Britain’s very first 100mph battery-diesel hybrid train leaves Marylebone station in London today February 10, 2022 Britain’s very first 100mph battery-diesel hybrid train is entering passenger service to cut carbon emissions and boost air quality. Chiltern Railways will introduce the train on its 40-mile route between London Marylebone and Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, today. There are plans to use it between the capital and Oxford in the coming months. It was developed by [...]
Exclusive: Sceptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg on 50 years of misguided climate panic February 9, 2022 Bjorn Lomborg is President of the Copenhagen Consensus and Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His latest book is “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.” Writing exclusively for City A.M. today, Lomborg zooms in on half a century of what has been, [...]
Exclusive: ESG consultancy sector to swell to nearly £12bn in next five years, says industry insider February 7, 2022 Spending by companies on ESG and sustainability consulting is set to more than double over the next five years to a record £11.8bn, or $16bn, according to a new report that was exclusively shared with City A.M. today. The market will grow at a CAGR of 17 per cent, from around $6.24 billion at the end [...]
Weekend chat: Many companies and investors fear greenwashing claims, says sustainability guru February 6, 2022 Increasing biodiversity and expanding nature-based solutions to solve the climate crisis through so-called voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) are currently a hot topic. VCMs, which encompass all transactions of carbon offsets that are not purchased with the intention to surrender into an active regulated carbon market, do include offsets that are purchased with the intent to re-sell [...]
Hasta la vista: Arnold Schwarzenegger vows to ‘terminate pollution’ at climate change summit February 1, 2022 Former California governor and Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger has vowed to “terminate pollution” at the sixth annual Austrian World Summit climate conference. The former bodybuilder and actor said he and Austrian president Alexander Van der Bellen would be welcoming “climate action heroes” from around the world for the event. The conference will take place in [...]
How can the blockchain help tackle climate change? February 1, 2022 | City Talk When you think of all the use cases for blockchain technology, solving the existential threat that is climate change is probably not one of them. If anything, crypto has had to play defence in 2021 when it comes to environmental issues, as big questions have been posed about the industry’s energy consumption and sustainability. Well, [...]
HSBC pushes further into Saudi Arabia: Canary Wharf approves $10bn loan so mass polluter Saudi Aramco can expand January 27, 2022 HSBC is in line to finance a $10bn revolving credit facility to one of the world’s biggest polluters, the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, or Saudi Aramco, despite the bank’s commitment to ‘Net Zero emissions by 2050’. HSBC’s latest venture in the Middle Eastern kingdom, in partnership with Standard Chartered, is likely to draw scrutiny from [...]
Nearly 2 million people were killed by air pollution in just one year January 22, 2022 New research published this morning shows that air pollution killed just over 1.8m people in 2019 alone. The study into fine particulate matter concentrations and the mortality rate in cities found that approximately 86 per cent (2.5 billion people) of urban inhabitants lived in areas that exceeded the World Health Organisation’s 2005 air quality guidelines. [...]
Exclusive: Most investors could not care less about ESG and sustainability January 20, 2022 With COP26 a few months behind us, more than half of UK investors admit sustainable investing is not a priority for them, with just under 45 per cent saying it is important and it is a priority in their investment portfolio. In fact, less than a third of British investors say COP26 and the UK [...]
Could Bitcoin be powered by volcanoes? January 18, 2022 | City Talk One topic at the forefront of crypto conversions in 2021 has been energy consumption. Due to record blockchain growth, coupled with the copious amounts of electricity needed to mine bitcoin and other assets, the quest for more renewable energy sources has become a top priority for an industry looking to lower its carbon footprint. For [...]