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Global electric vehicle sales continue to break records, though the numbers are heavily dependent on regional differences. Sales increased by 22 percent so far this year for pure battery-electric vehicles, not counting hybrids, according to the energy transition data firm Rho Motion. Automakers also scored a new monthly record of 1.7 million EV sales in September, beating the previous peak of 1.55 million set in December 2023. 

The record-breaking pace should help set aside doubts about the public’s willingness to invest in electric cars, at least on a global level, Charles Lester, data manager for Rho Motion, observed in an analysis published this week. However, he cautions that “the regional disparities are astonishing.” According to the firm's data, China alone accounted for more than half of global EV sales, while several European nations saw sales drop over recent years. 

For the purposes of decarbonizing the global economy, the real question is how to re-boost momentum and accelerate the pace of electrification. That's unlikely to happen in the U.S. and other parts of the world until automakers finally close a stubbornly high gender gap.

The gender gap in U.S. electric vehicle sales

EV sales grew by a combined 10 percent in the U.S. and Canada this year, according to Rho Motion, which disappointed advocates who hoped for stronger growth. By way of comparison, 2013 EV sales nearly doubled over the previous year.

Auto industry observers often mention affordability when discussing why U.S. drivers are not rushing to buy electric vehicles. Access to a convenient, reliable network of public charging stations also frequently comes up.

To the extent that both of these factors have an outsized impact on female heads of household, it is surprising that fewer analysts mention gender in relation to EV sales. Nevertheless, gender makes a big difference. 

Women purchased just 33 percent of the electric vehicles sold in the U.S. in the first six months of 2023, according to a frequently cited survey from the automotive sales company Edmunds. In contrast, women accounted for 41 percent of all U.S. auto sales during that time. 

“Women could represent a key target demographic for automakers that haven’t put all of their eggs in the fully electric basket and are looking for a stepping stone before committing,” Edmunds noted.

Affordability is not the only factor

If affordability is responsible for the EV sales gender gap, that factor could fade in the near future. Goldman Sachs, for example, anticipates that a sharp drop in the cost of EV batteries will reduce the up-front cost of an electric car to parity with conventional cars by 2026. Depending on the cost of insurance and other circumstances, EVs can also provide a lifetime cost-of-ownership advantage. Maintenance costs are lower for EVs, and recharging a battery is less expensive than buying gas.

Still, women who are concerned about safety at public charging stations could remain reluctant to buy EVs. The national network of public stations is still in the early phases of buildout. Breakdowns and connectivity issues are frequent, and drivers can’t assume that a human attendant will be on site to help in an emergency.

With single women now accounting for more home ownership than single men, one solution is to make installing a home EV charging station as affordable and guesswork-free as possible. 

Ford is among the automakers pursuing that path. In September, the company launched the Power Promise program aimed at incentivizing new electric vehicle buyers to install a home charging station. Homeowners also save money on home charging compared to using public stations, especially if their utility offers lower electricity rates for off-peak charging.

Similarly, the GM Energy branch of General Motors introduced the new Power Bank home energy storage system. Among other uses, homeowners can deploy the Power Bank to store extra electricity during off-peak hours when rates are low, and use it to recharge their EV as needed.

Help is on the way for renters, too

Overcoming the rental barrier is a much thornier problem. By and large, landlords have no motive to install expensive new electrical infrastructure, and tenants have no incentive to invest their own money in someone else’s property.

Still, 31 percent of U.S. households live in apartment buildings and other multi-family dwellings. Women renters, especially women of color, also experience more burdensome housing costs, further impeding any inclination to spend money on a charging station.

The U.S. startup 3V Infrastructure is among the charging station stakeholders spotting some low-hanging fruit in the rental area. The company plans to install Level 2 charging stations at buildings with 20 or more units, including hotels and other long-stay facilities as well as residential dwellings, with no up-front cost to the property owner or tenant. The charging stations also do not require property managers or superintendents to take on new responsibilities, as 3V takes care of ongoing operation, maintenance and repair costs.

Making public EV charging stations better

Making home EV charging more accessible to renters and homeowners is a good start. However, if automakers want to step up the pace of electric vehicle sales, they still need to provide the security of a safe, reliable public charging station network.

The initial approach to public charging was characterized by a bleak, featureless, charge-and-go approach. More recently, eight automakers — BMW, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, Kia, Stellantis and Toyota — formed a joint venture called IONNA, aimed at populating the U.S. with purpose-built charging centers that offer the amenities of a modern roadside stop, including food and beverages, bathrooms, and comfortable lounge-style seating areas.

These improvements benefit everyone. But programs and messaging focused specifically on women could go further to help automakers close the EV sales gender gap. For example, last month BMW engaged the former professional soccer star and gender equality activist Alex Scott to lead the Living with Electric campaign focused on both home and public EV charging.

While the campaign features the new BMW iX2 crossover SUV, which is not available in the U.S., it offers a good model for U.S. automakers to follow if they are serious about making electric vehicles more appealing to women.    

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology completely reinvented the modern toilet. Together with LIXIL, they’re hoping to change how we manage human waste and sanitation.

“For millennia, humans have put waste into water and just kind of flushed it downstream,” Shannon Yee, associate professor of mechanical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and developer of the Generation Two Reinvented Toilet (G2RT) told TriplePundit. “We're looking at a major shift.”

Re-envisioning universal sanitation 

Almost half of the global population — 46 percent, or 3.6 billion people — lives in an area where wastewater is not safely treated. As such, 44 percent of the domestic wastewater that was returned to the environment in 2020 did not go through proper treatment. This puts the lives and health of humans and animals at risk as bacteria- and virus-laden wastewater ends up in rivers, lakes, oceans and drinking water — causing diseases like cholera, typhoid and polio to spread.

In other cases, inclement weather can cause sewage treatment systems to overflow. Anyone who has lived along the northern part of the Willamette River in Oregon, for example, is familiar with frequent sewage spills. On December 8, 2023, the city of Salem released 3.15 million gallons of combined sewage and rainwater into the river after heavy rainfall overburdened the system. That problem is only going to get worse as the climate crisis entrenches further.

“We know the susceptibility of our infrastructure in the face of climate change,” Yee said. “Treatment plants will flood because they're at low-lying areas [and] in drought-ridden areas.” 

