In a new series, ‘Future of...’, we take a look at what is shaping the future of certain industries. Here, we look at the future of fuel and, specifically, the aviation industry. We look at the companies leading the way and the potential challenges that arise from creating such fuels.

Sustainable Aviation Fuel – now on the runway and about to take off…

Aviation currently contributes about 2.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) emissions. However, many more people are hopping onto planes post-pandemic and according to the International Energy Agency, the aviation industry is most definitely not on track to meet its GHG reduction targets. CO2 emissions from aviation did fall by a third from their 2019 level in the wake of the pandemic, but now, with passenger and cargo volumes set to rise, the aviation industry needs a whole range of solutions to tackle what will almost certainly involve rising emissions. 

This is where sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) comes in. Although battery-electric and hydrogen-powered aircraft are being developed, the aviation industry will continue to rely on liquid fuels in the near future and most likely for some time to come. SAF is a ‘drop-in’ replacement for the kerosene currently burned by planes and offers an 80% lifecycle emissions reduction compared to conventional fuel.

What is sustainable aviation fuel (SAF)? 

While fossil fuels take millions of years to produce, forming underground from organic matter, SAFs mimic these natural processes using renewable resources, and produce synthetic fuels in a fraction of the time. Synthetic fuels have the same properties as fossil fuels and are fully compatible with the existing global fuel infrastructure. They can be used in conventional internal combustion engines and jet engines, meaning that cars, planes, and ships can run on synthetic fuels without being changed or refitted. SAFs can also use the current fuel infrastructure for storage and distribution.

The first passenger flight partly fuelled by sustainable synthetic kerosene took off in February 2021. Airlines have already undertaken some 450,000 flights using SAFs as part of the fuel mix. The industry aims to be carbon neutral by 2050, and so far SAFs seem the only practical way to get there. 

All fuels are simply made up of hydrocarbon chains of different lengths. The base building block of a synthetic fuel is called syngas, a mixture of hydrogen (H) and carbon monoxide (CO). You need syngas to produce any type of liquid hydrocarbon fuel, such as jet fuel, diesel, or gasoline. Producing syngas requires a lot of energy and in order to be sustainable this energy needs to come from a renewable source. 

What types of renewable synthetic fuels are there?

There are currently 3 ways of producing renewable syngas, and the resulting climate-friendly synthetic liquid fuels. 

There are several ways of converting biomass into liquid fuel, but the most scalable and most versatile in terms of feedstock is through the gasification of biomass. This involves converting the biomass into syngas by heating it at very high temperatures. Biofuels can be produced from a variety of resources, also known as feedstocks. These include waste biomass such as used cooking oil; algae; or specifically grown energy crops such as sugarcane and corn. Biofuels produced by treating vegetable oils, waste oils and fats – Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids (HEFA) – are the only renewable synthetic fuels currently commercially available. 

E-fuels are produced from renewable electricity, such as solar, wind, or hydro power. The renewable electricity drives an electrolyser that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. The resulting hydrogen is mixed with CO2 and turned into syngas during the process. Continuous renewable energy supply and electricity storage remain a challenge, but these power-to-liquid fuels are showing potential as drop-in SAFs. 

Solar fuels are produced from solar heat that drives a thermochemical reactor. In the reactor, carbon dioxide and water are converted into syngas. Inexpensive thermal energy storage in sunny climes means that solar fuels have the potential for being produced at scale. An independent study assessing the geographical potential concludes that solar fuels could cover 50 times the current global jet fuel demand.

Targets and initiatives

Although the fuel efficiency of fossil-based jet kerosene in international aviation has improved since 2010, progress has slowed in the last few years. Sustainable aviation fuels currently account for less than 0.1% of aviation fuel consumption and because of low production levels, SAFs still cost double conventional fuels. The International Air Transport Industry has set a target of reaching 2% by 2025. 

In July the European Parliament voted to adopt draft rules for the ReFuelEU initiative, which aims to require sustainable aviation fuel to account for at least 85% of EU aviation fuel by 2050. Negotiations will now begin with member states on the final legislation to put this target into law. In the United States, the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge aims to scale up SAF production to 11 billion litres annually by 2030 and to eventually meet the country’s entire aviation fuel demand by 2050.

New tax credits for clean fuel production from the US Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law on 16 August, will serve to boost these companies further and faster, as SAF tax credits are an integral part of the Act. This critical legislative development in the US also follows the UK Government’s Department for Transport of its Jet Zero Strategy. This includes an ambition for a minimum of five commercial-scale SAF plants to be under construction in the UK by 2025, and a mandate for the equivalent of at least 10% SAF to be blended into conventional aviation fuel by 2030. 

There is some controversy about what constitutes ‘sustainable’ aviation fuel though. There are concerns that food-and-feed based biofuels encourage the spread of oil-palm plantations and contribute to deforestation. Advanced and waste-based biofuels are generally preferred by environmentalists to their crop-based equivalents, but the raw materials needed are finite and difficult to scale up. Biomass is a pretty bulky material, which makes it expensive to gather, transport and store.

Something else to consider is that the aviation industry accounts for around 1.9% of global GHG emissions, while road transport is responsible for around 11.9%. If the ReFuelEU initiative is made law, waste fats will be channeled into the production of biogenic aviation fuels. Because of the more complex production process, evidence shows that the production of HEFA from waste fats is more energy-intensive and less efficient than biodiesel production for road and maritime transport from the same raw waste materials. Therefore channeling limited available waste fats away from producing fuel for road and maritime transport to fuel for the aviation sector may lead to a loss of potential GHG emission savings.  

Companies are leaping into the SAF market and starting to create sustainable aviation fuels at a much lower cost. On the e-fuels front, Norway – a country with plenty of hydro and wind power – is home to a consortium called Norsk e-Fuel, which is building a direct air capture (DAC) plant to produce SAF. They aim to start producing 12.5 million litres of fuel a year from 2024.

