Sustainability Roundup

Good Morning,

Biggest B Corporation news witnessed to this day came yesterday. A half century after founding the outdoor apparel brand Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, the founder and enthusiastic rock climber, has given the company away.

Mr. Chouinard and his family have transferred their ownership of Patagonia, valued at about $3 billion, to a specially designed trust and a nonprofit organization. They were created to preserve the company’s independence and ensure that all of its profits — some $100 million a year — are used to combat climate change and protect undeveloped land around the globe.

Patagonia will continue to operate as a private, for-profit corporation, selling more than $1 billion worth of jackets, hats and ski pants each year. All the company’s voting stocks, roughly 2% of the overall shares, are now owned by a newly established entity known as the Patagonia Purpose Trust. The remaining 98% of Patagonia, its common shares, were transferred to a newly established nonprofit organization called the Holdfast Collective, which will now be the recipient of all the company’s profits. Each year, profits that are not reinvested back into the business will be distributed by Patagonia as a dividend to the Holdfast Collective to help fight the climate crisis. The company projects that it will pay out an annual dividend of roughly $100 million, depending on the health of the business.

"Kicking off its next 50 years, the company is 'going purpose' instead of 'going public'", the firm said in the press release.

Let's jump in to the other major news.

EU's Carbon Allowance (ETS) price development

UK's Carbon Allowance (ETS) price development

Major News Roundup

• Climate change likely increased extreme monsoon rainfall, flooding highly vulnerable communities in Pakistan. The country is reported to have received more than 3 times its usual rainfall in August, making it the wettest August since 1961. The two southern provinces, Sindh and Balochistan, each experienced their wettest August ever recorded, receiving 7 and 8 times their usual monthly totals (study by World Weather Attribution)

• The world is “heading in the wrong direction,” the United Nations says in a new report that pulls together the latest science on climate change. The World Meteorological Organization, in the latest stark warning about global warming, said weather-related disasters have increased fivefold over the last 50 years and are killing 115 per day on average—and the fallout is poised to worsen (WMO)

  • The new report shows that greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise to record highs. Fossil fuel emission rates are now above pre-pandemic levels, after a temporary drop due to lockdowns.

• European Union signaled yesterday a move away from wood energy, as lawmakers voted this week to phase out some wood-energy subsidies. Most primary woody biomass will no longer be subsidized, after the latest changes in draft directive (Financial Times)

• Private equity is still investing billions in dirty energy despite pledge to clean up. PE firms are exposing investors, including pensioners, to unknown financial risks as the planet burns and governments face escalating pressure to act, new research finds (PE Climate risk scorecard)

  • The first-of-its-kind climate risks scorecard ranks Carlyle, Warburg Pincus and KKR as the worst offenders among eight major private equity companies with significant fossil fuel portfolios. All three continue investing heavily in greenhouse-gas-emitting projects with no adequate plan on transitioning away from oil and gas

• In the U.S., documents obtained by congressional investigators show that oil industry executives privately downplayed their companies’ own public messages about efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and weakened industry-wide commitments to push for climate policies (New York Times)

  • At Royal Dutch Shell, an email sent by an employee, discussing talking points for Shell’s president for the United States, said that the company’s announcement of a pathway to “net zero” emissions “has nothing to do with our business plans.”

• Scientists are once again highlighting how failure to slow global warming will set off 'tipping points'. As global warming passes certain limits, dire changes will probably become irreversible, including the loss of polar ice sheets and the death of coral reefs (Science)

  • New paper by Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, among others, states that exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points

• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an American scientific and regulatory agency, issued its latest monthly report on climate trends and outlooks. Unsurprisingly, the results show all time temperatures: both Europe and North America experienced their warmest August in NOAA’s 143-year record. It was the sixth-warmest August on record globally - the 10 warmest August months have all occurred in the past 14 years (NOAA)

• World's biggest companies have a massive climate risk. Over 90% of the world’s largest companies will have at least one asset financially exposed to climate risks, such as wildfires or floods by the 2050s, data provided by S&P Global show. And more than a third of those companies will see at least one asset lose 20% or more of its value as the planet heats up (Bloomberg)

Latest from the environmental news in Finland

• On Thursday, the government submitted to parliament an amendment to the Waste Act, which would oblige the producers of several single-use plastic products to compensate the municipalities for the costs incurred in the waste management of the products and cleaning up the garbage (HS)

• GASUM's liquefied natural gas-carrying vessel Coral Energice was circling the Gulf of Finland and around Gotland for three weeks, which, from the point of view of emissions, makes no sense (HS)

  • Spoke person from the company said that: "Gas prices are at a record high, which has significantly affected the entire energy and gas market as well as the amount of gas purchased by customers. Unfortunately, our logistics capacity is not in full use now."

• Ilmatar plans to build a 550 MW solar energy park in Sweden. The project, one of Europe's largest solar energy parks, is located in Östergötland in Motala municipality (Company PR)

Climate pledges and action

• Amazon, the retail giant, has become the largest buyer of renewable energy in the world. The firm has been in the largest ever solar and wind shopping spree, buying 15.7 gigawatts globally over the past three years, nearly equal to the total energy demands of the Seattle based company (Time)

• The US will make announcements on how it will assist African nations in setting up early-warning weather systems at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in November, the country’s special presidential envoy for climate, John Kerry, said (Bloomberg)

• Race to develop smaller direct carbon capture technology solutions is increasing. Mitsubishi Heavy is starting to produce compact smaller size devices, that suck carbon dioxide from the emissions of small polluters before they reach the atmosphere (Bloomberg)

Latest from the academics on environment, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration

• Overall warming of up to 5°C in this century projected for the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. A new report identifies the EMME area as a climate change hot spot, and concludes that the region is warming almost two times faster than the global average, and more rapidly than other inhabited parts of the world (Reviews of Geophysics)

• A breakthrough discovery in carbon capture conversion for ethylene production. Researchers have discovered a way to convert 100% of carbon dioxide captured from industrial exhaust into ethylene, a key building block for plastic products. Because the system runs on electricity, the use of renewable energy can make the process carbon negative (University of Illinois Chicago)

Picture of the week: CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, latest measurement August 2022 (Nasa)