By Ben Elgin, Olivia Raimonde and Ilena Peng Less than two years ago, a group of the world’s biggest food companies, including Nestlé, Danone and Kraft Heinz, announced a major alliance to cut methane emissions from their hundreds of thousands of dairy suppliers. Last month, however, Nestlé’s logo vanished from the initiative’s website. Officials at the Swiss food giant confirmed that they’ve withdrawn from the effort, known as the Dairy Methane Action Alliance. Cows in Ireland Photographer: Paulo Nunes dos Santos/Bloomberg The company declined to elaborate on its decision to pull out. “Nestlé regularly reviews its memberships of external organizations,” said a company spokesperson in a written statement. “As part of this process, we have decided to discontinue our membership of the Dairy Methane Action Alliance.” Nevertheless, Nestlé officials praised the alliance’s efforts and said the company remains committed to slashing its dairy emissions as part of its overall effort to halve its climate pollution by 2030. It’s unclear whether Nestlé’s exit will shake the resolve of the alliance’s other members. Several participants — Danone, Starbucks, General Mills, Bel Group and Lactalis USA — told Bloomberg this week that they are sticking with the effort. Read the full story on Bloomberg.com. Boston’s heat pump upgrade | By Todd Woody A heat pump that can be installed in minutes is allowing the city of Boston to quickly decarbonize a public housing complex for the elderly and provide air conditioning as climate change-driven heat waves intensify. The Boston Housing Authority on Wednesday will announce a pilot project putting small heat pumps made by San Francisco-based startup Gradient in a 50-year-old, 100-apartment building. The units fit in a window and can provide heating and cooling for a space of about 500 square feet. That replaces the complex’s inefficient electric-resistance heating and doesn’t require the expensive and disruptive renovations that accompany the installation of a centralized heat pump system. Resident Wenda Dottin stands next to a Gradient heat pump installed in her apartment. Photo courtesy of Eversource The housing agency manages about 10,000 units for more than 17,000 residents, and window heat pumps’ fast installation time will produce immediate emissions reductions, according to Kenzie Bok, the agency’s administrator. “Most importantly, it allows us to deliver in-unit cooling to our residents for the first time as soon as possible,” she said. “We can’t treat heat as this one-off emergency.” Boston is the latest city to turn to window heat pumps to replace aging and polluting gas boilers and other fossil fuel systems in public housing. The New York City Housing Authority has installed 36 Gradient units and 36 window heat pumps made by Midea America, the US subsidiary of China’s Midea Group, as part of a pilot project. The agency plans to put in place 10,000 Gradient heat pumps and 20,000 Midea units in the coming years. Read the full story. US President Donald Trump may have dubbed climate change the “greatest con job,” but there’s growing evidence that energy transition investments are enjoying a revival. Clean energy stocks are even outperforming gold as investors respond to soaring demand for renewables needed to power the boom in artificial intelligence. Nano Nuclear Energy has no revenue, no license from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and no operating power plant. Yet investors have driven its valuation past $2.3 billion, a figure that may be built more on optimism than fundamentals. Rising power demand from data centers for artificial intelligence has led to a shortage of the gas turbines needed to generate electricity. This shortage might not seem the most obvious climate story, but it's having impacts across the entire energy sector. This week on Zero, Bloomberg’s Stephen Stapczynski joins Akshat Rathi to look at what’s causing the bottleneck in gas turbines, if the shortage will make companies look to renewables or coal, and whether natural gas is really a “bridge” fuel. Listen now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday. |