In February 2019, a group of progressive lawmakers proposed the Green New Deal, an ambitious plan to reorient the US economy around addressing the climate crisis. It was met with controversy and praise alike, with some calling it implausible, while others rushed to find ways to implement some version of it.

Ithaca, New York, falls into the latter camp. The city of 32,108 residents adopted its own Green New Deal in June 2019, including a pledge to fully decarbonize by 2030.

Now...The city is working to set its plans into motion—starting with decarbonizing all 6,000 residential and commercial buildings in the city by 2030. That’s a goal unmatched by any other US city.

• Emissions from the operation of buildings accounted for 28% of all energy-related CO2 emissions worldwide in 2019.

This part of the plan, formalized by a November vote, will be led by two climate-tech companies—BlocPower and Alturus—which will provide Ithaca’s buildings with the hardware needed to run on electricity only. The companies will use tech ranging from digital twins to heat pumps to get the job done

“I made it very clear when I started this program that the role of the city, the role of the local government needs to change,” Luis Aguirre-Torres, Ithaca’s director of sustainability, told Emerging Tech Brew. “We’re not the ones to make anything happen, we’re here to compete, to be a catalyst for social innovation, finance innovation, and I think the role is to set these companies up for success.”

But, but, but...To pull off this transition, Ithaca will need to work through thorny challenges that span beyond purchasing and implementing new technology—it also needs to get residents on-board with the change.

Click here to learn how Ithaca is approaching an unprecedented shift to a carbon-free city.—JM

An ongoing inter-university battle that has absolutely nothing to do with football, basketball, rowing, or any sport, for that matter, may have just concluded.

On Monday, the US Patent and Trademark Office ruled that CRISPR—the precise, cost-effective, game-changing gene-editing technique—is the intellectual property of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.

• The University of California Berkeley and University of Vienna are the other institutions in the mix here, and they plan to challenge the decision.

Why it matters: Several biotech companies have licensed CRISPR tech from Berkeley, rather than the Broad Institute, Stat reports, and now they may need to obtain new licensing deals and patents.

• “This is pretty bad news for anyone who has a license for Berkeley’s technology,” Jacob Sherkow, a patent attorney and professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, told Stat. “They have over 100 patent claims that just got wiped off the face of the earth.”

Intellia Therapeutics, which became the first company to successfully use CRISPR to treat disease in vivo—i.e., inside the human body—last June, is among the companies with a Berkeley license. Even so, the company told Bloomberg the decision does not impact its development plans, and another leading CRISPR startup that’s in the same position, CRISPR Therapeutics, basically said the same.

History lesson

CRISPR was first described by Jennifer Doudna, of UC Berkeley, and Emmanuelle Charpentier, of the Max Planck Institute, in a 2012 paper. They won the Nobel Pize in chemistry for this work in 2020.

But, but, but…Their initial article focused on the use of CRISPR to edit genes in a test tube—not eukaryotic cells—i.e., in an animal or human. A few months later, in January 2013, Broad Institute scientists published a paper documenting the technique worked for animal and human cells, and that is the basis upon which the Patent Office’s appeals board determined the Broad Institute has ownership.

• Both groups initially filed for patents in 2012, and the legal fight has more or less been raging on since.

Bottom line: Intellectual property battles, like the fight over CRISPR, could be a major hindrance to the bioeconomy’s growth.

Click here to read on-site.—DM

If you’re smitten and you’re green, what could be more romantic than getting down on one knee, snapping open the jewelry box, and proposing to your beloved with a ring…made from air pollution? That’s the idea behind Aether, a DTC startup that makes lab-grown diamonds from carbon that’s been removed from the atmosphere, and which announced today that it raised $18 million.

• The round was led by Helena, the venture capital firm with a non-profit arm that supports environmental and societal issues. Trirec, SoundWaves, Khosla Ventures, and Social Impact Capital also participated.
• Aether’s total funding since its founding in 2018 is now $21 million.

As lab-grown diamonds gain popularity as an alternative to traditional diamonds, Aether positions itself as an alternative to the other alternatives. Because while other man-made diamonds require fossil fuels in their manufacture, Aether developed a proprietary process to use CO2 which has been removed from the atmosphere. It gets the carbon from ClimeWorks, a carbon-capture plant company in Switzerland that’s also worked with Helena.

• Aether claims that for every 1-carat diamond a consumer buys, it removes 20 metric tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, more than the annual carbon footprint for an average American.
• Last month, the company became a B Corp, which it says makes it  the only diamond company with the certification.

Carats and sticks: Henry Elkus, founder and CEO of Helena, said what drew the VC firm to Aether is that it helps create a market for captured carbon. That, in the long run, could make carbon-capture plants more economically viable.

Click here to read the full story, which originally ran in Retail Brew.—AAN

Stat: The Ukrainian government and organizations helping it fight Russia’s invasion have received at least $50 million in crypto donations.

Quote: “Send it to my desk. I’ll sign it.”—President Joe Biden, discussing the CHIPS Act during his State of the Union address. The bill, versions of which have passed both chambers of Congress, could provide $52 billion in semiconductor subsidies.

Read: Twelve AI experts to pay attention to in 2022.

If we hear “be a team player” one more time … A recent Slack survey revealed that most remote and hybrid workers would rather communicate informally and ditch stale, overused workplace jargon. Peep the full survey and see why Slack is a more pleasant way to work.*

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Three of the following news stories are true, and one...we made up. Can you spot the odd one out?

• A Pokémon-inspired NFT collection that raised ~$70 million has come under fire after its digital art turned out to be less attractive than expected.
• Epic Games, the parent company of Fortnite, is buying…Bandcamp.
• To commemorate its new standalone EV division, Ford announced it will mass produce an all-electric Model T.
• For the first time, human-made space junk will unintentionally smash into a celestial body other than Earth.

Earlier this week, the IPCC released its latest report, which issued yet another dire warning that the world needs to immediately stamp out emissions—and ramp up efforts to pull billions of tonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere each year.

On the latter point…Natural solutions to drawing down current CO2 levels, like planting trees, are not only insufficient but potentially harmful if done in excess, or in places where trees don’t naturally grow.

• For example, over-planting trees could eat into land for growing crops and also mess with local plant and animal species.

This point underscores the need for experimentation with a wide range of techniques that can potentially scale quickly, including projects like direct air capture hubs, as well as more nascent methods like “enhanced weathering,” which seeks to accelerate natural CO2 absorption processes.

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• A small-scale satellite-launching contest shows just how accessible space has become
• The DOE just went on a cleantech spending spree
• Why some wearable-makers are looking beyond the wrist