Another European player, Swiss firm Synhelion is leading the way in solar fuels. Their technology minimizes the number of energy conversion steps by using the solar heat directly to reverse the combustion process and turn water vapour and CO2 into fuel. Synhelion’s proprietary thermal energy storage, means the company can produce fuel around the clock, unlocking synthetic fuel production at prices that could soon be competitive with fossil fuels. They are currently building the world’s first industrial facility for the production of carbon-neutral solar fuel in Jülich, Germany and expect to start production in 2023. Their target, by 2040, is 50bn litres of SAF a year. With commercial jet fuel consumption cited at around 260bn litres in 2021, the outlook looks very promising.

Velocys is a spin-out company from Oxford University in the UK and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the USA, are collaborating with British Airways to develop a full-scale commercial SAF plant in Immingham, UK. This is expected to be Europe’s first commercial scale waste-to-jet-fuel facility, processing household and commercial waste destined for landfill or incineration. Meanwhile Aemetis, founded in 2006, already produces sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel from the almond orchards and vineyards of California. They use gasification to create hydrogen, which is then combined with vegetable oil and animal fat to produce fuel.

This is just the beginning. Soon, sustainable aviation fuel will be taking off in a major way, scaling up to produce the synthetic fuels we need to radically cut CO2 emissions and meet our Paris Agreement goals.

In a new series ‘Future of...’, we take a look at what is shaping the future of certain industries. Here, we look at the future of fuel, and the way aviation fuel is changing. We look at the initiatives, innovations and companies striving for a greener future for aviation fuel. 

In a new series, ‘Future of...’, we take a look at what is shaping the future of certain industries. Here, we look at the future of fuel and, specifically, the aviation industry.

In a new series ‘Future of...’, we take a look at what is shaping the future of certain industries. Here, we look at the future of food, and we caught up with Fred Krefting to ask him about soil regeneration and how methods of farming are changing in the UK and why. Fred and his Dad have a 1400 acre farm near Towcester and are focused on regenerative farming. This interview highlights the changes they have made to their farm, including making their own bio-stimulants and collaborating with Soil Heroes to sequester carbon. Fred offers a unique insight into a new age in farming and the production of food. 

Could you tell me a little bit about your farm? 

I have a 1400 acre farm in Northamptonshire. We're focused on regenerative farming, which is a movement that's starting to gain a lot more traction. But what does that actually mean in practice? It's a different way of looking at the land. There are some very basic principles that we've applied for a long time. The first is to disturb the soil as little as possible – doing minimum tillage or direct drill. That's why you hear people talking about ‘the end of the plough’. It's been proven that there's a top layer of soil which is essential to protect all the microorganisms and the biology that happens underneath. Ploughing it up and exposing it to the elements is damaging. Also, you want to have as little compaction in the soil as possible. 

Part of the regenerative focus is also on soil structure. So, we cover cropping, we use a minimum of five different species at the same time. You don't have an economic return as a farmer for that – it’s purely to help with the soil structure – to give back to the soil. Then, rather than spraying off the cover crops with chemicals, we get sheep on to graze it off. That's very good for the soil again, because that's a natural process – they defecate and urinate, which adds nutrients back to the soil. 

Farmers need to change that paradigm of thought away from yield maximisation and look more at their actual margins. Farmers’ input costs are incredibly high, especially now that prices of fertiliser have gone through the roof. All your other chemical inputs are very expensive as well. So, the idea of regenerative farming is to accept a lower yield. But actually, that shouldn't affect your margin – it will hopefully improve your margin because over time, you'll still get strong yields, but you're losing a huge chunk of the input cost.

This is a good question. Organic is for me a long-term goal. It is true to become organic, all you have to really do is leave your field fallow with no chemical inputs for two years. That's not going to solve the problem. Your soil is still dead, your soil is still just weaning itself off the drugs it’s been fed – that is not going to produce a very nutrient dense crop or fruit or vegetable. And that's the problem with farming – the focus needs to be on getting the soil health back. You need your worms in there, you need your mycorrhizal bacterias, nematodes etc. You need the whole ecosystem functioning again. It's a longer-term goal, but your biodiversity and your soil health have to be strong. So – I am pro organic, but I think there are a lot of steps in between. 

I'm currently growing wheat for a company. I’ve put 40 hectares aside, which I'm going to use no ‘cides’ on whatsoever. No herbicides, no fungicides, and no chemical fertiliser. To have no chemical inputs on these four fields will be an exciting experiment. But there are also a few other things that I've been experimenting with in the background… I make my own bio fertiliser. 

There's a mother culture that you have to make first and then we add raw, unpasteurised, organic milk, molasses and ash. I use volcanic rock dust and filtered water to make sure that it doesn't have any chlorine in. Then its all brewed in a big Intermidate Bulk Container (IBC) over six weeks, with a heated blanket. And then that together with the mother culture will create the biofertilizer.

It's not – it's incredibly cheap! Compared to buying chemical fertiliser, it’s a fraction of the price. All you really need is the ingredients which do not cost a lot and an IBC which every farmer has and a heated blanket. This year I'm also going to make compost tea and apply the biofertiliser and the compost tea together on these fields. So they should get the nutrients that they require, but in a natural way, along with all the microorganisms they need to give them a boost. That's the plan for this year. 

There are different things you can use to make sure you actually get microbial activity and bacteria into the soil. The biofertiliser has the nutrients, but not necessarily the microbial activity. So, we'll make compost tea to supplement it. 

Soil Heroes is essentially a platform which is a bit like a marketplace – they sign up farmers on one side and then they have private businesses on the other side. The farmers are sequestering carbon, the businesses are buying that, and we transact through the actual platform. Carbon is important, but it's not just about carbon – it's also about biodiversity, water retention and overall soil health benefits. 

