In today’s edition:

⚡️ World Energy Investment Report

🚜 Building houses from rice

🌳 Assessing firms' impact on nature

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⚡️ Energy (1-minute read)

World Energy Investment 2023 Report Released

What is it? The report provides a global benchmark for tracking capital flows in the energy sector.

Highlights:

Lowlights:

Takeaway: Much more needs to be done by the international community, especially to drive investment in lower-income economies, where the private sector has been reluctant to venture.

🚜 AgriTech (1-minute read)

Indian upstream agritech funding climbed by 50% in 2022

Startups innovating upstream in India (i.e., closer to the farmer/producer) bucked the downward trend of venture capital dealmaking within the agritech and food-tech sectors in 2022. Upstream agritech startups from India raised $617 million in 2022 — up from $ 409 million in 2021. This upward trend is expected to continue. Enhancing agricultural productivity, while reducing agricultures impact on climate change, remains a priority for agri-food organisations and investors.

Why the upstream focus? There is a need for tech innovation to safeguard food security in India, where 80% of the population lives in districts at risk of climate-change-induced hunger.

Building houses from rice

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that the construction industry was responsible for 39% of the process and energy-related carbon emissions in 2018. 11% of emissions came from producing building materials. An Italian architectural firm uses the natural waste residues from rice production, such as rice straw, husk, and chaff, to create circular construction materials, such as thermal insulating plaster and prefabricated panels from the rice industry. The products can be applied using traditional techniques (without specialised equipment), and when they reach the end of life, they can be returned to nature to break down.

🌳 Nature (1-minute read)

New framework will allow firms to assess their impact on nature

What’s happened: The Science-Based Targets Network (SBT) is providing the first framework for companies to report their impacts on nature as part a efforts to help “get nature into the boardroom”.

Details: SBTN is releasing guidance for companies to measure how they contribute to land degradation, and the pollution of freshwater. Companies can then work out what impacts they should focus on reducing and what targets they can set to achieve that. Reporting systems for oceans and species abundance are set to be released in the coming year.

Why it’s important: Their is growing consensus of the risks to business from the loss and degradation of ecosystems. Nature-related and climate-related risks are inextricably linked as climate change drives the loss of nature and nature loss drives climate change. For this reason, business must address them together (2,600+ businesses are already signed up to current SBT)

💭 Little Bytes

Quote: “If these clean energy investments continue to grow in line with what we have seen in the past few years . . . we will soon start to see a very different energy system emerging.” Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA

Stat: Investment in solar power expected to exceed oil investment for the first time this year

Watch: A 3D-printed fillet of fish

🗞 In other news…

🎣 Gone Phishing

Three of these stories are true, one we've made up. Guess which:

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