šThe Sustainability Top 10: possibly the best news for sustainability for all of 2025. It could have a gigantic impact on emissions
Welcome back and happy new year! š,
On this edition, some potentially huge good news for sustainability and the forbidDEIn word might be mentioned a few timesā¦oops š ! Here are The Green Tea's Top actionable, innovation, and hot sustainability stories this week!
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Green Innovation
1. You heard it here first? AI in general is not something that would typically fall under green innovation but a development that shook the AI world (Nvidia stock dropped 17% from it on Monday), could be the best sustainability news for this entire year. The gargantuan ongoing buildup of energy-consuming data centers with energy-intensive chips was one of the factors offsetting global gains from green energy production and other green initiatives.
However, this week, news of the high performance of an AI model developed by Chinese company DeepSeek showed that a powerful AI model could be developed and ran on significantly less energy and less powerful chips. The dust is still settling on how they did it, but if the early indications are true, the projections of AIās energy consumption could drop significantly and with that would also come a significant drop in future global emissions (possibly several percentage points of projected global emissions).
Big Tech AI executives caught off-guard by DeepSeekās AI-assumptions-shattering model...
2. Innovation and strong value props will be critical in the new sustainability climate that we are entering so I wanted to share several startups receiving big funding paychecks recently to pull through their innovations:
- Amogy raises $56 Million to advance carbon-free power solutions for hard-to-abate industries. read here
- BeZero Carbon raises $32 Million to expand carbon credit rating platform into new markets. read here
- NatureMetrics raises $25 Million to scale biodiversity monitoring and reporting platform. read here
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On the Social Frontā¦
3. When I named this section āon the social frontā, I did not imagine that this aspect of sustainability would become a āwar frontā, but it seems like that is where we areā¦ The tug of war between big corporates dropping their DEI initiatives (Target, Meta, Amazon, McDonaldās) and those holding strong (Apple, Costco) continues.
4. However, the stakes are getting higher, as the US government is exterminating any trace of DEI in its ranks and has threatened the private sector with possible legal action against "egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners", whatever that means. āEach agency would have to identify up to nine "potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of $500 million or more, state and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over $1 billion.ā read here
5. It seems like DEI will continue to be a hot topic as the list above comes out in ~120 days, when we will likely learn what actions the government will take against those on the list (of course, also intended as a warning to everyone else not on the listā¦). At least, it seems like companiesā behaviors and actions around climate are insulated from DEI voluntary pullbacks and government action: we see that with Amazon which it is pulling back on DEI, but saying that āits green plans wonāt change.ā
Taking Action
6. Google signs largest-ever biochar carbon removal purchase deals. read here
7. Shell, Microsoft top list of top carbon credit buyers in 2024. read here
8. Vodafone: Cutting Scope 3 Emissions in Advertising. read here
Reporting and Regulatory Corner
9. China releases first corporate sustainability disclosure standards. read here
10. 80% of global financial regulators aligned with ISSB, TCFD recommendations. read here
A Changing Worldā¦
+. As expected, the news out of Washington for sustainability have not been good. The list is long: the USA is dropping out (again) from the Paris Agreement, ruled out the sale of new wind leases, and took a number of other measures. Now the climate action is left to US individual states (24 committed to the Paris Agreement goals), Europe (it has said that it is moving forward as planned), China, and others. Talking about China, it shared that it broke its own record in installing renewable power (added ~277 gigawatts of solar last year, surpassing the previous yearās record of 217 gigawatts) - I will leave you with that bit of good news.
What did you think of this edition of The Green Tea?
šµšµšµšµšµĀ the tea was hot!
Warm regards / saludos,
JulioĀ