Uncategorized

(Time) In a few minutes, electronic music will start pulsing, stuffed animals will be flung through the air, women will emerge spinning Technicolor hula hoops, and a mechanical bull will rev into action, bucking off one delighted rider after another. It’s the closing party of ETHDenver, a weeklong cryptocurrency conference dedicated to the blockchain Ethereum.…

(Protocol) Tech companies are bending a major business trade group toward backing President Joe Biden’s climate agenda. The Business Roundtable — a lobbying group representing the most powerful CEOs in the U.S. — has voiced support for some of the climate policies in the Build Back Better agenda, even as it worked to undermine the…

(The Wall Street Journal) A company that can measure the carbon footprint of Parmesan shavings for a salad maker was valued at $1 billion by its investors last month. Watershed Technology Inc. sells software that allows companies to quickly work out their environmental impact. That information is in high demand for investors and increasingly by…

(Climate Tech VC) Emily Kirsch and her team have shaped Powerhouse Ventures to sit at the intersection of big clients, big energy, and the software they’ll need to bend the cost curve for climate. With a new $70m fund that’s 10x the size of Fund I, Powerhouse has tracked the trendlines from early cleantech investing…

(Bloomberg Green) Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed Europe’s landscape when it comes to energy security, trade, and deep decarbonization. When I first wrote about this two weeks ago, I called it “The shock of the old, and the promise of the new.” Another way to consider the change is as an open window — specifically…

(The Wall Street Journal) Companies are increasingly using their venture-capital arms to pour money into startups that could help them profit from the energy transition. Last year, corporate venture funds invested $23.2 billion in businesses in the climate-technology sector—a broad category spanning renewable energy, energy storage, electric vehicles and more—according to PitchBook Data Inc. The…

(INSEAD Knowledge) Venture capitalists’ role as funding source and mentor of tech start-ups makes them uniquely placed to press for more responsible use of technology. When whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed last year that Facebook knew about the impact of its products on teenagers and the extent of misinformation on its platforms, it was only the…

(Fortune) So says the world’s foremost energy watchdog, which just released a new report on the global outlook for oil, its first since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It predicts slower economic growth this year, but more opportunities for countries to transition away from oil altogether. The International Energy Agency’s latest oil market report states that…

(GreenBiz) When it was founded roughly 23 years ago, Salesforce was unique in many ways, not just for its core product — software delivered only via the “cloud” — but also for its early embrace of what has become the Pledge 1% movement. It’s a model that designates 1 percent of the company’s equity, revenue,…

(Banking Exchange) A new Deloitte survey of 300 senior finance, legal, and sustainability executives shows that the growing expectation for high-quality ESG reporting information is high on the boardroom agenda. Findings from Deloitte revealed that leaders are working toward “more reliable and timely” data, with investments in technology, controls design and implementation resources, and a…