Sustainability Roundup

Good Morning,

New autumn, new newsletter platform. Mailchimp seemed to be stuck in their past success, with their lack of flexibility and inability to support a more dynamic layout and better functions (namely, paying extra for every single little feature, such as scheduled delivery).

So here we are! Testing out the beautiful beehiiv - a platform made specifically for newsletters, rather than marketing and advertising campaigns delivered via email.

In the world of sustainability and environment, greenwashing is fooling us all. According to a recent study by a global consulting firm, Behavioural Insights Team, it’s also very effective. Here's the story of their study, bear with us, cause this one is good.

In an Australian experiment, subjects were shown three ads for three fictitious energy companies. One ad talked up a company’s green credentials. It showed a woman in a gray blazer walking in front of a skyscraper. “Our offices are green,” the ad read. A second ad featured a woman in a red blouse and three hanging light bulbs. “How can you save energy?” the ad asked the viewer. Finally, third energy company ad made claims about creating jobs, but said nothing about the environment. 

The results? Over half of consumers believed that greenwashed claims were a reliable source of information about a company’s eco-practices. 57 percent said the companies featured in the first two ads — one with the green-office claim and the other with the carbon footprint calculator — had stronger “green credentials,” compared to the third energy company that made job creation claims. Remind yourself that all the three were fictitious companies, made up for this experiment.

Let's jump in to the news roundup.

EU's Carbon Allowance (ETS) price development

UK's Carbon Allowance (ETS) price development

Major News Roundup

• Europe’s record-breaking heat wave will be just an average summer in less than 15 years, even if countries meet their climate goals, with regular droughts and fires set to become the norm. By the end of the century, a typical summer will be over 4 degrees Celsius hotter than pre-industrial levels, more than twice the 1.5 degree target set by the Paris Agreement, according to a report by the Met Office Hadley Centre (Bloomberg)

  • Similarly to the European river droughts reported last week, Toyota and Foxconn are hit as drought leads to record low Yangtze River level. Extreme weather in China’s Sichuan province slashes hydropower capacity, impacting also local economical powerhouse (Financial Times)

• Google 'airbrushes' out emissions from flying, BBC reveals. The way Google calculates the climate impact of your flights has changed, and Some experts say Google's calculations now represent just over half of the real impact on the climate of flights (BBC)

• California's regulators approved new gasoline gar ban on Thursday, with a ban of nearly all new sales of gas-burning cars by 2035. The move that could dramatically accelerate the transition to electric vehicles nationwide if other states follow suit. New rules set a firm timetable for automakers to steadily increase their sales of zero-emission cars in the nation’s largest auto market (Financial Times)

• France’s transportation minister called for flights by private jets to be restricted because of their outsize contribution to climate change, while a prominent lawmaker for the Green Party said he would soon introduce a bill to ban them altogether (New York Times)

• India’s Delhi state plans to spend $600 million over three years to electrify most of its public transport to improve air quality in one of the world’s most-polluted cities. The state, which regularly tops global air pollution charts, is working on a strategy to make 80% of its buses electric by 2025 (Bloomberg)

• While Europe has seen extreme drought, Pakistan seeks help as deadly floods threaten the country. Nation reports more than 900 deaths from floods since mid-June, and millions of acres of crops being washed away. Pakistan has appealed to international community for help as unprecedented rains trigger a humanitarian crisis (Bloomberg)

• NASA satellites paint grim picture for the future of Antarctica's ice shelves. Twin studies using satellite observations show ice loss over Antarctica is twice as great as feared (Time)

Latest from the environmental news in Finland

• The Baltic Sea is in such a bad state in some places that seeing it with your own eyes would raise people's spirits, says a researcher. The seas are well-known carbon sinks, i.e. carbon dioxide binders, but the Baltic Sea may act in the opposite way. New measurement methods have revealed that methane is released especially from the coasts (HS)

• Maria Ohisalo: The government plans to start guaranteeing low-income electric car and solar panel loans for "several hundreds of millions". The chairperson of the Greens flashes even stricter climate goals for the next government term than for the current one (HS)

• According to a survey by the Finnish Nature Conservation Association, the majority of Finns support reducing forest cutting. 53 percent of Finns support reducing forest cutting in order to achieve climate goals. (SLL)

Climate pledges and action

• Renewable energy sector defies supply chain challenges to hit a record first-half for new investment. BloombergNEF reports an 11% year-on-year rise in renewable energy financing in the first half of 2022, for a total of $226 billion (Bloomberg New Energy Finance)

• The European Union will urge the world's biggest economies to improve their targets to fight climate change ahead of this year's U.N. climate summit and warn that states' current efforts fall short, according to a draft document seen by Reuters. The draft, which faces weeks of negotiations and could change before EU countries approve it in October, said polluters must revise their targets if the world is to stop global warming spiraling beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius (Reuters)

• India’s updated climate pledge to the Paris Agreement received the Union Cabinet’s nod August 3, 2022. The pledge will lay out India’s clean energy transition pathway from now through 2030 and will be communicated to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the Wire)

Latest from the academics, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration

• 'Dangerous' and 'extremely dangerous' heat stress to become more common by 2100. Combinations of heat and humidity that are dangerous to humans will become more frequent by 2100. A new statistical analysis finds that the tropics could be exposed to dangerous levels of heat stress most days of the year, and that the deadly heat waves of recent summers will become yearly occurrences in the mid-latitudes (Nature)

• China's cities leading the way on carbon reduction. Thirty-eight Chinese cities have reduced their emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) despite growing economies and populations for at least five years, a new study reveals (University of Birmingham)

• Researchers have reconstructed the extent of Switzerland's glacier ice loss in the 20th century. The researchers used historical imagery and conclude that the country's glaciers lost half their volume between 1931 and 2016 (ETH Zurich)

• Climate change likely to raise wheat prices in food-insecure regions and exacerbate economic inequality. Wheat is a key source of nutrition for people across the globe, providing 20% of calories and protein for 3.4 billion people worldwide. Even if we meet climate mitigation targets and stay under 2°C of warming, climate change is projected to significantly alter the yield and price of wheat in the coming years. Prices for the grain are likely to change unevenly and increase in much of the Global South, enhancing existing inequalities (Cell Press)

Picture of the week: Global investments in renewable energy