So instead of investing in systems that will fail, it makes more sense to change how waste treatment is handled in the first place, which is the goal with the G2RT. 

“It's about how do we responsibly treat waste on site?” Yee said of the reinvented toilet. “That type of colossal shift, I think, is now enabled.”

The G2RT as an appliance

The G2RT is an off-grid toilet designed to be used in just about any setting, from modern, urban homes to rural areas where traditional toilets have yet to make inroads, public places, and even emergency response and crisis situations. Since the toilet is self-contained and breaks down waste on-site, it doesn’t need plumbing to connect it to water or sewage. That on-site treatment eliminates an enormous amount of waste, turning it into clean water that can be safely discharged into the environment or reused to flush the toilet and a negligible amount of ash, Yee said.

Erin McCusker, senior vice president at the water and housing products company LIXIL, likened the G2RT to an appliance. LIXIL is licensed to hone the new toilet and get it to market.

“This comes down to the acceptance of these types of technologies,” she said, referring to the wafers of waste produced by using the toilet that people may not be comfortable with right away. “Scientifically, this is possible. We've got that validation, but now it's like, ‘Are consumers going to trust this in their home?’”

But can it be maintained the same as any other home appliance? McCusker thinks so. “The idea is, ideally, this is a home appliance that someone could repair, replace a filter, maintain, as we do our washing machines, for example,” she said. “But in the end, you will need some skilled labor to be able to do some additional maintenance or to troubleshoot.”

Ongoing testing to ensure reliability

The reinvented toilet has undergone numerous prototype versions and pilots to ensure its reliability and determine its repair schedule, Yee said. The team tested four different versions between trials in the lab and in homes in South Africa and India. 

“Prototype testing and testing with actual users becomes the most critical stage of this,” McCusker said. “The sooner at LIXIL we can get it out of the lab and build prototypes and actually start testing, is when we’re really going to learn more [and] understand the long-term usage. That's a really high priority for us, particularly over this next year.”

But LIXIL isn’t rushing the toilet to market. It will still be a couple of years before the product is robust enough to meet the criteria needed for production, she said.

“Oftentimes people have the expectation that as soon as a technology is invented, it works perfectly and can last 30 years, but in reality, that's never been the case. It took us 100 years to get the automobile to the reliability it has now,” Yee said. “We're at the early stages of that now with the toilet. It's going to take some time.”

In the meantime, LIXIL is partnering with communities in a rural, agricultural region in western Alabama where lack of sanitation infrastructure and aging septic tanks led to an ongoing sewage crisis. The need there is so great that McCusker said it’s worth giving residents access to the new toilet even though it hasn’t been perfected yet.

Regulation is the biggest challenge

“There’s very few, if any, places it’s legally allowed to be installed,”  McCusker said. “How do we actually change mindset, regulation, policy around on-site treatment and on-site reuse that can enable these types of technologies to be installed.” 

Yee agreed. “There are more challenges beyond the technology than there are with the technology at this point,” he said.

Those challenges include social acceptance, the high initial cost of the toilet, and a need for resources to get it out there, McCusker said. The G2RT will likely be rolled out in higher-income countries first. Then as production increases and the price drops, it will become a more feasible option for communities in lower-income countries.

Safe elimination and sanitation are a basic human right, and without it, people around the world are suffering. This technology has the potential to make a huge difference once social, financial and legal hurdles are cleared. 

“I see it really helping to address some of the equity issues, social justice, environmental justice, poverty issues surrounding sanitation, but I also see it really addressing public health,” Yee said. “I look at [COVID-19] and consider how lucky we were that it was mostly a respiratory transmission and not oral-fecal transmission because it could have been a lot worse. If we can really isolate waste on site and treat it, it really opens up tremendous opportunities for combating future pandemics and disease.”

In the United States, institutions of higher education are champions and facilitators of decarbonization research: They foster the next generation of climate scientists, build innovative technologies, and educate industry and the general public. Equally important, universities can become effective champions of decarbonizing their campuses.

College campuses are amongst some of the largest energy users in the country. Academic institutions, especially those that rely on large-scale computational systems and industrial machinery, still face many challenges when implementing decarbonization programs and curbing their carbon emissions.

Given their energy usage, functioning as small-scale cities, colleges and universities have a unique opportunity to act as natural test beds for a multitude of decarbonization strategies and provide case studies for peer institutions and larger citywide and statewide communities. Campuses are comprised of multiple different building types — dormitories, offices, classrooms — where the lessons learned can be applied to most of the nation’s residential and commercial building stock.

New Jersey colleges are building a blueprint for how academic institutions, alongside regional energy regulatory bodies, can collaborate across the country to make progress on shared carbon emission goals.

While many institutions have similarly committed to taking action on the climate crisis and achieving net zero emissions, it’s important to recognize there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Depending on the type of HVAC systems in place, each university will face unique barriers when it comes to implementation. Several common challenges include a lack of funding for decarbonization initiatives, a lack of experience in measuring and demonstrating the cost-benefit of campus decarbonization, and at some institutions, there may be a lack of stakeholder buy-in from top decision-makers or staff who are unaware of available incentive programs.

Thus far, the most significant barrier to campus decarbonization is the absence of reliable roadmaps for strategic planning. Here, knowledge sharing becomes a critical way to pool educational resources and proven experiences of how to design and implement a cohesive decarbonization strategy. Decarbonization policies become significantly more effective with access to academic resources, like the New Jersey Clean Energy Learning Center.

In New Jersey, new pathways for education and collaboration are being built through the Campus Consortium for Decarbonization, an initiative funded by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities and the New Jersey Clean Energy Program, housed at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The state of New Jersey also benefits from the New Jersey Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability, a volunteer organization housed at Rutgers University that focuses on student engagement, knowledge sharing and workforce development. It’s worth noting that most states don’t have these kinds of consortia.

The Campus Consortium for Decarbonization was organized to share knowledge across New Jersey campuses working on reducing their carbon footprint. Academic institutions gather to share funding strategies and practical approaches to decarbonization and collaborate to develop innovative solutions. For example, at a recent consortium event, Princeton University shared the use of cutting-edge electric heat pumps to supplement its low-temperature water heating system, encouraging others to gauge the feasibility of adopting heat pumps and introducing similar thermal storage and geo-exchange programs. 

