🌱 The Grumpy Optimists #83
Another week, another positive climate update and a great song recommendation.
Happy Monday. 👋
Welcome back to another episode of The Grumpy Optimists. A relatively short one today after I spent far too long procrastinating by gardening and prepping my veg patch for the next few weeks and sowing seeds (yes, I am 26, not 46). I felt slightly hazy this week after speaking about sustainability at a beer conference in Liverpool last week so if I have missed something I should know about, let me know. Without further ado, this week we cover:
A positive news article
An important thing I think you should read
Great music recommendation
👀 Articles to read
🐟 Historic moment to protect Vjosa river in Albania. The Vsoja is one of the last free-flowing rivers in the world and last week the Albania government declared it a national park, making it the first wild river national park in Europe. Companies like Patagonia campaigned to protect the river system from being damned for hydropower, massively impacting nature and biodiversity. A really big win that puts Albania at the forefront of river protection.
🌊 One man and his passion for rewilding kelp forests. Steve Allnutt, an NHS worker, has made it his mission to rewild 3 hectares of kelp beds in Sussex. Steve has made it his mission to rewild 3 hectares of kelp beds after being concerned by how much kelp has disappeared from practices like bottom trawling. The beauty of this story is not just what Steve is doing, but that he was trying to raise £3,000 to support his work but the article by The Guardian has helped him raise a whopping £16,500!!
🔥 Data centre to heat Devon swimming pool. A washing-machine-sized data centre is to be used to heat a leisure centre pool in Exmouth, Devon. The pool will be heated to 30C° 60% of the time, saving the leisure centre thousands in the process. Neat.
🐛 Waitrose and Tesco turn food waste into animal and insect feed. Waitrose will look to separate food waste across 20 stores, with products containing meat and fish sent to the pet food sector with the rest used for animal feed. Tesco is taking a similar approach, redistributing food no longer fit for human consumption to be used to grow insect protein.
🌡️ Geothermal startup use wells to create a giant underground battery. Fervo Energy, a Houston-based geothermal power startup, has conducted an experiment in northern Nevada that suggests it can create flexible geothermal power plants capable of ramping electricity output up or down as needed. The system can store up energy for hours or even days and deliver it back over similar periods, effectively acting as a giant and very long-lasting battery. This could fill a critical gap in today’s grids, making it cheaper and easier to eliminate greenhouse-gas emissions from electricity systems. It could be a huge way to unlock capacity in a fully renewable system but it requires mass scale-up and lower costs to be commercially viable.
☀️ Solar and wind dominate India’s energy growth. India's power capacity increased by 15.7 GW in 2022, with 92% of the increase coming from solar power while coal only accounted for 5%. This is equivalent to the entire solar fleet of the UK as of 2021 and represents a 17% increase over the previous year.
🚜 Carlsberg expand regenerative barley use. Carlsberg Group are looking to expand its use of regenerative barley as part of some of its beer range. Regenerative barley refers to a method of farming barley that focuses on improving soil health and restoring biodiversity. This approach to farming is intended to be sustainable and environmentally friendly and aims to create a system that benefits both the farmers and the environment. Breweries like Gipsy Hill (also a Zevero customer, shameless plug) in the UK are already using regenerative barley in some of their beers, signalling a shift towards breweries playing their part in tackling climate action.
🛢️Biden approves Willow oil and gas project. Despite talking last week about how TikTok was being used to fight against the Willow oil and gas project in Alaska, Biden approved the ‘carbon bomb’, effectively adding two million cars to US roads every year.
Thank you for reading this week's episode of The Grumpy Optimists. This episode was written while battling my fourth cold of the year spurred on by an afternoon planting seeds and prepping the garden for the summer, bloody worth it. It was also written while listening to this incredible video from Dijon, I highly recommend you listen and feel happy about how great life is.
The Grumpy Optimists 💚
Loved the kelp project, very inspirational. Thanks for newsletter!