The Triple Bottom - 🌱 Wooden batteries

IKEA joined the Clean Cooling Collaborative
As the UK faced record-breaking temperatures last week, it’s clear that clean, cost-effective cooling equipment will become a part of our adaptation to climate change. Yet, cooling currently accounts for around 7% of global emissions and could x2 by 2040. IKEA has joined the Clean Cooling Collaborative, which brings together companies and policy experts to create more climate-friendly cooling technology through redesigning current systems and innovations (see image). IKEA will provide $25m in grants over 4-years which will target regions such as India, China, and the United States - responsible for 75% of all cooling-related emissions.

Biden aides back at climate drawing board after mad rush 
What happened? Senator Joe Manchin told Democratic leaders he would not support new spending on climate measures or tax breaks for renewable energy and electric vehicles, delivering a huge blow to President Biden’s ambitious agenda, which at one point contained a historic $555 billion green investment. Manchin’s vote is pivotal in the evenly divided Senate, where Democrats need a unanimous decision to pass.
What now? In a follow-up speech, Biden unveiled new policies to fight the rulings effects - including opening additional offshore areas to wind farms. To retain Manchin’s support for some climate policy, Biden held back on declaring a formal climate emergency - a move that would unlock broad new powers to develop clean power while restricting the extraction and export of fossil fuels.

How Burger King Austria is making vegan whopper the norm 
Fast-food giant Burger King is normalising plant-based meat in a new way in Austria. The chain recently ran a campaign titled “Meat Option” based around the idea that plant-based meat is the norm while animal-derived meat is not—flipping the common narrative on its head. As part of the campaign last week, customers at Burger King Austria who ordered burgers were given a choice of “regular or meat-based?” Our take: A small action helping to normalise meatless indulgence and making alt-meat a permanent fixture on the menu.

Cow Manure Power Stations in Japan Extends Battle to Curb Methane
Challenge: Agriculture and livestock are the biggest contributors of methane from human activity, a potent greenhouse gas with 84x the warming power of carbon dioxide in the short term.
What’s happened? A Canadian company has teamed up with the renewable energy arm of Japanese property group Toyo to build one of Japan’s biggest plants to convert cow manure into power, the latest effort to fight the potent effects of methane on global warming. The facility will anaerobically digest about 250 metric tons of cow manure a day and generate about 1.2 megawatts of energy from biogas, enough to power about 2,200 homes a year.
In Europe… Anaerobic digestors and biogas have been touted as one solution to reducing reliance on Russian gas. The European Commission recently decided to set new, ambitious targets for biomethane production 10x from current volumes.

• PepsiCo has issued a new $1.25bn green bond, with proceeds set to fund programmes scaling regenerative agriculture, reducing emissions and packaging waste and improving water stewardship.

• UK businesses have reported a surge in food waste over the last six months, with many organisations attempting to revamp supply chains to respond to resource shortages.

• An abandoned Berlin airport is being transformed into a climate-neutral, car-free neighbourhood.

• Ukraine and Russia agree to allow grain shipments from Ukrainian ports - easing pressure on a global food crisis 

• The $290 Billion Fund Helping Make Tiny Singapore an Agricultural Powerhouse