New Jersey colleges and universities are also working together to share insights on installing electric vehicle chargers, heat and power systems, energy efficiency, beneficial electrification and carbon storage solutions. And they are looking at the feasibility of sending all organic waste to processing facilities, where it can be converted into renewable natural gas and used to power vehicle fleets or as carbon credits. Later this year, universities will explore the viability of carbon sequestration. 

Throughout this work, a recurring question we ask ourselves is: How do we prepare our campuses to be available 24/7 for students, faculty and staff, while also reaching ambitious renewable energy goals? Consortium partners are working together to coordinate assessments and responses to tackle these questions. For example, the New Jersey Institute of Technology will host a workshop alongside Rutgers University and Kean University with the goal of accurately calculating their respective transportation footprints — a major part of a university’s overall emissions — to find ways to reduce them. 

Since its inception, one of the consortium's primary concerns is the practicality of financing and tailoring these solutions. In New Jersey, state funding has been essential, especially through the Large Energy Users Program Higher Education Decarbonization Pilot, which provides up to $5 million for universities with diversified decarbonization plans. 

Yet, increased federal funding will be necessary to support regional efforts and deploy more solutions at scale. The Environmental Protection Agency, the federal agency responsible for maintaining environmental standards and issuing nearly half of its overall budget in grants to that end, divides the country up into 10 regions. Each represent a source of additional funding that could potentially be unlocked for campuses nationwide.

Another source of federal funds, tax credits from 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act, are allowing institutions to install renewable energy and make their campuses more vibrant. Regardless of the agency or initiative, we believe that directing federal funding to a well-structured consortium of colleges allows for more efficient utilization than funding marked for individual institutions.

This much is clear: If a group of large energy users makes simultaneous progress on decarbonization goals, the overall impact can be significant. New Jersey’s higher education community, and its active cooperation with the state’s public utilities authority, serve as a replicable model for how academic and regulatory communities can collaborate across the country. If America’s colleges want to practice what they teach, this kind of collaboration is not merely helpful — it’s a necessity.

On the outskirts of Hyderabad, India, Diya lives at the Center for Social Service (CSS), a nonprofit that helps abandoned girls. Her journey there has been hard fought. 

Born in a small village in Andhra Pradesh, Diya’s mother died when she was one, and she was abandoned by her father. Living at her uncle’s house she faced cruelty. At the age of eight, her uncle sent Diya to the city of Hyderabad, where her uncle told her she would be living there as a maid and babysitter to his family. He told her to behave. 

Only Diya’s courage and help from a family member brought her to CSS, where she restarted her education. 

October 11th is the International Day of the Girl, the annual observance of issues faced by girls worldwide. The theme this year is “vision for the future,” reflecting a hope that we can accelerate progress “towards a future in which every girl can fulfill her potential.” 

But for too many girls, that future is still far out of reach. Today nearly 30 million girls are displaced and 110 million girls are at risk of child marriage. One in five girls worldwide never finish elementary school, and almost half never complete secondary education. Nearly 90 percent of adolescent girls and young women in low-income countries do not use the internet. In India alone, a staggering 29.4 million girls like Diya were orphaned or abandoned, based on UNICEF’s most recent survey. 

These crises — poverty, displacement, abandonment, abuse, bias and more — are endemic to many parts of the world. They imperil our shared future, and they are putting the ambitious goals of the International Day of the Girl out of reach. 

In 2010, inspired by girls we met in orphanages and residential centers across India, we started an organization designed to build that future where every girl can fulfill her potential. Commit2Change works with vulnerable, school-aged girls in India and South Asia to empower them with critical education and life skills. In 14 years, with more than 8,500 girls helped by our programs, we’ve learned two big lessons about how to make progress real for girls — lessons we hope will be instructive for global leaders, philanthropists and educators alike. 

The first: You can’t give up on girls in crisis. Ever. 

We believe that empowering girls through education is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty and discrimination. Many of the girls we serve come from backgrounds of extreme hardship, often cast away from their families due to poverty or gender discrimination. They face additional barriers such as domestic violence and negative family environments, which can severely impact their self-worth and ability to make independent choices.

Time and time and time again, we’ve been moved by the determination and bravery of these girls. From a young girl with HIV abandoned by her parents that Sumana met during a recent visit to the Little Flowers Children’s Home in Bangalore to the conversation Sejal’s daughters had with girls in partner orphanages, the girls we serve are fiercely determined to get educated and make something of their lives. 

The second lesson: Empowerment works.

We take a holistic approach to education, going beyond traditional education to include life skills, digital literacy and mental wellness. We focus on the "4C's" — confidence, critical thinking, creativity and communication skills — which are integrated into our curricula and supported through social and emotional counseling. 

This approach is meaningful for girls from troubled backgrounds. But empowerment is critical for all girls because it elevates learning. By incorporating life skills such as vedic math, digital literacy and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education, we’re creating a next generation talent pool. This is good for girls, but it also gets us all closer to achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals, from no poverty and equality to innovation and economic growth. 

This comprehensive model starts in early education and extends through high school, ensuring that girls are empowered to complete university or vocational school and become competitive in the job market. Programming includes leading-edge tech education, from robotic kits and STEM labs to assistive technologies. In South Asia today, only one in four STEM students in college and university are women. Together, we can change that. 

Fresh data shows the remarkable progress of this holistic model: a 75 percent boost in math scores across grades one through eight, and a 61 percent improvement in math scores across grades three through eight. Sixty percent of students achieved English proficiency, compared to only 25 percent locally. Students' scores jumped 15 to 30 points in math and science. And there was a remarkable 98 percent success rate in helping enrolled girls stay in school.  

This model is working, and it's scalable. As more partners join on, we’ve expanded from India to the wider region, helping exponentially more girls each year who come from increasingly varied and complex situations of crisis. 

By Diya’s sixteenth birthday, she’d not gone back to her village since she came into our program and refused contact with her abusive family. When you hear her story, you might not think that this young girl smiling back at you has been through so much trauma, but she is strong beyond her years. Today Diya is studying on a science track in school. Her hope is to become a doctor so that one day she can help people like her sister live a better life.

