR7, the timing is great!

Matt takes a retrospective on the various Offshore Wind Support Schemes that have gone before, and a review of the CfD itself.

I can at least say, and you may know this from his LinkedIn posts, that he has a strong opinion on the CfD! 💥

Part 2 will feature a proposed alternative solution.... 🤔

And there's more... a good connection and long-time supporter of Konfab, and founder of a transport sector EU scale-up, has just sent his draft. Focused on the challenges around EU red tape and our penchant to stifle innovation and subsequently growth. 💡

And still more... a new connection from Innovation Zero has jumped straight into it and is giving us a decarbonisation perspective from inside one of Britain's oldest institutions. I will keep stum on that one until it's approved! 🤐

Podcast 05 is also awaiting sign-off - I mentioned this one last week, had to bunny-hop over 04. All in a rush before our esteemed guest dashed off on Maternity Leave! 🍼 👶

😃 Good Stuff

Net Zero - Cheap at Twice The Price!

This week, Richard Tice of Reform penned an angry letter to Greg Jackson of Octopus Energy and others, threatening to row back all AR7 support should they win power. 🤔

All the usual bluster and nonsense in it, for sound bites and attention seeking. It's too expensive, no one wants it, we love fossil fuels, blah blah - more on that if you haven't seen it already and can be bothered, here.

Anyway, the OBR and Carbon Brief are on hand to give us, you know, some actual data on the costs of net zero. OBR:

...the net cost to the economy of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 is now put at £116bn over 25 years, some £204bn lower than previously expected.

What does that mean though? Carbon Brief:

In very rough terms, this figure – which excludes health co-benefits due to cutting emissions and avoided climate damages - is equivalent to less than £70 per person per year.

I think if the majority of the population could sift their way past the climate denial, partisan media and social media fossil fuel disinformation, they might be pleasantly surprised by that. ✅

Add on the savings from the NHS from reduced emissions impact, and it's happy days!

The best bit, it's also cheaper than business as usual! We know it's cheaper than using imported, geopolitically unstable, fossil fuels, and it's also cheaper than the impact of climate change damages that are on the horizon.I would rather avoid as much of that as possible:

🔵 cost of climate impact on Gov borrowing

🟡 cost of Gov investment in cutting emissions

The irony of course, is that Tice likes renewables, particularly Solar, because it makes him money. More on that here. 🤣

...his company has fitted solar panels and electric car charging stations at commercial properties it owns in England. 

⚡Pylon of the Month

Your weekly Tower of Power returns! We are still stuck on May back at Pylon HQ, a hunt in the archive brings us this growing season colour-fest, from June 2024.

Notable remarks beyond the 132kV line include the lovely contrast between the yellow rape seed crop and the blue sky - plus:

🐝 Rapeseed provides a key and early food source for bees and pollinators

⌛ Rapeseed oil shelf life of 12 - 18 months

✅ Cold-pressed rapeseed oil contains around one-third of the saturated fats of olive oil and is naturally rich in omega oils, vitamin E and antioxidants

We go beyond in this newsletter...😁

Friday morning update.....

And here is proof, one of my connections on LinkedIn, Mitch Rawlyk, happened to post about canola oil, which is a modified version of rapeseed oil - this field is likely canola....and well, hmmm, remarkable origin story, makes you realise all is not what it seems!

We have many of the answers, we are just too wrapped up in our process-focused, industrial machine.

On that bombshell, another hot summer week ticks by - siesta time?

Thanks as always, let's keep pushing forward - remember, the momentum is unstoppable despite everything you might see and hear! 🌍

Kane