🌱 The Grumpy Optimists #116
The Grumpy Optimists is back with your weekly positive climate
Happy Monday. 👋
Welcome back to The Grumpy Optimists, your weekly positive climate newsletter. Last week I took a week off the blog to enjoy a rare day off for my birthday, but this week, we’re back into it and there’s a lot to cover.
🛢️ COP28 - what’s happened, the good news and why I’m signing to keep 1.5°C alive.
🚗 Paris triples SUV parking tariffs and the UK bans airline adverts for greenwashing.
🧪 Innovation makes solar panels more e powerful and helps food grow from wood.
Without further ado, let’s dig in, shall we?
From COP28
Personally, I find COP events far too overwhelming to keep up and over the last few years I’ve found the best resources to be a few people on X and Carbon Brief. So instead of me giving you a rundown of everything that has happened at COP28, I’ll link the resources below so that they’re in date for when you read this newsletter.
The overarching opinion is that we’re still not doing enough and this week will be critical if we have any chance of keeping temperatures below 1.5°C. That’s why I joined 1000+ leaders from around the world calling for President Sultan Al Jaber to support the delivery of a 1.5°C-aligned outcome at the UN climate conference. I spend every day of my life working to make 1.5°C a reality with Zevero, we need those at the top to make that a possibility. You can read more about the letter here.
🇺🇸 US set to slash methane levels by 80%. The US has announced a plan to cut methane emissions from the oil and gas industry by 80% in the next 15 years with $1 billion committed by major oil companies. The plans will prevent 58 million tons of methane emissions from going into the atmosphere, equivalent to 1.5 billion metric tons of CO2, from 2024 to 2038. However, to play a grumpy role, nothing is currently being done about methane emissions from agriculture, the highest source of methane emissions globally.
🏭 US joins 56 nations in kicking out coal. The United States has committed to phasing out coal power plants by 2035 and has joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance, a group that aims to phase out coal power plants. Despite often seeing China in the news for their coal use, the US consumed the 3rd most coal of any country in 2022. The move is also seen as a way to pressure China and India, which are building new coal plants, to reduce their reliance on coal. Despite a global commitment to phase down unabated coal use, global coal consumption has increased since the COP26 agreement in 2021.
👀 Articles to read
♻️ Circular packaging comes to the spirits industry. Spirits giant Diageo has partnered with ecoSPIRITS to launch a keg-style packaging system for brands like Smirnoff, Gordon's, and Captain Morgan. Once empty, the kegs can be collected, cleaned, refilled, and redistributed, aiming to be reused up to 150 times and eliminate approximately 1,000 glass bottles, resulting in a 4.2 tonne CO2e emission reduction, equivalent to 1/3 of a person's annual GHG emissions in the UK.
🛫 UK bans airline adverts for greenwashing and misleading customers. The UK's Advertising Standards Authority has banned advertisements from Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, and Etihad Airways stating that the ads gave a misleading impression of the airlines' environmental impact and their ability to reduce the impact on the planet by flying with them.
You might be wondering how they claimed to do so. Well, Lufthansa said that customers could offset some of their CO2 emissions (probably with low-cost/low-impact offsets). The others? They didn't say anything!? Interestingly, Air France-KLM claimed the ad was created using an AI tool. This calls into question the future of advertising using AI and the need to protect consumers from greenwashing. If the AI tool is learning from what's already out there, there's no wonder it’s producing greenwashing content.
💸 Paris to triple parking prices for SUVs. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, will look to raise £35m in additional taxes by tripling the prices for parking an SUV in Paris with the aim to push them out of the city and limit air pollution. The price increases won’t apply to residents and are instead being used to incentivise other forms of transport into the city. I for one am all for it, who needs to drive a stupidly large car into a city? The proposal will go to a referendum on the 4th of February.
🪱 Innovation turns waste wood into seafood. Researchers have developed a new type of aquaculture system that can grow shipworms. The researchers have renamed shipworms "Naked Clams" and believe that they could be a sustainable source of food because they grow quickly, are high in protein and nutrients and can be grown in a completely controlled environment. The researchers plan to make Naked Clams more palatable by fortifying them with omega-3 fatty acids and turning them into products like fish fingers and fishcakes. I’m not sure you’ll see them on a pub menu soon, but innovation like this is what’s needed to create sustainable food.
🛏️ Ikea launches mattress removal and recycling scheme. Mattresses are not easy to dispose of and are hard to recycle, but in the UK we still get rid of 6.4 million mattresses a year, with over 11 million in the US, currently, the majority end up in landfills or are burnt for energy. Ikea has partnered with the Furniture Recycling (TFR) Group to help turn mattresses back into resources, separating the components and recycling what they can. That can help you sleep easier…
☀️ How fish oil could help boost solar panel efficiency. Solar panels become less efficient as they heat up, but scientists in Korea have developed a new type of solar panel that uses fish oil to filter out excess heat and light, making the panels more efficient. The fish oil-based system achieves an efficiency of 84.4%, compared to 79.3% for water-based systems and 18% for standalone solar cells. This is great, but it could lead to more overfishing and could cause problems elsewhere in the complex system of the planet.
Brewing and sustainability, what do consumers think? In the summer, the wonderful Phoebe Sanderson worked with my company, Zevero, to understand what consumers think about sustainability in the brewing industry and the results are incredibly interesting. We got opinions from over 250 consumers and found the important message coming out of the survey is clear. Consumers are willing to choose sustainable options, but they don’t know what they look like and that’s not surprising.
🌍 75% of consumers at least sometimes choose the sustainable option. Sustainability is clearly important to consumers.
🎨 55% of customers can't tell if a beer is sustainable. Branding and marketing are ineffective at communicating how and why a beer is more sustainable. There's lots of work to be done here.
💰 Consumers are willing to pay £0.10 to £2 more for sustainable options. Price and quality are still the primary decision-making factors.
🍺 Reporting sustainability clearly and through engaging formats is important to consumers. Consumers quickly know if a company is taking action or just greenwashing. They also want more engaging ways to know if a beer is sustainable, a website page will no longer cut it.
🤝 Climates X Memes
It’s not really something to laugh at, but reporters from COP28 are complaining of coughs and sore throats from the air pollution in the UAE, a country with high air pollution due to its production of fossil fuels. You can’t make it up, can you?
This week’s episode was written after a wholesome day out of London and a busy Sunday. I’ve had Overmono’s Boiler Room set on repeat for the last two weeks, a great work playlist.
Last week was a great chance to recharge, enjoy my birthday and spend the day recovering from my yearly birthday run. This year, 27 miles for 27 years and a LOT of carrot cake to replenish.
I’ll be back next week for potentially the last Grumpy Optimist of the year…shocking, I know! For now, have a great week.
George, the Grumpy Optimist 💚