This is the lesson for International Day of the Girl. Never, ever give up on a girl in crisis. And this is our charge across sectors and across borders: provide girls with the education and empowerment they need to overcome adversity and achieve their dreams. That’s a powerful “vision for the future,” for girls and for us all. 

The Commit2Change student’s name was changed to protect her privacy.

Orchards blanketing California’s Central Valley produce 80 percent of the world’s supply of almonds, and all of ours in the United States. Touted as a superfood, they’ve soared in popularity since the 1980s — with Californian production increasing seven times since then. Filled with nutrients and antioxidants, almonds help lower cholesterol and blood pressure, strengthen bones, and improve blood sugar control and gut health.

But almonds are a thirsty crop, which can be problematic under water shortages in California. So Kind Snacks, a producer of snack bars and cereal, is delving into the nuts and bolts of almond farming. Last year, it launched a three-year pilot program, the Almond Acres Initiative, to test regenerative agriculture and new technologies in partnership with one of its top suppliers, Ofi. 

With a year of promising progress under their belt, the organizations are expanding the Central Valley project to include a second, drier site. Undaunted by dust and dehydration, they’re hoping to make our favorite nut a little better for everyone.

The bitter side of almond orchards

Almonds give us marzipan, Amaretto, amaretti cookies and so much more. But there’s a downside to this delicious nut. 

It’s no secret almonds need a lot of water. With 3.2 gallons required per nut, that’s a higher water footprint than other major California crops. However, this elevated water use is in line with other fruit and nut trees. 

Further, that water doesn’t just go toward nuts — other parts of the almond tree can be put to use too. The protective layer around the almond shell, the hull, can be used as livestock feed, while the shells can be used as mulch or bedding.

Besides water, pesticides are also applied in abundance on almonds. In 2022, nearly 31 million pounds were used in California, making almonds one of the state’s dirtiest crops. These chemicals can damage biodiversity, harm workers and people living nearby, and pollute water, soil and air.

But it’s not all bad news in almond orchards. Almonds have a relatively small carbon footprint, 20 times lower than that of beef. And almond milk production requires less land and water than dairy milk and causes less pollution. 

Kind’s approach in a nutshell

Despite these challenges, Kind launched an ambitious project to improve almond production. 

“When we launched Kind’s Almond Acres Initiative in 2023 last year, we started with the commitment that 100 percent of our almonds would be sourced from farms leveraging regenerative agriculture by 2030,” said Lindsay Philpott, sustainability communications manager at Kind. 

Regenerative agriculture focuses on soil health while also improving yields, lowering water use and reducing carbon emissions. To reach that goal, Kind and Ofi are testing five agricultural approaches and a new set of tech tools. 

“We're starting to test there with the hopes that the test will give us the information we need to scale across our supply chain to meet that 2030 commitment,” Philpott said. “So getting as much information out of this pilot as possible, so we can go to other growers and say, ‘Here, we've tested this over the course of three years. Here's what we're finding. Here are the practices we think would be most beneficial. And here's how we can support you in scaling those practices.’”

While the pilot project started with an initial 500 acres in Madera County, California, that acreage is doubling. The new test site, located in Bakersfield, California, was chosen due to its drier climate.

Kind is not alone in its endeavors. It’s working in collaboration with a whole cadre of partners including the California Water Action Institute, the Pollinator Partnership, the University of California, Davis, and the University of California, Merced. 

From pollination to high-tech tools 

The Almond Acres Initiative starts at the very beginning: pollination. Similar to many crops, bees are critical for almond farming. Yet honeybees are in trouble. In 2023, nearly half the colonies in the U.S. died from pests and disease, extreme weather, lack of food, pesticides and climate change. 

Kind is testing a new approach to addressing the issue with the beekeeping tech company Beewise. It’s using a solar-powered beehive combined with robotics and artificial intelligence to combat bee decline. By detecting problems early on, it reduced colony losses by 70 percent. And closing the hive can reduce bees’ exposure to pesticides.

Once the bees have done their part and the almonds start growing, Kind is testing a number of other regenerative agriculture techniques. 

For example, burying irrigation lines underneath the soil saves water. Known as subsurface drip irrigation, this technology has used 30 percent less water in the pilot so far, said Zac Ellis, senior director of agronomy at Ofi. It also reduced the amount of weeds, translating into fewer herbicide applications, and decreased humidity, reducing disease risk. But this type of irrigation system is more expensive to install than a traditional one, and pocket gophers can pose a problem.

Another technique in the testing mix is cover crops. Planted between the trees, they improve soil health, prevent erosion, suppress weeds and encourage water infiltration. These plants also provide forage for pollinators and uptake carbon. 

Kind also applies compost and biochar, or a charcoal-like substance made from burning almond shells, to the soil. These materials improve soil quality, retain water and sequester carbon. But since biochar is expensive, they’re also examining if applying almond shells alone can do the job. If that weren’t enough, a fertilizer with a significantly lower manufacturing carbon footprint is also part of the test.

A set of high-tech tools from Landscan helps optimize these last techniques. The company produces high-resolution spatial mapping of soils four feet in depth. This detailed information on soil quality and nutrients helps target applications of fertilizer and biochar, potentially reducing their use. 

Harvesting to an almond tree’s end

Once those delicious almonds are ready for harvesting, Kind has another suite of approaches up its sleeve. At harvest time, almonds are normally shaken off the trees and then swept into rows. For this project, an off-ground harvester catches almonds directly from the trees and then lays them in rows to dry. Bypassing the sweeping step reduces soil disturbance, dust and equipment use. While the current adoption of this technology is low, Kind hopes its pilot can demonstrate the benefits to farmers.

In the final phase — when almond trees are nearing the end of their productive lifespan — they’re recycled. Traditionally trees are burned, but areas of California are phasing out the practice. In contrast to this fiery end, whole-orchard recycling involves grinding old almond trees into chips. This biomass is applied to the orchard floor where it improves soil health, nutrient levels and water retention, and eventually boosts almond yields. This method can be costly, but some financial incentives are available for farmers.

