Apple says its supply chains and products will be carbon neutral by 2030

Apple announced plans to make its entire business carbon neutral within the next 10 years. The roadmap to sustainability is part of the company’s annual Environmental Progress Report. Reducing every device it sells to zero climate impact means that the company will, at a minimum need to reduce emissions from production by 75%. The remainder will be focused on efforts to help remove carbon from the atmosphere.

See TechCrunch: "Apple says its supply chains and products will be carbon neutral by 2030."

Published by Nucleation Capital in Carbon emissions, Carbon negative, Climate change, Corporate decarbonization, LINKS, Public companies, Reduced ecosystem impacts

July 14, 2020

Microsoft will be carbon negative by 2030

Microsoft has grabbed the corporate high ground with a commitment to be carbon negative by 2030. The senior executives have studied the issue and write: "If we don’t curb emissions (given that human activity has already released more than 2 trillion metric tons of greenhouse gases), and temperatures continue to climb, science tells us that the results will be catastrophic."

Read more at Microsoft's Blog: Microsoft will be carbon negative by 2030.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Carbon negative, Climate innovation fund, LINKS, Public companies

July 10, 2020

Nuclear power has a big role to play in the energy transition

Nuclear plants today provide 10% of the world's electricity, all of it carbon-free – that's almost twice the combined contribution of solar and wind. To meet the key energy goals of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), the Paris Agreement has set a specific ambition for nuclear, targeting the doubling of present installed capacity by 2050. For the nuclear industry the challenge is double; it is about progressively replacing plants reaching the end of their lives, and adding new plants to the existing fleet. However, there is need for innovation.

Read more at: World Economic Forum: Nuclear power has a big role to play in the energy transition. Here's why.

Published by Nucleation Capital in Carbon negative, Climate innovation fund, Future of Energy, International support for nuclear, LINKS, Nuclear innovation

July 10, 2020

IAEA Head Tells Ministers Nuclear is ‘Contributing Massively’

By David Dalton
Nuclear power is playing an important role in the world’s production of clean energy, “contributing massively” to avoiding greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in many countries and providing innovative solutions that could be very useful to emerging economies, International atomic Energy Agency director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi said during a panel discussion on electricity security and sustainability at the International Energy Agency’s Clean Energy Transitions Summit.

“Nuclear power has a great deal to contribute as part of clean, resilient, inclusive energy systems, which are of course indispensable drivers of economic development, especially at this hard time of pandemic recession all over the world,” Mr Grossi said.

“Nuclear energy is not a promise in terms of low-carbon energy, it is already now today contributing massively to a low carbon economy and a green grid” by avoiding the equivalent of 55 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over the last 50 years, he added.

Read the full article at NucNet: Rafael Grossi / IAEA Head Tells Ministers Nuclear is 'Contributing Massively'

Published by Nucleation Capital in Carbon negative, Climate change, Future of Energy, International support for nuclear, LINKS, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear innovation

November 18, 2014

What it takes to reverse climate change

Ross Koningstein and David Fork, armed with the resources of Google, Inc., set out in an effort that was known as "RE<C" to assess and support the development of renewable energy sources so that they could generate reliable electricity more cheaply than coal. In an subsequent article penned in the IEEE Spectrum entitled What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change: Today's renewable energy technologies won't save us. So what will?, we learn the results of their years of work.

Initially, Google announced that it would help promising technologies mature by investing in start-ups and even engaging in internal R&D. Its goal: to produce a gigawatt of renewable power more cheaply than could a coal-fired plant within a few years, not decades. Unfortunately, within a few years, Google shut down the initiative, when it became clear that exclusively using renewables would not work. Koningstein and Fork then turned their attention to examining the the underlying assumptions and learning from their experience.

Even though there were a few sparse areas that might manage to achieve higher renewables penetration and approach the goal, it was clear that most regions of the world would not be able to power their needs with renewables, if looked at on a time-coincident basis. They determined that the only way to both stop new emissions and reverse the warming trends that had been put into motion by CO2 accumulations was through "radical technological advances in cheap zero-carbon energy, as well as a method of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering the carbon."

Ross Koningstein serves as an advisor to Nucleation Capital and we have discussed and benefitted in many ways from his vast experience. Read Ross' own published report at "What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change: Today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us. So what will?."

Published by Nucleation Capital in 100% Renewables, Advanced Nuclear, Brilliant thinkers, Carbon emissions, Carbon negative, Climate change, Corporate decarbonization, Corporate purpose, Future of Energy, LINKS, Public companies, Reduced ecosystem impacts, Solving climate

September 26, 2007

Scientists have urged exploration of carbon-fixing solutions for a long time

Back in 2007, scientists recognized that curtailing emissions from our use of energy was going to be very difficult, and they began to urge research into ways to "fix" carbon that could prevent the coming climate catastrophe. "We are taking the very strong line that we are not going to save the planet by the regular approaches like the Kyoto Protocol or renewable energy," Professor James Lovelock told BBC News.

Publishing their thoughts in the journal "Nature," London Science Museum head Chris Rapley and Gaia theorist James Lovelock discussed the concept of boosting ocean take-up of CO2 through the use of circulation pipes. "What we have to do is to look at it in a systems sense, or a Gaian sense, and see if it's curable by direct action."

Read this 2007 BBC News report: "Lovelock urges ocean climate fix."

Published by Nucleation Capital in Brilliant thinkers, Carbon emissions, Carbon negative, Climate change, LINKS, Scientific debate