Time For the Planet, Green Steel, and Ecologi's 2022 Annual Report.

1. Time for The Planet

This is a slightly different section than usual. I wanted to talk about an organisation that I volunteer for and that I think is truly amazing. They are also taking a unique approach to helping us reach global Net-Zero. They are called Time for the Planet (TFTP).

TFTP is a French non-profit company who are looking to solve one of the biggest challenges in reaching Net-Zero. Taking new low-carbon innovations to market and helping them rapidly scale to have a real impact on global emissions.

They have a very unique funding model. Anyone can buy shares and contribute to their crowdsourced investment fund. They use volunteers AKA ‘Assessors’ to help vet and validate projects that are submitted to TFTP, this helps keep costs down and to create collective intelligence around the project, as well as a sense of community by investors.

The next step in their assessment requires the hiring of subject matter experts to validate if the innovations behind the project are viable and if there is a market ready for it to disrupt and grow. If a project makes it through to all these rounds then they are eligible for funding, it goes to a final vote at a tri-annual General Meetingtri-annual General Meeting, where there is a double majority system with both 1 share = 1 vote and then 1 shareholder (entity or citizen) = 1 vote.

Now there are a few caveats to submitting a project, they must be:

- Focused on GHG reduction or GHG removal - (anything else is inadmissible (they are laser-focused on this).

- Scaleable & repeatable

- Feasible in a reasonable time frame

- Be disruptive to its intended market

- No major negative externalities

Also, any project that is seeking investment must be willing to go open source, or as close to it as possible. This is a cornerstone of TFTP in that project owners must be willing to give us some control over the rollout of designs they have to help with a much quicker global rollout - as time really is of the essence.

They have a goal of sourcing €1 billion Euros to help create 100 companies to decarbonise some of the world's most polluting industries like shipping, construction and air conditioning. You can read more here and learn about the projects they have backed already here .

PS - Anyone who is keen to explore investment in green tech as part of a wider Beyond Value Chain Mitigation strategy (as previously discussed in newsletter #2) - should seriously look into Time for the Planet as an option.

2. Green Steel

True 'Green Steel' has been a bit like nuclear fusion, talked about, but always just beyond the horizon in terms of the rollout. However, it looks like this is changing.

This BBC article highlights some of the companies that are moving into the production phase of their new ‘Green Steel’ that use a new process to drastically cut their carbon footprint.

“The production of steel is responsible for around 7% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. But in Boden, the new plant will use hydrogen technology, designed to cut emissions by as much as 95%.”

The knock-on effects of this on the construction industry will be huge when production reaches high levels. A new company called H2 Green Steel is the focus of much of the article and is highly exciting - and they didn't exist before the pandemic, so are fast movers. The rest of the article highlights the role of incumbents in promoting their use and roll-out of green steel to existing plants to have any major effects on global steel emissions.

‘H2 Green Steel hopes to produce five million tonnes of green steel a year by 2030. Global annual production is currently around 2,000 million tonnes, according to figures from the World Steel Association .’

There is still a long way to go before it becomes the norm but this investment and interest are good signs of things to come.

3. Ecologi’s 2022 Impact Report

Our in-house impact team has released our 2022 Impact Report. The goal of this report is to help emphasise the impact all of our 17,000 businesses and our subscribers are having and bring it to life!

I will leave you to read it in the peace rather than try and summarise it but it's a great deck and helps to emphasise the power of collective action - here’s to 2023! - Josh