Here is today’s sustainability news, research and analysis for technology partners; renewable energy and green IT service providers; management consultants; CIOs; chief sustainability officers (CSOs) and c-suite members.
A. Sustainable Technology, Talent, Partnerships and Green IT Alliances
1. Solar Energy - IT Services: NTT demonstrated new solar energy developments at the company's annual R&D Forum. The new developments involve harvesting the sun with artificial photosynthesis. And unleashing the power of solar farms in space.
2. Energy Use Dashboard: Altus Power has unveiled Altus IQ, which is designed to "give comprehensive energy usage insights to clients as they strive to achieve ambitious net-zero goals." The all-in-one cloud-based dashboard uses proprietary formulas and industry standard data sources to "give businesses a detailed understanding of their energy usage and empower them with actionable insights to reduce emissions, generate solar savings and meaningfully improve their carbon footprint across properties," Altus Power said.
3. Survey: Fully 85% of companies say it's difficult to set or achieve strategic sustainability goals for procurement because they aren't sure if their suppliers that follow sustainable practices, an Amazon procurement survey found.
4. Gaming: Cityscapes -- a game that focuses on sustainability city design -- is an Apple App Store Award Finalist for 2023.
5. Data Center Cooling: LiquidStack announced direct-to-chip liquid cooling solutions for AI, HPC and cloud computing applications.
6. Data Erasure: Keep an eye on Extreme Protocol Solutions (EPS), which specializes in data erasure solutions for data centers, company assets and more. The company believes the best way to lower a carbon footprint is to not destroy the asset -- but rather the data. After the data erasure process is completed, the asset can be resold, repurposed or reused, EPS notes.
7. SAP Partner: Protera, a software-enabled services provider that has supported such green companies as Ingevity and Greenskies in their digital transformation efforts, is now positioned to serve companies like that to an even greater extent. The reason? Protera has received official SAP service authorization for RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, SAP S/4HANA (on-prem) and SAP BTP, the company said.
8. Talent: Schneider Electric has named Heather Cykoski as senior VP, Industrial Automation, U.S.A. & Process Automation, Canada.
9. Partnership - Carbon Measurement: One10 and Cedara are partnering to "address the pressing need for accurate carbon measurement and reduction strategies."
10. Partnership - Building Energy Management: Tango, a provider of cloud-based real estate, facilities, and sustainability management software, has partnered with the Institute for Market Transformation (IMT), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that catalyzes demand for high-performing, energy-efficient buildings.
11. Partnership - Communications Hardware: Kapsch TrafficCom (KTC) and Exeger have partnered to develop self-charging, environmentally friendly communications solutions -- which have the potential to reduce the carbon footprint of some devices by up to 50%, the two companies said.
B. Sustainability M&A, Investments, Funding and Green IT Business Launches
1. Investment - Batteries and Energy Storage: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) has invested in Element Energy -- a developer of energy storage technology. Element, founded in 2019, has "developed proprietary hardware and software algorithms applicable to both 1st life and 2nd life batteries to improve visualization, battery safety and efficiency," the companies said. Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.
2. Financial Services: JPMorgan Chase is changing how it calculates greenhouse gas emissions that flow from the funding it provides oil and gas companies, Bloomberg reported. The Wall Street giant run by CEO Jamie Dimon said it’s adding its financing of zero-carbon power generation to the calculus.
3. M&A - Environmental Consulting: Barge Design Solutions has acquired Environmental Consulting & Design (EC&D), a Florida -based consulting firm specializing in environmental permitting, land planning, mitigation banking, land management and geospatial services. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
4. M&A List: Here's our database of all M&A deals involving sustainability, green IT and renewable energy buyers, sellers and investors.
C. Regional and Global Sustainability Policies and News
1. COP28: China and the U.S. have agreed to back a global target to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030, the two superpowers said in a statement, Reuters reported. The agreement arrives two weeks before nearly 200 countries meet for the COP28 climate conference.
2. Australia - ESG Consulting: Phillips Group of Brisbane, Australia, has launched a dedicated ESG and Sustainability Practice. The company specializes in communications, creative and digital services.
3. Germany - IT Services: Fujitsu has realigned its services business in Germany. The organization now focuses on Fujitsu Uvance for sustainability solutions; digital applications; and public cloud solutions. The realignment includes selling off the Fujitsu Services GmbH business to AEQUITA. The buyer essentially gains private cloud solutions, managed services for on-premise customer environments, and other managed service solutions. The sold assets remain based in existing data centers in Frankfurt.the Frankfurt area.
4. China - Zero- Carbon Factory Partnership: Shanghai Electric has inked a "Carbon & Digital" Joint Laboratory Strategic Cooperation Agreement with Johnson Controls. The partnership, with its focus on expediting the development of zero-carbon factories and industrial parks, will see the two companies establish a green and low-carbon supply chain system in an effort to empower the energy sector to enhance efficiency and reduce carbon footprints, the two organizations said.
5. South Korea - Data Center Financing: Digital Edge will receive a $335 million green loan to develop a 100MW data center project in Seoul. It will be the largest commercial colocation facility in South Korea. Crédit Agricole CIB and ING are backing the data center buildout.
6. United States Energy Grid: WestRock has entered into two virtual power purchase agreements (VPPAs) with ENGIE North America. The VPPAs are designed to add renewable energy to the U.S. energy grid and mark a step forward in WestRock’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the companies said.
D. Sustainability and Green Technology Conference Calendar
- Wetex 2023 (November 15-17, Dubai, United Arab Emirates)
- Houston Carbon Management Community Summit (November 16-17, Houston, Texas)
- ESG Evolve 2023 Conference (November 21-23, Malaysia)
- AWS re:Invent 2023 (November 27-December 1, Las Vegas)
- COP28 (November 30-December 12, UAE)
- Complete Calendar of Sustainability Conferences
E. Previous Updates & Future News
1. Did You Miss Yesterday's Daily Update?: Here is our previous sustainability, green IT and renewable energy news for technology partners.
2. Future Updates: Send us your news tips. Please email me the details.