Almond farming for the future

Overall, these practices improve sustainability while also fighting climate change. For example, practices like whole tree recycling and low-carbon fertilizer reduce an orchard’s carbon footprint, Philpott said. And soil health practices help sequester carbon while bolstering orchards against weather extremes like flooding or drought.

“The reality is we're working in California, which is on the front lines of the changing climate,” Philpott said. “So it's not something that's far off in the future that we're trying to do now. We're actively working to adapt.”

Since the pilot is ongoing, it’s too early to share concrete results. But Kind is excited by some of the progress it’s seeing in soil health so far, Philpott said.

The path forward

As the state’s top-valued agricultural export, the almond industry was worth $4.65 billion in 2022. The global almond market is predicted to grow by 5.5 percent until 2029. 

Kind’s pilot project could help soften the industry’s impact while providing a variety of benefits for the environment and farmers alike.

“If we know that one of our larger impact ingredients is almonds, and we buy a lot of them, how can we move the needle in a way that's impactful not only for Kind and our goals but for the broader industry?” Philpott said. “That's our hope.”

Editor's Note: Travel and accommodations to California’s Central Valley were provided by Kind Snacks. Neither the author nor TriplePundit were required to write about the experience. 

The U.S. wind industry often faces criticism for failing to recycle decommissioned wind turbine blades. Thousands of these massive pieces of equipment are piling up in disposal sites across the country, and there are many more to come. That is a bad look for an industry that deploys sustainable energy as a selling point. Fortunately, new tools are emerging to help the industry build more circularity into its green profile.

Solving the turbine blade riddle before the numbers add up

Wind turbine blades are relatively new to the waste disposal and recycling streams, but their numbers are set to rise rapidly in the coming years. About 90 percent of U.S. wind turbines were installed after 2012, according the U.S. Department of Energy. Assuming a 20-year lifespan for a typical wind turbine, that adds up to an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 blades to be disposed of each year between 2025 and 2040. 

The Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) took a look at the situation in 2022 and warned of a significant gap between the nation’s current blade recycling resources and the number of blades to be recycled in the future. Among other issues, the massive size and weight of decommissioned blades make it expensive to transport them to a recycling facility, NREL noted. Disposal in the nearest landfill is a more economical alternative, though not necessarily a more sustainable one.

The NREL team estimated that up to 78 percent of decommissioned blades will end up in landfills under a business-as-usual scenario. That estimate is supported by studies showing that turbine blades account for a small fraction of the global waste stream. One study published in 2021, for example, found that turbine blades will take up just 1 percent of available landfill space by 2050. In other words, the raw numbers suggest that landfilling turbine blades is not a particularly significant waste disposal issue.

Nevertheless, the U.S. wind industry has a strong reputational motive to adopt recycling over landfilling. In addition, a growing number of farmers and other businesses are deploying their own wind turbines on-site to support their sustainability goals, a movement supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These hyper-local renewable energy stakeholders form another constituency with an interest in finding more holistic alternatives to landfilling.

Near-term solutions for turbine blade recycling

Unlike other parts of a wind turbine, blade materials can’t be separated from each for recycling. Because they need to be strong, durable and lightweight, turbine blades are made from advanced composite materials containing glass, carbon fibers and epoxy binders. 

“Blades are designed to last a long time, and the fundamental nature of a composite is you are combining dissimilar materials together that are not designed to come apart,” Patrick Sullivan, a strategy director at Owens Corning, which manufactures glass fibers that are used in the composite materials for wind turbine blades, told TriplePundit last year. 

As one indicator of progress, last month the Energy Department announced six winners in its Wind Turbine Materials Recycling Prize program. Drawn from an initial cohort of 20 teams selected in January, the winners were judged according to their potential for advancing from the prototype stage to demonstration-scale systems and eventual commercialization.

One of the winners, the Iowa firm Critical Materials Recycling, is developing a more environmentally-friendly approach to retrieving the magnets used in various parts of a wind turbine. The other five winners focus specifically on blade recycling.

Among those five is the Cimentaire project in Houston, Texas, which makes a protective waterproof coating for concrete out of ground-up turbine blades. Another Texas company, United Standard Materials Corp., deploys a process called flash composite recycling to convert fiber-reinforced composites into the widely used compound silicon carbide. Among other uses, the compound can be used to improve the durability of new turbine blades. The flash composite system also produces hydrogen as a byproduct, which can be deployed in fuel cells, fertilizer production, and other industrial systems.

Shredding turbine blades is another commercially promising strategy recognized by the Energy Department. In that area, the West Virginia firm Fletcher Engineered Solutions is developing transportable equipment that can shred an entire blade on-site, without the time and expense of cutting it into sections beforehand. Similarly, GreenTex Solutions of South Carolina is developing an on-site shredder with the aim of using the material to produce flooring panels, which can also be recycled when their lifespan is over.

A third winner in the shredding space is the Wind Rewind project at the University of Maine, which plans to use shredded wind turbine blade material as a low-cost additive to plastic used in large-scale 3D printing.

The “limitless” wind turbine blade of the future

The six finalists each earned a $500,000 cash prize along with technical support to help them take the next steps toward demonstration, validation and commercialization.

In the meantime, the Energy Department also supports research aimed at encouraging the wind industry to adopt new materials that allow for turbine blades to be reused, rather than granulated or shredded. The challenge is to reassure the wind industry that the new materials perform as well, or better than, conventional turbine blade materials.

One significant area of focus is the resin used to bind turbine blade materials together. In August, NREL announced a milestone study in the development of a new bio-based resin. The new resin enables recyclers to deploy a low-impact chemical process that dis-assembles turbine blades into their component materials. The materials are intact and can be reused multiple times.

“It is truly a limitless approach if it’s done right,” Ryan Clarke, a postdoctoral researcher at NREL and lead author of the new study, said in a statement. His team found the bio-based resin to perform "on par" or better than those in use today.  

A similar project is underway at Virginia Tech. Funded in part by the Energy Department, the Virginia Tech team is working on an ambitious turbine blade manufacturing method that combines large-scale 3D printing and high-performance design with a new, fully recyclable polymer composite. The process eliminates the use of hazardous materials, enabling the composite to be reprocessed into new blades.