I feel that the carbon market is a very nascent industry. There's a lot of new players in it every year and I do think it's a bit of a murky world. I'm convinced there are woodlands in Scotland or Canada that have probably been sold three times over to some big corporation who's never going to go there! They want the carbon credits to sell as a marketing story and there's a big disconnect – where does the carbon credit card come from? How does it come about? What was that land used for beforehand? How is it measured? To address the climate issue we need to focus on arable and livestock, not only woodland.  

The businesses that partner with Showsley via the Soil Heroes platform have all been to the farm and they're all from the food and beverage space. They want to be involved – to understand more and be part of the solution. That's what makes it appealing to those types of companies and hopefully these sorts of platforms will start working with bigger companies in the future.

Can you explain what you're looking for in the Soil Heroes’ 5 year soil test? 

The soil test looks at everything from just the amount of carbon you capture in your soil to things like your soil density, structure, compaction, worm count, water filtration and the level of nutrients to name a few. When you dig down you see different colours and layers and then you can see whether or not the cover crops have been helping, how aerated the soil is. It’s quite farmer friendly and not too capital intensive.

Is there a lot of regenerative agriculture happening in the UK?  

There's a lot happening in the UK. We have Groundswell, which is probably the largest regenerative agriculture conference in Europe. With the removal of subsidies Farmers are realising they might need to reduce inputs and sell carbon credits. There are many companies now in this space, all with slightly different models and concepts. It’s good – that's what the market needs. Lots of young businesses. Hopefully in four or five years time, there will be some strong winners and we'll have more good companies which are well proven – giving the right incentives to farmers.

In a new series ‘Future of...’, we take a look at what is shaping the future of certain industries. Here, we look at the future of food, and we caught up with Fred Krefting to ask him about soil regeneration and how methods of farming are changing in the UK and why.

'On the horizon' is a brand new series where we meet businesses, initiatives and people at the forefront of creating a brighter tomorrow.

In this episode, we caught with Ganesh Bere from the Indian agritech start-up 'Science for Society' or S4S Technologies. S4S are a full-stack food processing platform operating in India. They help reduce food waste, empower female farmers, and prevent carbon emissions.

We discuss their founding journey, and what they hope to achieve by 2030. 

Tell us a little bit about what S4S is/ does?

We produce Convenience-Driven Food Ingredients for the Food & Beverage Industry. We convert farm losses into food ingredients through farm-gate sourcing and processing –all done by female entrepreneurs. 


We started as an innovation company with a social purpose. Our idea was to develop innovation & tech to help underprivileged people in rural India get out of poverty and bring them an opportunity for financial independence. 

In short, we are a full-stack food-tech/ food processing company. The idea is to work with women farmers in rural India, source food produced on their farms, process the farmers' produce locally to the farms, and then sell the produce to other businesses. 


We provide the technology and machines to the farmers, allowing them to process the food that would otherwise perish. All the training for the female farmers, cleaning & production is done under our supervision and to the Global food-processing standards to check the quality. 


S4S helps female farmers become entrepreneurs by enabling access to capital. We ensure that farmers get financial support in terms of working capital, banking etc. Typically, women farmers in India don't have enough money to reach their full potential. 


Women can work from home and process food in their own homes. Women can make their own decisions, and they don't need to travel anywhere to sell their products. Truly empowering for female entrepreneurs. 


All the processing machines are solar-powered, meaning farmers don't have to rely on the power supply.

There are 7 co-founders in the organisation. We met at college or connected through close networks. Many of us had farming backgrounds and had a good understanding of energy, machinery and food products.

We started putting our heads together when we were young graduates during our bachelor's degrees. We knew we wanted to use our knowledge to benefit our society. 

In India, the food seasons mean that certain foods can either be in abundance, driving down the price or in scarcity, pushing the price up. This isn't as much of an issue for large scale farmers, but it meant a reduced income and a lot of food waste during abundant periods for smallholder farmers. So we set to work out a way to increase the shelf life of this agri-produce and came to build S4S. 

We started in 2017 focussing on the machines, and since then, we have focussed more on getting the food produce into the market, and now we're looking at developing the supply chain. 

What specific challenges are you trying to solve?

There is a big problem in India with perishable foods, foods come in high seasons, and this fluctuation creates volatile economic issues for farmers in India. In fact, 30-40% of food in India is lost due to transportation issues and being unable to eat.

S4S increases the shelf life of the food the farmers sell and enables farmers to hold onto their produce and sell when the market is high instead of selling when they have to when the food is set to perish. For example, Veg fruit can be dehydrated & increase shelf life by one year. 

What does the year 2030 look like for S4S?

We're currently working with 800 women entrepreneurs and 25,000 farmers in the states of Maharashtra, Odisha and Tamilnadu. By 2030 we want to present in every state in India, and our target is to help one million female entrepreneurs across India.

If you could wish for one thing, what would it be? 

We want to develop our partnerships. We'd love to connect with value partners in the supply chains. We're hoping to connect with the local suppliers and customers willing to help the farmers. We're on the lookout for all socially oriented businesses to partner with us.


To find out more about S4S, please visit their website here. 

On the horizon is a brand new series where we meet businesses, initiatives and people at the forefront of creating a brighter tomorrow.

'On the horizon' is a brand new series where we meet businesses, initiatives and people at the forefront of creating a brighter tomorrow.

Welcome to State of play, a series where we gather insight on the world's most pressing issues. In this edition, we explore the state of our pensions industry.

There is a massive £2.7 trillion invested in the UK pension sector, but how is this money invested? Does it match the morals of those that it invests on behalf of? We invited Make My Money Matter, an organisation that wants to make everyone proud of their pension, to shed some light on where pensions are invested and what we can do to have our say!

The secret weapon you didn’t know you had to tackle climate change

Going veggie, giving up flying, switching to a renewable energy provider at home… these are some of the most common individual actions to tackle climate change.

