Here is today’s sustainability news, research and analysis for technology partners; renewable energy and green IT service providers; Today's sustainability news also involvesmanagement consultants; CIOs; chief sustainability officers (CSOs), c-suite members and climate accounting professionals.
A. Sustainable Technology, Talent, Partnerships and Green IT Alliances
1. IBM - Sustainability Partners of the Year: IBM will announce its global sustainability partner of the year on May 20, 2024 at the Think 2024 conference in Boston. The five finalists for the global award are:
- North America - Cohesive
- APAC - Wipro Limited
- Japan - ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation
- EMEA - EY Ukraine
- Latin America - ScaleUP Consultoria
The Think 2024 conference will include an IBM Partner Plus Day on May 20.
2. Talent - Green Data Centers: Soluna Holdings has hired John Tunison as chief financial officer (CFO). Soluna’s data centers are co-located with wind, solar, or hydroelectric power plants to support high-performance computing applications including Bitcoin Mining, Generative AI, and other compute-intensive applications.Â
4. Talent - Engineering and Consulting: WSP has named Joe Sczurko as president of USA operations, and Chris Peters as COO of USA operations.
5. Talent - Strategic Data Center Advisor: Microsoft veteran Christian Belady is now a senior advisor to liquid cooling technology company Iceotope Technologies. Belady previously was VP of data center research at Microsoft, where he led a team to "drive disruptive data center technologies in cooling, power generation, networking, chip technology and natural ecosystems," Iceotope noted.
6. Talent: Executive search firm Mercuri Urval (MU) of Sweden named Peter Torjussen as global practice head for its new ESG practice.Â
7. Data Centers: Digital Realty will host an NVIDIA-powered super computer in a Copenhagen, Denmark, data center.
8. IT Services - Net Zero Target: Â NTT DATA Group has obtained approval for its Net-Zero targets from the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). Key goals include striving to achieve net zero by 2040.
9. Partnership - ESG Program Management: AuditBoard and Persefoni are partnering to "help organizations integrate carbon accounting into their broader ESG program management."
10. Partnership: Aiven, an open source data company, has leveraged technology from Thoughworks to help customers track and reduce their cloud-based carbon emissions.
11. Consulting - Financial Services: EY has launched a Sustainable Finance Innovation Hub in Dublin, Ireland to "help financial institutions around the world accelerate their efforts to meet their environmental, social and governance (ESG) regulatory and reporting requirements.
12. E-Waste Reduction - AT&T Pilot Program: AT&T and Recycle Global Exchange have partnered to test a recycling program in Atlanta, Georgia; Austin, Texas; Dallas, Texas; and Seattle, Washington. Customers can leverage the program to recycle old phones, tables and laptops.
13. Smartphones: New Fairphone CEO Reinier Hendriks plans to expand the smartphone maker internationally and lower prices to increase competitiveness in the market, Android Police reported -- based on original content from Handelsblatt. Fairphone is best known for its focus on sustainability and modular device design.
14. Apple Layoffs - Tied to EV Project Cancellation?: Apple layoffs will impact more than 600 employees in California, marking the company's first big wave of post-pandemic job cuts amid a broader wave of tech industry consolidation, The Associated Press reported. Some sources speculate that the job cuts involve Apple's decision to cancel an electric vehicle (EV) car project.
15. Energy Transition - Aviation and Transportation: Stinson Municipal Airport in San Antonio, Texas is working with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on various sustainable aviation, battery technologies, battery storage solutions, electric vehicle (EV) charging, and power demand management technologies. The effort includes:
- the DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E);
- the City of San Antonio Aviation Department and City Public Service Board (CPS Energy); and
- the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA).
16. Renewable Energy - Residential Pilot Programs: Duke Energy is implementing PowerPair, a new incentive-based pilot program for "installing home solar generation with battery energy storage in its Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress service areas in North Carolina," the company said.
B. Sustainability M&A, Investments, Funding and Green IT Business Launches
1. Funding - Offshore Wind Projects: Macquarie Asset Management is making a $50 billion bet on offshore wind after sidestepping a perfect storm of low power prices and cost inflation that forced many competitors to walk away, Bloomberg reported.
2. M&A - EV Charging Optimization: SolarEdge Technologies has acquired Wevo Energy, a software startup specializing in electric vehicle (EV) charging optimization and management for "sites with large quantities of EV chargers such as apartment buildings, workplace carparks and public charging locations," the buyer said. Financial terms were not disclosed.
3. M&A - Renewable Energy: Green Building Renewables has acquired JL Phillips Renewable Energy Limited. The deal aligns with Green Building's goal to become "the largest installer of domestic renewable technology in the UK by 2025."
4. M&A - Software Development and ESG: Synechron has acquired Dreamix, a custom software development company in Sofia, Bulgaria. Dreamix serves such sectors as Aviation, Transportation, RegTech, FinTech, ESG and Healthcare. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
5. M&A - ESG Consulting: Xcelerate of Singapore has acquired Stirrup Communications Consultants, a provider of corporate reporting, ESG and stakeholder communications guidance, The Economic Times reported. Stirrup was previously known as AICL Communications. The acquisition is part of a "clearly delined roll-up strategy," focused on the GRC and ESG segments, the buyer said. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Xcelerate, which is the parent company of Aparajitha, raised $25 million in funding in February 2024. Federated Hermes Private Equity led the round. Altair Capital, Exacta Capital and various individual investors also participated in the round.
6. Complete M&A List: Here's our database of all M&A deals involving green IT and renewable energy buyers, sellers and investors.
C. Regional and Global Sustainability Policies and News
1. United States - SEC Climate Rule On Hold: The SEC will continue "vigorously defending" climate disclosure rules, but a stay will allow "the orderly judicial resolution of those challenges and allow the court of appeals to focus on deciding the merits," Reuters reported.
2. COP29: Conversations and preparations for the COP29 conference shifted into overdrive this week. The latest preparations and chatter involved dedicated meetings with representatives from Asian Development Bank, India, Israel, the Muslim Council of Elders.
3. United Nations: The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has named Nazim Mammadov as its coordinator for COP29. Mammadov is UNDP's national coordinator for environmental projects.
4. Central Europe: 71% of Central European companies are already dealing with sustainability, with a further 20% planning to do so, Deloitte reported.
5. South Korea: The country's deeply divided political parties have shown rare alignment leading up to next week’s election for parliament, with both backing candidates and policies advancing a green agenda, Bloomberg reported.
D. Sustainability and Green Technology Conference Calendar
- Sustainability Conference on Ecopreneurship 2024 (April 8-9, Stanford University)
- Tantalus Users Conference 2024 (April 8-11, Fort Worth, Texas)
- Google Cloud Next 2024 Conference Dates (April 9-11, Las Vegas, Nevada)
- Engage24 Conference Dates (April 9-11, Lisbon, Portugal)
- 2024 ReMade Circular Economy Tech Summit and Conference (April 10-11, Washington, D.C.)
- Complete Calendar of Sustainability Conferences
E. Previous Updates & Future News
- Did You Miss Yesterday's Daily Update?: Here is our previous sustainability, green IT and renewable energy news for technology partners.
- Future Updates: If you have news to share then please email me the details.