As an additional benefit, the Virginia Tech team aims to manufacture turbine blades at or near the site of installation, avoiding the considerable cost of transporting whole blades from a distant factory.

Zooming out to see the big picture, the environmental issues confronting the wind industry are pea-sized compared to the boiling stew of disaster brewed up by the fossil energy industry over the last century. Still, wind stakeholders can — and should — set their own bar for progress and take advantage of a more circular, sustainable way to manage end-of-life for turbine blades.

As someone who lives a mile from New England’s second largest commercial fishing port, the most controversial bumper sticker I used to see on my neighbors’ rusty pickup trucks was, “Tilapia is NOT Seafood.”

While the merits of eating factory farmed fish versus the tons of fresh flounder, halibut, sea bass and squid processed in Rhode Island’s Port of Galilee has not abated, the much louder battle cry over the last couple of years has been focused on the dozens of offshore wind turbines under construction off Block Island, Martha’s Vineyard and the south fork of Long Island. 

Unsubstantiated claims tying ocean wind farms to the deaths of whales and birds have become a rallying cry during the presidential election. When debris from a faulty turbine blade forced the closing of a beach on Nantucket during the peak summer season, calls for a construction halt became even louder. 

It’s against that backdrop White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi provided a progress report Monday on whether it is still possible to achieve President Joe Biden’s goal of generating 30 gigawatts of clean electricity by 2030 as part of the U.S. battle to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change.

“We've greenlit enough projects to build out 15 gigawatts of that offshore wind resource,” Zaidi said at a Reuters sustainability conference in New York, acknowledging cost overruns and production mistakes have also stymied progress.  

South Fork Wind, 35 miles east of Montauk Point, New York, is currently delivering electricity to the state's grid, Zaidi said. Dominion Wind, 27 miles off Virginia Beach, is on budget and on schedule. 

“I think there's a lot of learning that's coming out of this first round of projects. There's a lot of investment into the supply chain which now reaches 46 states across the country,” Zaidi said, adding that the United States is playing catch-up with Europe on offshore wind development.

On the topic of misinformation heading into November’s election, the Biden aide admitted that debunking conspiracy theories is a substantial distraction.

“I think part of propelling a clean energy transformation in the United States is making sure folks see the cause and effect in a positive way. It becomes more complex when you've got people surging misinformation,” Zaidi said.  “The vehicle transformation is one example, where the petroleum producers have actually been funding the ads to mislead folks about what our policy is, which is a policy around choice, affordability and making things in America — not about bans or mandates." 

He sees combatting misinformation as "just part of the terrain these days," adding: “I think it's a task made more difficult by the wild, wild west online. But it's an important thing for us to figure out if our democracy is going to meet the test of this incredible crisis.”

This article is part of our series on responsible mining solutions. The push for clean energy is fueled by a growing demand for minerals, but conventional mining has a track record of harmful social and environmental impacts. Here is another potential solution to that problem.

It’s estimated that 54 percent of transition mineral projects around the world are located on or near the lands of Indigenous peoples. That means working with Indigenous nations — and obtaining free, prior and informed consent to explore a mineral deposit — is paramount to the clean energy transition.

If we want a cleaner energy grid — and things like electric vehicles, solar power and battery storage — we need minerals like copper, lithium and nickel.

The pursuit of one good, however, must not compromise another. The push for renewable energy should not come at the expense of the rights and freedoms of Indigenous peoples.

The mining industry is awakening to the fact that it needs the consent, cooperation, and collaboration of the Indigenous nations on whose lands they operate to extract and process minerals, even when federal or state regulations are not in place.

Legacy mining issues include human rights abuses and environmental disasters, along with corruption, elaborate tax evasion schemes and suing countries in international court, so communities are understandably cautious when considering a mining project. One potential solution to managing the mining industry and Indigenous nation relations is through co-ownership. 

What is co-ownership?

Co-ownership provides an equity stake in the company, as well as a seat at the executive table. That way a community is not just aware of company decisions that affect them, they can actually influence those decisions. Communities not only share the profits of the project, they also contribute funds and risk losses.

In mining, this is very rare. Only a handful of projects have some semblance of co-ownership. The environmentally disruptive nature of mining projects, immense start-up capital required, volatile nature of mineral markets, and often decades-long permitting processes are some of the factors that prevent communities from engaging in co-ownership with mining companies.

But in renewable energy projects, co-ownership models are more common. Solar and wind projects are much less disruptive to the natural environment than mining is. And they require less start-up capital and permitting, contributing to a more easily accessible and attractive investment opportunity for local communities.

In Canada, over half of the renewable energy projects launched between 2010 and 2020 on Indigenous territories were wholly or partially Indigenous-owned.

The case of Skeena Resources and the Tahltan Central Government

Skeena Resources is exploring a gold-silver mine at Eskay Creek, which sits on Tahltan land in Northwestern Canada. As conversations and the relationship between the two parties grew, the Tahltan Central Government eventually made a $5 million CAD ($3.71 million USD) equity investment in Skeena Resources in 2021. This co-ownership agreement is one of the first of its kind in mining.

“Skeena’s leadership recognizes that communities have to benefit from these projects, or there is no reason to support them,” said Allen Edzerza, Tahltan Elder. 

Edzerza sits on the Tahltan Elders Council and has led negotiations with Canadian governments and industry. He spoke to TriplePundit as a community leader, not in any official capacity representing the Tahltan Government.

“I’ve visited the Skeena mine,” Edzerza said. “I’ve looked at how they plan to deal with acid rock and tailings, and all of that seems like a strong plan. They’ve worked with us to protect some lands, and they’ve hired Tahltan into senior positions in their company. One would hope that this relationship will continue to evolve and build trust with each other.”

The Skeena project is still in exploration but will move into production in the coming years.

“The Tahltan have a piece of equity in the company now, but we fully expect that’s not the end of the road or the total sum,” said Justin Himmelright, senior vice president of external affairs at Skeena Resources. “That was the exploration stage, and now we’re moving into a producing mine model, and those discussions are going to continue.”

Coordinating with the Tahltan, “has been tremendously helpful in streamlining and taking a lot of the friction out of all of our regulatory submissions,” Himmelright said.

The benefits of working so closely with the Tahltan go beyond just the regulatory streamlining.