But while these are important steps to take care of our planet, there is a hidden and effective tool at our disposal: our money. At Make My Money Matter we know that our money is one of the most important tools we have in building towards a more sustainable future. And the evidence has our back: greening your pension can be up to 21x more effective at reducing your carbon footprint than going veggie, switching to a renewable energy provider and stopping flying combined. 

With £2.7 trillion invested in the UK’s pension sector alone, the potential for this money to have a positive impact and accelerate climate action is extraordinary. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to most of us, our pensions and savings often make us accidental investors in practices we avoid and causes we fight against. For example, our recent research shows that two pounds for every ten invested in an average pension is linked to deforestation. 


Pensions are powerful, but we know they can be scary, confusing and inaccessible. That’s why we set up this campaign to help give the public more voice and choice over where their money is invested and make sure the trillions invested on our behalf helps build a better world. 


To do this, we’ve been driving a cultural awakening around the power of our pensions. By raising awareness, driving action, and empowering the public with knowledge and tools, we’re helping them use the hidden superpower of their pension in the fight against the climate emergency. 


And it’s been working: our message has reached over 22 million people across the UK and we have seen an 85% increase in citizens who now understand the link between their money and the climate crisis. This growing pressure from individual and organisational pension members, has led to now more than 40 leading pension providers – managing over £1 trillion in assets – to commit to robust net zero targets. 


But this is just the start. We are building a world where all our money in our pensions, banks, savings and investments can help us protect the planet and finance the solutions that will ensure we actually have a world to retire into.  


The latest scientific reports warn us about a ‘code red’ for humanity if we don’t bring down greenhouse gas emissions. The clock is ticking, but we still have a very small, precious, window of time in which we can act to avert climate disaster, and our money must become a key element of this fight. 


The decision on where we keep, save and invest our money today will shape our lives and impact future generations for decades to come. That’s why it’s time we all join the movement to make our money matter. 

Find out more about Make My Money Matter at  https://makemymoneymatter.co.uk/

Question your pension: practical steps to Make YOUR Money Matter

So if you want to use that power to build a better world, here are some practical steps you can take today:

Find out who your provider is – ask your employer or use this handy government service to find out who’s looking after your money (you might even have a few without even realising!)


Ask for a green pension – contact your pension provider and tell them you want a green pension, aligned to net zero. Take the 21x Challenge to contact them and find out what your fund is doing to help build a better future.


Get your employer involved - many pensions are run through workplace schemes. You can engage your employer to ask that they offer a green pension and if they are already working on it, make sure they sign up to MMMM’s Green Pensions Charter. After all, what’s the point in your company delivering a brilliant sustainability plan but having it undone by their pension? 


If you have a self-invested pension plan (SIPP) - you’ll likely have even more control over where your money’s going. So, contact your financial advisor or log in to your SIPP platform, ask where your money’s invested, check the sustainability ratings and see what options you have for making your money matter. Good With Money has a guide which outlines the top-rated funds that could go into a SIPP.

Jacinta Dillon – Partnerships Manager, Make My Money Matter

Welcome to State of play, a series where we gather insight on the world's most pressing issues.

Welcome to State of play, a series where we gather insight on the world's most pressing issues. In this edition, we explore the state of our pensions industry. There is a massive £2.7 trillion invested in the UK pension sector, but how is this money invested? Does it match the morals of those that it invests on behalf of? We invited Make My Money Matter, an organisation that wants to make everyone proud of their pension, to shed some light on where pensions are invested and what we can do to have our say!

State of play: Pension Power with Make My Money Matter

Welcome to State of play, a series where we gather insight on the world's most pressing issues. In our second edition, we explore Sustainable Development Goal 12, Responsible Consumption and Production and invited Mahak Agrawal - an emerging leader within sustainability, to provide her insight into the 'state of play' for our global waste problem.

Responsible consumption and production is about doing more and better with less and calls on us to learn how to consume and produce in sustainable ways that do not harm our planet.

Every year, humans generate over 2 billion tons of solid waste —of which one-third is not managed properly and contributes to approximately 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That’s roughly equal to the weight of 4,000 Burj Khalifas. What’s more, this waste is estimated to increase to 3.4 billion tons per year by 2050, roughly equivalent to the weight of 7,000 Burj Khalifas.

Head to your nearest supermarket; you’ll find yourself in an aisle of plastics or rather different shapes and sizes of plastic containers stacked on each rack. Some of this plastic packaging is tough to replace with less environmentally damaging product packaging, but most are easily replaceable and avoidable. 

Take that box of pre-cut fruit. It is easy to purchase and even easier to consume and discard. That box of pre-cut produce, lying somewhere in your bin or fridge, is a product developed for the fast-paced, time-stressed, or simply lazy consumers, who are willing to shell those extra pounds for a unit of pre-cut produce than spend 5-10 minutes chopping an actual fruit or vegetable, scraps of which can be turned into manure. 

Now, let’s be clear supermarkets and policymakers can and must do better, and France has this year led the way by banning single-use plastic on many fruit and vegetable items. But a global problem calls for collective efforts and solutions, and while supermarkets and policymakers slowly wake up – we must take personal responsibility too. Plastic or any form of waste emerging from a supermarket — or much of the capitalist economy — is a big problem and we humans are part of the problem. Our choices are amplifying the quantum and flow of waste across terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. 

Irresponsible choice plays a key part in waste generation and proliferation. For example, as customer demand for the consumption of pre-cut produce increases, the amount of plastic produced and used for selling the pre-cut produce increases, and so does the amount of waste. In fact, for any supermarket or enterprise in the capitalist economy to survive, it needs backers — customers — who understand the ecosystem that the supermarket is operating to fill the demands of its customers, who are willing to feed it by paying more per unit of produce. 

