7 years, 1% increase: Black representation in tech barely improving

March 29, 2022

(CIO Dive) In recent years, top-flight tech companies devoted resources and laid out plans to address diversity and cultural challenges within their organizations. Despite efforts, the data show improvement has been minimal in terms of the racial composition of the IT workforce. “We haven’t seen the increase because there hasn’t been a real commitment to addressing…

Despite ‘Net Zero’ Rhetoric, World’s Biggest Banks Continued to Pour Billions into Fossil Fuel Expansion in 2021

March 29, 2022

(Rainforest Action Network) The 13th annual Banking on Climate Chaos report, the most comprehensive global analysis on fossil fuel banking to date, underscores the stark disparity between public climate commitments being made by the world’s largest banks, versus the reality of their largely business-as-usual financing to the fossil fuel industry. The report documents that in…

The White House wants to know whether crypto is bad or good for the planet

March 28, 2022

(Protocol) The White House would like to get to the bottom of this whole “is cryptocurrency going to destroy the climate or not” thing. The Office of Science and Technology Policy announced it’s putting together a report that assesses whether digital assets “impede or advance efforts to tackle climate change” and makes moves toward a…

The climate divide: How Facebook’s algorithm amplifies climate disinformation

March 28, 2022

(Global Witness) In April of last year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted during congressional testimony that climate disinformation is ‘a big issue’ on the platform. In an effort to combat this, Facebook created its ‘climate science centre’; an information hub designed to ‘connect people with science-based information on climate change’. Facebook also expanded their flagging…

Can Blockchain Networks Fix Carbon Offsets?

March 27, 2022

(Coindesk) Projects like Toucan, Regen and Moss say on-chain carbon credits will increase transparency and improve accessibility to the carbon credit market. Another project, KlimaDAO, aims to bump up the price of carbon credits by tapping into a corner of crypto where memes are gospel, Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk is king and everyone is…

How ESG Is Shaping Private Equity: What Is On The Horizon?

March 22, 2022

(Mondaq) Fundraising in private equity in recent years was shaped by myriad forces, including ESG considerations. In this Q&A with Claudia Arango, we explore private equity fundraising trends in Latin America after 2020. Claudia is the Managing Partner of Exagon Impact Capital, with a career of more than 20 years in private equity and a…

Boardrooms with more women deliver more on climate, says Arabesque

March 22, 2022

(Reuters) Companies with more women on their boards are more likely to be on track to meet global climate goals, analysis by investment research and asset manager Arabesque showed on Tuesday. The study, the first to address the topic, found the most diverse 20% of the world’s 1,000 biggest companies were more aligned with a…

Carbon removal’s place in the climate fight

March 21, 2022

(Axios) Actor and climate tech investor Robert Downey Jr. stirred controversy last week when he tweeted that “the technologies that suck carbon out of the air and capture it” are as equally important in global efforts to halt global warming, as “building new renewable energy.” Why it matters: To climate tech investors (and scientists), the…

Climate tech companies in the spotlight as SEC votes on new ESG disclosure proposal

March 21, 2022

(Fortune) All eyes are on the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is expected to vote on a new set of climate disclosure rules for public companies in its meeting today that began at 11 a.m. The guidance would make it easier for investors to make an apples-to-apples comparison of companies’ carbon footprint. It will also…

Why Bill Gates’ climate VC firm is focused on the tech we don’t have

March 20, 2022

(Protocol) Breakthrough Energy has emerged as one of the most prominent climate venture capital and policy shops in the U.S. That’s perhaps unsurprising given it’s the brainchild of Bill Gates, a guy you’ve probably heard of. Gates himself put a lot of the thinking behind Breakthrough Energy in his 2021 book “How to Avoid a…