Josh Knauer is co-founder of ReSeed and a former Obama administration advisor on science and technology. Knauer is a general partner at JumpScale, an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University, an advisor for Columbia Technology Ventures/NYSERDA, and a board member at WQED. Previously, Knauer was the founder of Rhiza (sold to Nielsen - NYSE: NLSN), Green Marketplace (sold to Gaiam - NASDAQ: GAIA) and EnviroLink.org.
While the emergence of carbon capture technology to draw down legacy carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is promising, this technology is largely still in its infancy and should not be the only carbon capture solution we rely on. Mechanical carbon capture is enormously expensive, still proving its ability to scale.
THIS solution for carbon removal has been used for millennia: Good ol’ fashioned photosynthesis. To avoid the worst climate impacts, IPCC estimated the need to remove between 100 billion and 1 trillion tons of Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere: At scale, photosynthesis is already doing this, overseen by the globe’s 2 billion smallholder regenerative farmers.
“The EU has come under a tremendous amount of pressure from corporations to delay the ESG regulations, but what’s interesting is that these regulations started with pressure from investors to have normalcy and standardization for how ESG claims are documented and reported.
Ultimately, this is a trend that’s coming: by getting out ahead of regulatory pressure, companies can minimize the effort and costs and integrate this forthcoming reporting into their business models and maximize their competitive advantage. At the end of the day, companies who get ahead of this will be considered less risky for investors.”
Many businesses may find they fail to meet SBA terms for forgiveness, which will leave banks with loans to service and customer issues to resolve.