Plastic in different shapes and sizes line up Amazon’s Whole Foods Market shelves in New York. Image by Mahak Agrawal (2022)

While the world is drowning in its waste, a few are investing to mine value from waste. Around 5,000 medals for Tokyo Olympics 2020 were produced from old phones and electronic waste donated by people across Japan. Phool.co in India is giving a new, fragrant life to temple waste by converting the waste into incense sticks and cones. Operating across 20 countries, TerraCycle is working to eliminate the throwaway culture.  

Few others are guiding consumers towards responsible choices. ReFill London is a free tap water scheme in London envisioning an end to single-use plastic bottles. Shops and businesses of Costa Coffee, Pret A Manger, Planet Organic, Leon, National Theatre and Tate Modern have joined the scheme too. If you are craving some South Asian food, Hackney based DabbaDrop will deliver a steel “dabba” or container to your home and pick it up the next time you order. DabbaDrop is helping reduce food container waste while improving customer return rates. Is it something new and innovative? Not entirely. 

Free tap water schemes and infrastructure have existed in several parts of the world for decades. Delivering food in reusable steel containers and picking it up in the next order is a common practice across South Korea and India. What these schemes and establishments are trying to do is not invent something new but guide the consumers towards choices with lower environmental impact. 

Several other entrepreneurs and groundbreakers across the world are changing the way we deal with waste, but they alone cannot stop the world or any city or region from drowning in waste or switching 100% to responsible choices. Why? 

Because many times we do not know what is responsible and what is irresponsible. Many times we do not understand the impact of our choices. For instance, opting for a glass bottle over plastic seems like a sustainable choice, even when evidence indicates a larger environmental impact from a glass bottle than a plastic one. In 2005, Chris Jones of the University of California, Berkeley, launched the world’s first online household carbon calculator with the hope that if people were better informed of the emissions their activities were contributing to, they may change select choices in their daily lives and contribute in small ways to save the planet. Nearly 2 decades later, and several calculators later, decoupling environmental degradation from economic growth remains a hope; wasteful consumption and production pattern continue to proliferate. 

Till the time tickets to Mars become affordable, and the planet itself becomes habitable, we need to do all we can for the planet we now call home. As citizens and consumers of varied products and services, we need to make responsible choices that help eliminate the concept of waste. We need to embed sustainable consumption and production — and doing more and better with less — in our daily lives. We need to reduce the waste we produce at individual and household levels; we need to mine value from our waste and we need to do it now. We created this mess and now we need to clean plus manage it — together! 

* Mahak Agrawal is an urban planner and a former United Nations fellow. As a Shardashish Scholar and Environmental Fellow at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, Mahak earned her second master's in public administration. She earned her first master’s degree in urban planning from the School of Planning and Architecture Delhi. Mahak currently works at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and leads urban adaptability efforts with International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association’s Committee on Underground Spaces (ITACUS). 

Recognised for her achievements in accelerating the Sustainable Development Goals in India through public health initiatives, Mahak was nominated for the Gates Foundation’s 2021 Goalkeepers Global Goals Award. In various capacities, she has worked with OECD; the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, the Government of India; and the Institute of Transport Economics, Oslo. Mahak was an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report, has authored numerous scientific publications and has presented her works globally, including at the United Nations. In 2021, she delivered a TEDx talk advocating for mining value from waste. 

In 2019, she founded the Spatial Perspectives initiative to change the way we view and respond to pressing urban-regional challenges. In her spare time, Mahak experiments with sustainable artworks with her mum. 

State of play: Global Waste with Mahak Agrawal

In our latest edition of 'On the horizon', we caught up with Cindy Forde, Founder and CEO of Planetari. Planetari is an organisation that aims to empower children with the knowledge and skills to be innovators, entrepreneurs and global citizens who protect the planet and ensure a brighter future. 

Cindy has a fascinating background in sustainability and previously has led the Blue Marine Foundation as their MD and the Cambridge Science Centre as CEO. Here we catch up with Cindy to hear all about Planetari's exciting mission and the challenges they are currently facing. 

What is Planetari & what drove you to start it?

Planetari aims to enable children to understand and develop a different relationship with Earth, so they understand our planet as an interconnected, living system and are equipped with the tools & the knowledge to be a part of creating a brighter future. We want to inspire future innovators and entrepreneurs of a brighter world. 

I've been an activist for most of my life, starting as a teenager in the anti-apartheid and environmental movements. As my career developed, I spent some time in the corporate space looking at how it might be possible to make systemic change. 


Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is evolving, and there are some great CSR initiatives, but it has long been about trying to make companies do 'less bad' rather than 'more good'. I became gradually more disturbed by how much money, and energy, is spent trying to fix things that have gone wrong, rather than preventing the damage from happening in the first place.


So I thought, why not start a company to help teach children to get things right from the beginning. So instead of continuing to teach a mentality or values set that perpetrates destructive practices, which is what unfortunately still drives most corporates, why not change the  framework of education, for how we understand this world, so that as children grow and become adults themselves, everything they design or do is in line with our planetary boundaries. That's really what Planetari is about. 

 How long have you been going for & how big is the team?

I've been working on Planetari since 2019 and collaborating with a beautiful ecosystem of like-minded businesses. I have been lucky enough to collaborate with design agencies and publishers – I mainly work with those who are also committed to a brighter future. There's a real community growing in the space. We've worked with the Blue Marine Foundation to create a ‘makerzine’ and set of learning resources called ‘An Ocean Adventure’ where children can explore how the oceans work. This has been distributed in several countries. In October my book,  'Bright New World' comes out, published by Welbeck, which shows what a thriving future we could have if we transform the parts of our system that are now our biggest problems, such a energy, transport, food, and turn them into regenerative solutions.

Having a dedicated team would be nice, but the collaboration model has been interesting for us, and I believe it is an important part of the collective problem solving we will need to address this crisis.

We're developing our educational programmes more systemically, as well as exploring different media such as fiction and film, where also developing a digital platform to mobilise large-scale change, which will be for adults too. 

