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. Solar Eclipse - Energy Impact: The United States will lose more than 30 gigawatts of solar energy during Monday’s total eclipse — roughly the output of 30 nuclear reactors — as sunlight is blocked during prime generating hours, Bloomberg reported.
2. Partnership: GE Vernova and PwC are partnering to "accelerate grid modernization."
3. CEO - IT Services: Wipro has named Srini Pallia as CEO and managing director of the global IT services and consulting company. Pallia succeeds Thierry Delaporte, who stepped down to "pursue passions outside the workplace." Pallia joined Wipro in 1992. He previously was president of Wipro’s Consumer Business Unit and global head of Business Application Services. Wipro has sustainability-related IT relationships with IBM, Microsoft, Pure Storage and ServiceNow, among others.
4. YouTube - AI Training Debate: OpenAI and Google trained their AI models on text transcribed from YouTube videos, potentially violating creators’ copyrights, according to The New York Times. The report surfaced a few days after YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said in an interview with Bloomberg Originals that OpenAI’s alleged use of YouTube videos to train its new text-to-video generator, Sora, would go against the platform’s policies. A Yahoo News summary is here.
5. Cloud Services - Pakistan: Google Cloud has launched Startup Competition Pakistan 2024. The competition includes a track for sustainability & environment startups.
B. Sustainability M&A, Investments, Funding and Green IT Business Launches
1. Funding - AI and Regulatory Data: HData has raised $10 Million in Series A funding, led by Buoyant Ventures, an early-stage venture fund that invests in digital solutions to combat climate change. Participating investors include Victorum Capital, Hyde Park Venture Partners, and Firebrand Ventures, among others. Funds will be used to accelerate the expansion of the flagship HData platform with enhanced capabilities for energy industry professionals. HData software enables customers to "receive, analyze and understand crucial data, empowering key strategic decision-making for energy initiatives," the company asserts.
2. Investments - Bill Gates: A Bill Gates-backed startup Is making fuel from water and carbon dioxide, Bloomberg reported. Infinium has fuel buyers that include Amazon and American Airlines, the report noted.
3. M&A - Wind Power: French asset manager Conquest Group has acquired two mature onshore wind projects with a combined capacity of 182 MW in Finland as its first step in the local renewables market, promising additional development and a sizable investment there, Renewables Now reported.
4. M&A - Data Centers: Asia-Pacific Strategic Investments (APS), a real estate developer, has acquired Mobii Genius co., a Taiwanese firm specializing in sustainable IT and data center solutions, Singapore Businss Review reported. The purchase price was US$202.3 million.
5. 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. COP29 and President Trump: The incoming host of the next COP summit has called on the U.S. and other nations to maintain their climate commitments, even if Donald Trump is elected as president in November 2024, Newsweek reported.
2. EU vs. US - Financial Services: The European Banking Federation says lenders in the region won’t be able to compete with their US rivals if regulators continue to pile on ESG rules that Wall Street remains free to ignore, Bloomberg reported.
D. Sustainability and Green Technology Conference Calendar
- 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.)
- Energy Tech Summit 2024 (April 10-11, Bilbao, Spain)
- 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.
