🍄 6 Things To Learn Before Breakfast: POST-SCARCITY CULTURE

Hello, we’re Alice and we are always in a state of wander. 2030. The milestone year for commercial, industrial and government sustainability agendas. It was the target set by the United Nations Global Impact’s “Agenda 2030” with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which clearly defined the world we want to live in—and one unified agenda which all 193 Member States of the United Nations adopted a plan for achieving a better future for all. The EU now aims to be climate-neutral by 2050—an economy with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

It’s already 2024…so how are we doing? Do a quick search on “2030 sustainability goals” and you will see many programs and missions set for transitioning to a net zero world… and some stakes extended to 2035 and beyond. Scalability and speed have been the challenge—some Goliaths of commerce say—but the David’s are blazing us forward.

Markets understand that it’s too expensive to keep powering our economy by digging up and burning fossil fuel. In most places by 2030, solar and wind will become cheaper and renewables are set to contribute 80% of new power generation capacity by 2030, with solar alone accounting for more than half of this expansion. Technologies that grow chemicals in bioreactors or boost crop yields are expected to outperform 100-year-old industrial processes that are dirty and dangerous. By 2030, we’re on a clear trajectory to 8.5 billion people on this planet. The most profitable companies meeting this population growth demand are those that sell products and services that use less carbon because they are ultimately the cheapest to offer. In simple terms, cutting gigatons of CO₂, mass market adoption and generating profit will go hand-in-hand. We are creating an interdependent post-scarcity society where biology is the driver for abundance. There’s nothing at this point that is impossible for a biological system to make and produce in a way that’s greener, less energy consumptive and more precise. Every time you can bring down costs, there's a potential to raise the standard of living.

🏦 Enter the Infrastructure Startup. In the race to build green infrastructure, venture capitalists are getting comfortable backing a whole new kind of company, one that has little or no tech innovation of their own but is instead focused on building existing technology — for example, the tech to produce green methanol — at scale. Arne Morteani, investor at Kiko Ventures is the person responsible for coining the term "infrastructure startup" — a new generation of startups promising to really move the needle on climate tech.

“We're moving into a phase where we're going to see a rollout in many, many areas of climate tech. It's going to be all kinds of alternative fuels, alternative materials. It's, potentially, going to be alternative food sources and proteins,” says Morteani. Morteani uses the analogy of financing infrastructure to that of private equity investment into restaurants. He told Sifted that if you build a new concept restaurant, your return on investment is limited and not necessarily scalable. But if you back the rollout of those new restaurants, the returns are greater. But in climate, the job is falling to startups precisely because of the speed of the rollout: they’re better equipped to move quickly than the older, corporate industrial players. That’s key given how much we need green infrastructure, fast. Venture Radar lists infrastructure startups for sustainability that crosses all sectors.

🌳 Agriculture and forestry make up about 24% of global greenhouse gas emissions—that’s 8 billion metric tons of CO₂ equivalent in our atmosphere. And these emissions are projected to grow 80% by 2050 with increased demand for meat and dairy. Carbon-negative processes aren’t just novel—they are necessary. By using elements of the air to produce food and beverages, innovative companies are removing greenhouse gases from our atmosphere and helping our planet renew. “Air meat” is crafted through a process similar to how beer and yogurt are made and can be produced exponentially faster than traditional meat production. Air Protein is a modern food company, crafting the world’s first air meat to feed us sustainably, help renew the planet’s resources, and eliminate compromise between nutrition, taste, and climate impact.

🥕 Carrot over stick, fight carbon with coin! The carbon currency is the economic instrument of the Global Carbon Reward (GCR) policy. The main function of the currency is to deliver public and private finance at a scale that can address the ambition of the Paris Climate Agreement—and to do so without imposing any direct costs on citizens, businesses or governments. The carbon currency will be a new type of ‘representative money’ because it will represent carbon that has been mitigated. This is analogous to representing gold in storage under a gold exchange standard.

💡 Twelve is a new kind of chemical company built for the climate era. Their breakthrough technology eliminates emissions by turning CO₂ into essential products. They call it carbon transformation. Reinventing what it means to be a chemical company, Twelve believes that “if it's made from oil we can make it from air instead.” It’s Opus™ technology works like industrial photosynthesis, turning CO₂, water and renewable energy into hydrocarbons, the building blocks of the material world. From sneakers to jet fuel, Twelve is on a mission to create a climate positive world and a fossil free future.

💨 Made of Air embodies the concept of carbon-negative materials. The company’s biochar-based material, made of 90% atmospheric carbon, can replace thermoplastics in a wide variety of applications across the built environment and in consumer goods. Made of Air’s biochar-based materials, made out of waste biomass (like tree clippings or crop residue), can be used in everything from buildings to furniture to automotive parts. It represents a durable alternative to the plastics that big oil companies are betting on to fill the gap as cars and utilities go electric.

♾️ Performance materials that fight plastic pollution and climate change. Novoloop’s Lifecycling™ platform transforms non-recyclable plastics, such as bags and packaging, into performance materials with a small carbon footprint. They chemically alter the post-consumer polyethylene to create building blocks, which is used to make thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). This reduces carbon emissions by up to 41% compared to traditional methods.products.

💡 Why put a price on carbon? Because it’s the single most powerful tool available to reduce carbon pollution. When government puts a price on carbon, it sends a signal through the economy. Businesses respond by becoming more energy efficient and developing new sources of clean, renewable energy. These innovations will not only lead to reduced greenhouse gas emissions, but also provide abundant, affordable, and reliable clean energy and drive us faster toward net-zero carbon pollution. The list of countries that already practice some method of national carbon pricing includes Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, the European Union (27 countries), Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, the UK, and Ukraine. Other countries that are considering joining them include Brazil, Brunei, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam. Of all the world’s developed economies, only Australia and the U.S. do not have nationwide carbon pricing in place.

“Alice laughed. ‘There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.' ‘I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’”
― Lewis Carroll

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