Some our work is unseen advocacy work - building a coalition of educators in this space. The education system still follows the model from the industrial revolution, it must evolve to be fit for purpose. We're part of a growing group of educators working at UN , COP, and government level to help embed sustainability into the heart of education systems. It's not easy to get things like this in schools when teachers don't have the mandate to teach it, so we're working hard to galvanise the shift.


By 2030, we hope millions of children will understand our Earth as the living ecosystem that it is. We hope to equip millions of children with the tools to care for Planet Earth and dare to create a world where everyone can thrive.


Trying to shift things institutionally is our biggest challenge

COP leaders have said how important education is, so the conversation is turning towards education. We cannot have another generation who does what we have always done. We'll get what we always have - which is a climate disaster. Awareness at the government level is rising, but it isn't anywhere near where it needs to be yet.

For more information, please visit https://planetari.world/

In our latest edition of 'On the horizon', we caught up with Cindy Forde, Founder and CEO of Planetari. Planetari is an organisation that aims to empower children with the knowledge and skills to be innovators, entrepreneurs and global citizens who protect the planet and ensure a brighter future.  

Welcome to State of play, a series where we gather insight on the world's most pressing issues. In our first edition, we explore the carbon credits industry and invited Sylvera - the carbon credits rating agency, to provide their insight into the 'state of play' for the carbon credits industry.

'Carbon credits' are purchased to offset corporations' and individuals' carbon emissions and are a crucial tool in the world's drive towards net-zero. The increase in demand for carbon credits has led to increased scrutiny of the quality of the credits. It is often very unclear what buyers are actually buying. There's no doubt we need improved transparency and clarity around carbon credits, but how close are we to achieving this? 

Here, we catch up with Sylvera to discuss the topic of carbon credits. Sylvera provides in-depth and high-quality carbon ratings, which enable companies to invest in high-quality offsets and help deliver net-zero commitments.

What's your current view of the carbon credits industry?

After emissions reductions, carbon markets are the greatest tool we have to achieve net-zero. 

The reason for this is simple. The reality is, today, it is impossible for 100% decarbonisation in most industries. The technology is just not there yet. 

So, while this technology comes on stream, carbon markets are a powerful tool for corporations to achieve their net-zero targets. 

To be clear, carbon markets are by no means a cure-all solution. For carbon offsetting to be effective, it must be part of an organisation's broader climate action strategy. This must include reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions as a first step before carbon offsetting is explored as a complementary strategy. 

However, it is imperative that we reduce greenhouse gas emissions within a specific time frame, and we have no more time to waste. Carbon offsetting allows immediate action, for example, allowing indigenous people and local communities to benefit from forest conservation and associated biodiversity and social co-benefits, rather than being economically incentivised to unsustainably exploiting forest resources. Nature-based solutions also have significant potential to scale: it is estimated that they can provide one-third of the carbon reduction the planet needs to stabilise the climate by 2030.

It's undoubtedly a growing space, what is the size and growth of the carbon credits market?

Voluntary carbon markets are scaling fast, and they have the potential to drive billions of dollars of investment into carbon projects. In fact, it has been predicted that voluntary carbon markets will be worth up to $100 billion by 2030. 

There has traditionally been a trust problem, and this has the potential to derail this growth trajectory and slow down the pace of change. 

If we can add a layer of transparency and inject more trust into the marketplace, we have the power to turn the tide to hit net-zero and mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. 

What possible solutions will help to improve the trust of the industry?

To date, corporate buyers have been hamstrung by asymmetric information. They can't assess whether a ton of CO2 sold to them really means a ton and because they can't assess quality, they can't assess value either - and this can often lead to them overpaying for the credits they purchase. 

So, ultimately, the market needs reliable data to establish trust.

We use cutting-edge technology and expert teams to produce independent, detailed, and accessible ratings that assess offset projects on objective measures of quality. These ratings collapse an insanely complex process down into three fundamental questions:

Did the project issue the correct number of credits?

Would the project's activities have occurred anyway and without the revenue from a carbon credit?

Will the CO2 be out of the atmosphere for a meaningful period of time? 

On top of this, we also consider the co-benefits that the project brings to local communities and the environment - particularly biodiversity. By adding this transparency, we can ensure that high-quality projects command the price they deserve, and projects with poor additionality or unreported issues in performance will be discounted. 

How close are we to achieving the solution mentioned above?

Our ratings platform is already helping corporate buyers, traders and exchanges confidently evaluate the best, and most impactful carbon credits to invest in. 

We have now rated the majority of REDD+ issued credits and in the remainder of 2022 we will expand our coverage significantly, adding new project types like renewables to our platform. 

We're at a critical point in securing the future of the planet, and we're closer than ever to a slew of dramatic climatic and ecological tipping points. But, if we can fix the current market failures, we will have a much better chance of avoiding the most serious impacts. 

If you could wish for one thing to improve the industry, what would it be?

To date, there has been little to no correlation between price and quality. This means a great quality carbon project might not be commanding the price it deserves for its credits, while, on the other hand, a poor performing project could be selling credits for too much. 

Increased transparency into the quality of projects - through ratings platforms such as ours - will naturally improve this, but we also need corporations to recognise that carbon offsetting is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. By only using carbon offsetting as a means to balance the shortfall of net-zero strategies, low-quality credits will not be purchased in the first place, and demand will increase for high-quality projects that are having a positive, tangible impact on the planet. 

If you could wish for one thing to stop in the industry, what would it be?

To date, carbon credits have had a bad reputation and they have been likened to indulgences instead of legitimate solutions. There are two strands to this: thinking about offsets in isolation, and the use of poor-quality offsets.

It's important that offsets are part of a broader decarbonisation strategy, for all companies and countries. The concept of the 'mitigation hierarchy' clarifies that reducing one's own emissions should be the priority. Where that is not possible, at least not in full, high-quality offsets can play a crucial role.

