Green roofs, steel and carbon capture sustainability
In this issue:
Guilty by association
This week, Planet Tracker revealed many corporates’ memberships of trade associations are at odds with their stated climate goals. The report tells us only 8% of S&P100 companies assessed the climate policies of the trade associations they were members off. Planet Tracker provides a 5-point list of good practice towards alignment between corporate climate statements and association membership. Obviously, alignment with CEP carries no such risks.
Carbon capture comes with risks
Carbon capture has seen many developments, has obvious attractions and has received much publicity recently. Concerns are emerging, though, about its sustainability if uptake becomes extensive. A team of international scientists looking at nature-based CDR (carbon dioxide removal), including bioenergy with carbon capture technologies, has warned that risks to sustainability will emerge well below the technically feasible level of capture estimated by the IPCC. They go on to suggest similar risks will exist for direct air and ocean-based capture.
Supply chain reporting creaking
At least that is true in the UK, where Make UK reports 77% of firms are receiving ESG requests from their customers but 48% are inadequately resourced to comply. Partly because of that, 45% of companies report they are not aware of their suppliers’ performance against ESG targets.
Economic green steel from aluminium waste
Scientists from the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung have developed a process that makes steel from the red mud waste of aluminium manufacturing. Is it significant? Well, the numbers are staggering. The aluminium industry creates around 180 million tonnes of red mud a year. It’s estimated there are around 4 billion tonnes of red mud accumulated from previous production. The new process could convert that 4 billion tonnes of waste into 700 million tonnes of steel, which is about a third of the annual global output of an industry that emits 8% of global CO2 emissions. The scientists claim the process is CO2-free as it uses (green) hydrogen plasma. If true, that conversion would save 1.5 billion tonnes of CO2. It’s not clear if their analysis incorporates the financial and emission costs of collecting and transporting the mud but with demand for steel and aluminium predicted to increase by 60% by 2050, it’s an opportunity not to be ignored.
Green roof can save 7.7% of energy
A case study in Seoul tells us the cooling effect of a green roof can reduce energy intensity in a building by around 7.7%.