How Battery-Swap Networks Are Preventing Emergency Blackouts
June 11th, 2024
Via MIT Technology Review, a look at how Taiwan’s Gogoro’s 12,500 green-and-white battery-swap stations – built to allow users of electric scooters to drop off an empty battery and get a fully charged one immediately – automatically stopped drawing electricity to stabilize the grid after the 7.4 magnitude earthquake there this April: On the morning […]
Read more »The Cement That Could Turn Buildings Into Giant Batteries
June 11th, 2024
Via BBC, a look at how an innovative cement could turn buildings into giant batteries: Concrete is perhaps the most commonly used building material in the world. With a bit of tweaking, it could help to power our homes too. On a laboratory bench in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a stack of polished cylinders of black-coloured concrete […]
Read more »Beyond the Yuck Factor: Cities Turn to ‘Extreme’ Water Recycling
June 10th, 2024
Via Yale e360, a look at how San Francisco is at the forefront of a movement to recycle wastewater from commercial buildings, homes, and neighborhoods and use it for toilets and landscaping. This decentralized approach, proponents say, will drive down demand in an era of increasing water scarcity: In downtown San Francisco, in a cavernous […]
Read more »As Water Shortages Plague Bogotá and Other Cities, Nature-Based Solutions Can Help
June 7th, 2024
Via WRI, a look at how cities can take advantage of nature-based solutions to help combat drought: Bogotá, Colombia is in the throes of a water crisis. After several months of dry weather caused by El Niño, the Chingaza reservoir system, which provides 70% of Bogotá’s water, reached its lowest level in history. The city’s over 8 […]
Read more »Paris Wanted an AC-Free Olympics. Visiting Nations Had Other Plans.
June 6th, 2024
Via The Washington Post, an article on Paris’s sustainable geothermal cooling system: For all the steps Paris organizers have taken to put on the greenest Olympics ever, their boldest measure — the one they’ve touted again and again — pertains to the dorms in the Athletes’ Village. The rooms don’t have air-conditioning. Because of other cooling measures, […]
Read more »The Electric Vehicle of Cement Making
June 3rd, 2024
Via The Cool Down, an article on one company’s major strides with game-changing low-carbon cement: ‘the electric vehicle of cement making’ Construction is a dirty business, but some companies are working to help clean up its act. One such company is Sublime Systems, which recently announced, along with WS Development, the first commercial application of low-carbon Sublime Cement in One Boston Wharf […]
Read more »'Black Swans' are highly improbable events that come as a surprise, have major disruptive effects, and that are often rationalized after the fact as if they had been predictable to begin with. In our rapidly warming world, such events are occurring ever more frequently and include wildfires, floods, extreme heat, and drought.
'Green Shoots' is a term used to describe signs of economic recovery or positive data during a downturn. It references a period of growth and recovery, when plants start to show signs of health and life, and, therefore, has been employed as a metaphor for a recovering economy.
It is my hope that Black Swans / Green Shoots will help readers understand both climate-activated risk and opportunity so that you may invest in, advise, or lead organizations in the context of increasing pressures of global urbanization, resource scarcity, and perils relating to climate change. I believe that the tools of business and finance can help individuals, businesses, and global society make informed choices about who and what to protect, and I hope that this blog provides some insight into the policy and private sector tools used to assess investments in resilient reinforcement, response, or recovery.