The use of poor-quality offsets is another challenge, one which Sylvera was created to tackle, through the provision of rich, independent data. Our data shows that the majority of projects are having positive impacts on the environment. This activity cannot be discounted if we are to achieve net-zero targets.

To find out more about Sylvera, please visit their website here.

State of play: Carbon credits with Sylvera

State of play: Carbon Credits with Sylvera

'On the horizon' is a brand new series where we meet businesses, initiatives and people at the forefront of creating a brighter tomorrow.

In our first episode, we catch up with Alex Stephany, CEO of Beam. 

Beam is an organisation that empowers people to leave homelessness for good. They help homeless people find new jobs and homes, giving them a brighter future. The Beam platform enables the public to donate directly to a homeless person's 'crowdfunding campaign'. The campaigns can range from learning new vocational skills (such as Gary learning to be a plumber, pictured below) to securing a stable home. Beam also work with governments and corporations to help lift people out of homelessness. We had the pleasure of catching up with their CEO and founder, Alex Stephany.

How was Beam born & why does it exist? 

Several years ago, I got to know a homeless man at my local Tube station. I’d buy him cups of coffee and pairs of thermal socks when it was getting cold. At one point, he disappeared for weeks on end. When he reappeared, he looked years older: he told me he’d had a heart attack and had just come out of hospital. Despite the well-meaning gestures from myself and no doubt others, he was in a worse position than ever. 

So I began to ask myself what it would take to make a lasting difference to this man’s life. He had never had a job, and was illiterate. For me, the answer lay in empowering him with the skills and training needed to sustainably support himself. Of course, that would cost far more than coffees or socks - but what if everyone chipped in?  

The idea of crowdfunding employment training for homeless people was born. Over the following nine months, I developed the model working with homeless people and charities. Beam launched in October 2017. 

Our mission is to create equality of opportunity at scale, starting by crowdfunding brighter futures for homeless people in the UK. In the future, our goal is to work with thousands more disadvantaged people not just in the UK, but worldwide - from refugees to prison leavers to people with disabilities. 

I can’t quite believe that Beam will be turning five in September. We’ve quadrupled the team in the past couple of years (there are now 50 of us!) and outgrown our offices twice. The Beam Team is a truly remarkable group of extremely intelligent, experienced but also down to earth people. 

In this time, we’ve proven that Beam’s community-led approach to supporting disadvantaged people into jobs truly works: our beneficiaries are starting work 80% of the time. And it’s amazing to see Beam rolled out not just across London, but across many other cities up and down the UK.

We have crowdfunded more than £3m on behalf of homeless people, 100% of which supports their progression into stable work in over 60 career pathways: whether that’s the cost of training, childcare, tools, textbooks or more. It’s a highly personalised approach that focuses on people’s unique strengths and needs. And the public can fund the progression of people out of homelessness with unparalleled transparency and efficiency. We’ve now supported more than 700 people to leave homelessness for good, which we’re incredibly proud of. 

What do you hope 2030 looks like for Beam?

By 2030, my vision is for Beam to help 1 million disadvantaged people into stable jobs. In turn, allowing us to become one of the most positively impactful companies in the world. It’s a bold vision, but one that I think we can achieve through lots of action, grit and hustle. 


We’re growing rapidly and have big ambitions to scale Beam to as many people as possible. This means we need to hire the smartest people and this uses up a lot of resources. If you’re reading this and looking to join the UK’s top Tech for Good startup, we’d love to hear from you! [https://beam.org/careers]


If you could wish for one thing, what would it be?

Greater collaboration between tech, government, charities, corporates and local communities. At Beam, I’ve seen first-hand how social impact is best achieved when everyone is working to their strengths. For example, my background is in tech, while my cofounder Seb Barker joined Beam from the NHS after years working in homelessness. We could only create Beam by combining experience from wildly different professional worlds. What would happen if more people working in tech collaborated with people who'd never worked a day in tech? How many more problems could we solve?

Be sure to check out the wonderful work of Beam via their website: https://beam.org/

On the horizon is a brand new series where we meet businesses, initiatives and people at the forefront of creating a brighter tomorrow.


With more and more companies signing up to 'Net-Zero', we thought it might be good to explain what it means in practice.

The UN has asked the world to aim for net-zero emissions by 2050, which would help limit global temperature rise to 1.5 deg C above pre-industrial era levels, the level deemed 'safe' in the climate crisis.

Many companies have pledged to become net-zero by the middle of the century. This means that by 2050, the company has committed to reducing their carbon emissions to the lowest amount possible, and they will remove from the atmosphere whatever remaining carbon pollution they can not entirely eliminate. Other companies have signed up to become carbon neutral. This is similar to net-zero but does not include commitments to cut emissions first, relying more heavily on carbon removal.

This removal of the carbon they emit is known as carbon offsetting. Many have criticised the offsetting element of the schemes as it allows companies to 'burn now, pay later'. We'll have more on carbon offsetting in a future post.

Carbon offsetting compensates for carbon dioxide emissions produced by industry or from general human activity through schemes that help to balance out the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Offsetting is an internationally recognised way to take responsibility for unavoidable carbon emissions. 

In theory, when you offset one tonne of carbon through an offset scheme, you essentially remove one tonne of carbon from the atmosphere.  Companies or individuals must purchase the equivalent volume of their emissions in 'carbon credits' to offset emissions. These are independently regulated/ approved and involve various activities that either reduce greenhouse gas emissions or increase carbon sequestration. 

This includes and is not limited to renewable energy projects, forest protection, tree-planting activities and energy efficiency improvements. Given climate change is a global issue, carbon offset projects can take place anywhere globally. The idea here is that Greenhouse gases mix throughout the atmosphere, so reducing them anywhere contributes to overall climate protection. 

Some have heavily criticised offsetting as 'kicking the can down the road' and believe there should be more focus on cutting carbon emissions full stop. We have also seen that some of the forests that Microsoft and BP  used to offset their emissions have been burnt down in wildfires across North America, which brings into question whether offsetting goes far enough. (Source). 