“There's an inherent value that I don't think you can quite put a finger on, but it's the relationships,” Himmelright said. “It’s the ability to work closely with people around common goals and to share aspirations with each other. Trust and respect build fantastic productive relationships when it comes to advancing projects and initiatives together.”

While recapping a seven-year relationship in a few paragraphs misses the nuance involved, whenever there were disagreements between Skeena and the Tahltan, their common goals allowed them to overcome those differences.

“Just like any relationship where the parties involved have trust and respect for each other, you have the capacity and the desire to sit down and have honest conversations to achieve some kind of reasonable outcome that works for both parties,” Himmelright said.

“When you get a mining company coming in like this, it's like a marriage,” Edzerza said with a smile. “You’re going to be together for a long time — maybe 20, 30 or 40 years. You have to learn how to dance together. You have to learn how to talk to each other in a respectful way and say, ‘Hey, I have a problem. Let’s figure this out.’ And that goes both ways.”

Replicating the co-ownership model 

While Skeena is by no means a small company, its current market capitalization is $1.26 billion CAD ($933 million USD), in the mining world it is relatively small. That, in part, allows the company the flexibility and freedom to pursue this type of innovative collaboration with the Tahltan — something that might be more difficult for larger companies to do.

The Tahltan will look to build on the agreement with Skeena when they enter negotiations with some of the mining giants beginning to show interest in the territory.

“There are over 100 exploration companies on our territory,” Edzerza said. “The Skeena project is large, but it’s small compared to the other ones like Seabridge’s KSM project or the Galore Creek project. Those are monster-type mines.”

The Skeena mine at Eskay Creek has measured and indicated reserves totaling about 4 million ounces of gold, and 100 million ounces of silver. The KSM project boasts about 100 million ounces of gold, 400 million ounces of silver and 20 billion pounds of copper. 

The Galore Creek project is smaller than KSM, but is a split-ownership undertaking between Newmont and Teck, two of the mining industry’s top heavyweights.

“What's happening in our territory is the big boys are taking over all the projects,” Edzerza said. “But it's going to come down to how sustainable their projects are for us to provide consent. And it's going to require them to recognize our jurisdiction and authority. We own the minerals, not the province, and not the guys who stake the claim.”

While it remains to be seen how the negotiations with the “big boys” will progress, for Skeena, the decision to enter co-ownership was pretty straightforward.

“When they approached us to say are you willing and interested to go down this somewhat experimental and new path, unequivocally and very quickly, our answer was yes,” Himmelright said. “Number one, it’s the right thing to do … This community feels the effects of the project the most, so they should be front and center in any decision-making that affects them … And if you’re looking for the dollars and cents support for this, you only have to look at the trend of Indigenous participation in every industry in Canada to understand very quickly that we are moving into a UNDRIP world.”

UNDRIP, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, assures and protects the sovereignty of Indigenous communities, their land, their resources and their right to self-determination.

“It is making a wise investment today to achieve a standard that might not be the norm now, but it is going to serve you well as the regulatory and Indigenous rights landscape evolves in Canada,” Himmelright said.

Skeena demonstrates the kind of relationship that is possible with Indigenous communities as the world’s demand for transition minerals ramps up. The hope is that more agreements can be founded on the mutual respect, trust and ownership seen in the Skeena-Tahltan relationship.

“Indigenous governments are capable of balancing the economic benefits of a project versus the potential consequences to the environment,” Himmelright said. “If you want to get right down to the heart of what UNDRIP is, it’s about being respectful for nations to make decisions for themselves.”

Whether to host mining projects on their land is a decision that each Indigenous government will have to make for itself. How they structure those agreements is also up to their choosing, but a co-ownership model could represent the more just and equitable option that Indigenous governments are looking for.

“If you ask me what the priority was for Indigenous peoples, I'd say the re-establishment of our sovereign nation,” Edzerza said. “We own the lands and the resources, and we have the jurisdiction and authority to make our own plans and resource decisions.”     

The transition from school to a career is fraught with challenges that hinder students from entering the workforce.

Studies show that the majority of graduates in the United States feel unprepared to make critical decisions about their education and careers after leaving high school, have no defined educational or career path when they graduate, and feel unprepared for such life-altering decisions.

What’s more, in the United States, the average ratio of students to school counselors is 350:1, they are overworked and unevenly distributed.

“It's extraordinarily rare for a young person, to have access to a counselor or an advisor or a career coach," said Jared Chung, founder of CareerVillage. "Often, they're entering the labor market for the first time without having had any kind of coaching about how they should be applying, or how to prepare for an interview, what to wear for the kind of job they’re trying to get into, and how to leverage their network. It disproportionately affects people who already are facing a lot of inequities."

CareerVillage, a nonprofit with over 13 years of experience in providing career advice, just launched a solution to address these inequities. Its new tool Coach, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), is democratizing how people navigate their career paths, especially youth who lack access to traditional career support systems.

The need for such a tool is even more pressing in the face of rapid changes in the labor market due to AI. "We all have to be really good at navigating the labor market even more so now because of how quickly the market is changing,” Chung said. 

Coach offers services that range from helping users find internships to assisting with resume writing and conducting mock interviews. What sets it apart is its ability to provide personalized, step-by-step guidance based on real career coaching practices.

"We've designed all these activities based upon the real things that real career coaches do with their clients and based upon the best practices and pedagogy that they use," Chung said.

Developing the tool was a collaborative effort involving a coalition of 20 organizations, including experts in various communities, specific subject areas, bias and AI. This diverse input helped ensure the tool's quality, consistency and reliability.

One of the most significant advantages of Coach is its accessibility. It's free for anyone to use, available 24/7 and can communicate in multiple languages. "If anybody is getting ready to enter the labor market or trying to plan for their future, then 100 percent free, unlimited access to world-class career coaching is available," Chung said.

Launched in August 2024, the tool has over 4,700 users across 15 partners in over 70 countries and 10 languages.

"Foundations and donations pay for the public to be able to access Coach for free," Chung said, ensuring that individual job seekers can use the tool without cost barriers. 