In our recent blog post, we introduced the concept of ESG and what this term means for investors. Here, we introduce impact investment, what it means and look into its growth in recent years and whether investors can genuinely make a financial return when investing in impact.   

Although the term was first introduced in 2007, impact investing has been around for many years. In brief, Impact investing is an investment strategy where investors seek out specific social or environmental benefits from their investments beyond just gaining a financial return. Whereas an investment through an ESG lens may look to avoid negative impact, an impact investment will look to generate a measurable positive impact on social or environmental issues. 

The theory of impact investing is that by choosing to channel capital into investments that positively impact our environment and societies, investors can have a transformative effect on a positive future. Essentially, Investors are looking to the private sector to solve some of the world's most pressing issues and using their money as a force for good. 

As with all investments, the exact method and amounts will be dependent on the individual person. Depending factors include their risk appetite and how impact or financially driven they are. For example, finance-first (prioritising return) vs impact-first (prioritising impact) investors, depending on what is more important to them. Impact investments can be made through a range of asset classes, including - equity, private equity, loans, cash deposits or hybrid forms. Impact investment has attracted a wide range of investors from everyday/retail investors to fund managers, right through to religious institutions. A few examples of impact investment may be renewable energy, community development projects, education, health, microfinance and many more.  

Some consider impact investing to be an extension of philanthropy; however, impact investing challenges the theory that social and environmental issues can only be addressed by charitable donations. To be clear, impact investments are always made with the expectation of a financial return or for the enterprise to become financially self-sufficient. It is therefore not a charitable donation or grant. So how do impact investments actually perform?

Well, according to the GIINs (Global Impact Investing Network) ‘2020 annual Impact investor survey' only 88% of investors believe their impact investments are either performing as expected or overachieving. In the same report, only 1% of investors feel their investments are underperforming on impact. Thus proving you can indeed create impact alongside a financial return. 

The growth of impact investing has been monumental in recent years. In their Impact investor survey mentioned above, The GIIN estimated a total global market size of $715billion at the end of 2019. Incredibly doubling each year from 2017. In addition to this, The International Finance Corporation estimates that the pandemic has prompted an increased awareness in impact investing, suggesting $2.3trillion was being invested for impact in 2020 - a whopping 2% of global assets under management.  

With the climate crisis rising up the agenda on investors’ minds, it is not just environmental investments that are growing, it is social investments too. According to Big Society Capital, one of the UK's largest social impact investors found that social impact investing has grown 8 fold in the time from 2011 to 2020, from £834m to £6.4m. 

Millennials have been a huge driving force behind the shift towards impact investing. This is predicted to grow even further, particularly when you consider millennials in the US alone are set to inherit around $30 trillion from boomers in what is being coined the 'Great generational wealth transfer'. However, it must be noted that all generations are now getting in on the act! 

As an impact investor, it is vital to ensure you understand the holistic impact an investment may have. With Etcho, we'll show you how well a company aligns to 17 different goals, therefore allowing you full transparency of an overall impact. So, if seeking impact is important to you, why not join our waitlist for priority access to the app.

It’s no secret that the world of investing loves an acronym, and over the last decade, the use of ‘ESG’ has become a somewhat household name within the space. However, what does it actually mean, and is ESG the same as Impact Investing and Socially Responsible Investing?

ESG refers to Environment, Social and Corporate Governance. In a nutshell, it is a criteria to assess how well a company performs against these three issues and can be used to analyse negatively performing companies and seek out opportunities. 

E - pollution/emissions, S - Human rights, G - board structure.

Despite a recent boom, this set of criteria has actually been around since the 1960s as investors looked to exclude companies invested in ‘dirty’, ‘bad’ or ‘controversial’ activities such as those involved in the South African apartheid. 

Analysing companies against these criteria allow an additional analysis layer for accurate valuations to hopefully mitigate risk and produce a financial return. A good example would be the 2015 Volkswagen scandal that saw stocks plummet as it was discovered that VW had lied about its emissions scheme and a ‘light’ approach to ESG from investors essentially missed the signs.  

So, in a nutshell, ESG criteria can be used to analyse negatively performing companies and seek out opportunities in relation to specific issues and is often used in addition to traditional financial analysis to establish valuations. 

Recently the growth of ESG has skyrocketed, with global AUM estimated to hit $53 trillion by 2025! PwC predict that ESG will account for more than half Europe’s funds under management by 2025! Several factors have fueled this:

Younger generations, such as millennials, are more concerned about the impact their finances have on the world we live in.

The global landscape has changed with new regulations coming into play to mitigate ESG risks such as climate change exposure and privacy issues.

The availability, transparency, and tools we now have to analyse ESG data have grown, giving more accurate insight into how companies perform.

It’s not just ESG that has graced the investing landscape. Impact Investing and Socially Responsible Investing are terms that often get used interchangeably but mean quite different things.

Socially Responsible Investing takes ESG to another tier and looks to negatively or positively screen companies based on certain principles, for example, removing all companies from a portfolio involved in tobacco. While financial returns are still important, the alignment to specific characteristics must be met.

Impact Investing is different again as it looks to only direct capital into companies that have a positive outcome against specific criteria, regardless of financial performance. An example might include an NGO that produces climate tech.

Ultimately, the investment criteria to be used comes down to the balance between the desire for financial return and the importance of alignment to specific issues.

We’ll be diving into Impact Investment and SRI in more detail in upcoming blogs.

Future of fuel: Aviation

Future of food: Soil Regeneration

State of play: Pension Power with Make My Money Matter

On the horizon: Planetari

State of play: Global Waste with Mahak Agrawal

On the horizon: S4S Technologies

State of play: Carbon Credits with Sylvera

On the horizon: Beam

What is Impact Investing?

What is ESG?

What is Carbon Offsetting?

What is Net-Zero?