The impact is already visible. Chung shared the story of a 22-year-old recent immigrant to the United States who used Coach to navigate the unfamiliar U.S. education system. Within weeks, she enrolled in a community college program aligned with her goal to become a chemical engineer — a path she might have struggled to find on her own.

For educational institutions and job training programs that want to integrate Coach into their services, CareerVillage adopted a cost-sharing model. "When we work with an educational institution or a job training program, we share the cost," Chung said. 

AI technology can be expensive to develop and maintain, but it’s a no-brainer investment, Chung said. "We're giving people access to personalized, year-round career coaching for a few bucks a year," he said, emphasizing the high return on investment for society in helping people navigate the job market effectively. 

The organization’s dual funding approach — philanthropic support for public access and cost-sharing with institutions — will make Coach both widely accessible and financially sustainable in the long term.

The use of AI in career coaching also raises questions about potential biases, so CareerVillage took proactive steps to address these concerns. "If you can identify bias, then you can work it out," Chung said. "I actually think it's far harder to get bias out of a person than it is to get it out of an AI system."

The team implemented monitoring systems to ensure Coach meets their standards, with the aim to detect and correct any issues before they impact users. "Our goal is that we know first and can take action if needed before somebody even has to tell us," Chung said.

The idea for Coach emerged from CareerVillage's long-standing, micro-mentoring program, which has connected young people with over 150,000 volunteers answering career questions online. Despite that program's success in serving millions across 150 countries, Chung and his team found themselves constantly having to decline requests for more comprehensive services like internship matching, resume help and mock interviews, Chung said. 

The advent of generative AI technology in late 2022 made them realize that they could easily expand their scope of services. The journey began with a simple experiment in a San Jose library, where Chung tested an early AI chatbot with a teenager seeking career advice. 

"It was incredibly obvious that, although you couldn't do everything at that early stage, there was a lot of the stuff that a young person needed," Chung said. This initial success led to the development of a small demo version, created by just five staff members over 10 weeks, which then evolved into the full-fledged Coach tool available today. 

For CareerVillage, the success of Coach isn't simply about user numbers or engagement metrics. "We don't actually care about usage in and of itself," Chung said. 

Instead, the focus is on tangible outcomes that benefit job seekers. "What we care about is our learners and job seekers being confident going into their job search, and we care about whether they get the jobs that actually allow them to thrive" he said. 

To track these outcomes, CareerVillage is implementing follow-up mechanisms. "There's a moment that we're working toward, or we're building, when Coach reaches out to you and says, 'How did it go? Did that interview go well? Do you need help? Did you get an offer?’” Chung said. This approach will allow the organization to celebrate successes with users and provide additional support where needed. 

For institutional partners, success is measured by improvements in job placement rates for program graduates. And as Coach evolves, CareerVillage hopes to gather and share insights to inform broader efforts to support career development, but protecting user privacy remains a top priority, Chung said.

"Where we learn about the kinds of activities that people most benefit from on the path to reaching their career goals, we do hope to share those insights broadly so that everybody in the sector, or just everybody in society, can be involved in making sure that everybody navigates their way to thriving occupation.”

The ocean is the single most important lifeline for addressing the climate crisis. And that’s not hyperbole. It absorbs 90 percent of the excess heat caused by emissions from industrial activities, which are expected to double by 2030. The marine environment is increasingly vulnerable to pollution, and its ability to regulate global climate and weather patterns is weakening. We’re at a critical junction for saving our planet, yet only 8 percent of the ocean is currently protected. 

This October, over 12,000 global experts will arrive in Cali, Colombia, for the United Nation's Biodiversity Conference to revisit the global commitment to ocean protection. Progress will be evaluated in terms of how far we’ve come since December 2022 when over 190 countries adopted a “30x30” target to conserve at least 30 percent of the Earth’s land and water by 2030. This landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework marked the biggest conservation commitment the world has ever seen. 

But when we’re talking about the ocean, it’s hard to know what’s really going on without the technology to see below the surface. Since the ocean is without boundaries and the high seas are managed by everyone and no one, satellite imagery, artificial intelligence, and innovative research techniques are necessary to gain a true picture of what’s actually happening in the vast blue space that covers 70 percent of our planet.  

Fortunately, there’s a rising tide of nonprofit organizations using these cutting-edge data sources to not only analyze threats to the ocean but to make the findings free, easily accessible online and user-friendly. These open-source platforms are revolutionizing our capabilities to monitor what’s happening to our ocean ecosystems and beyond, and empowering governments and local communities to take action.

In February 2023, for example, a fisherman in Indonesia found the waters he fished in daily were polluted by a massive oil spill. There were no boats in sight or clues as to who was responsible. He reached out to the Indonesia Ocean Justice Initiative, which accessed an open-source data platform with satellite information that led them to the source.

A stranded tanker had spilled asphalt and polluted 40 miles of the marine environment, resulting in 641 fishermen losing their livelihoods. This information was given to the Ministry of the Environment to hold the polluter accountable. Without that piece of the puzzle, there’s no telling how long it could have taken to execute a response — and identifying the culprit was almost unimaginable. 

Today, a platform like SkyTruth's Cerulean is able to track oil spills and their potential sources in real time, providing global data in the blink of an eye.

Similarly, Global Fishing Watch recently used machine learning to analyze 2 petabytes of imagery — five years’ worth of data — from coastal waters across six continents, producing the first global map of large vessel traffic and offshore infrastructure. It revealed activity that was previously dark to public monitoring systems.

Mermaid is yet another tool using cutting-edge cloud technology to capture a real-time snapshot of the health of coral reefs. 

The best part is that because these platforms are all designed for the greater good, we’re working collaboratively for greater impact. For the first time at this year’s UN Biodiversity Conference, for example, all of the available 30x30 data will be aggregated in one place, the 30x30 Progress Tracker. That way everyone can see — with full transparency — how well the world is doing in enhancing ocean protection. Terrestrial data is also added but is not yet as comprehensive as the marine data.

The platform is intended to be used by civil society campaigns, government agencies, and policymakers to track country-by-country progress, identify where biodiversity protections would be most impactful, and hold governments accountable for promises made. 

When these tools are not behind paywalls or legal privacy privileges, they become reachable to a wider audience, including underserved communities that might otherwise be excluded from decision-making processes. But “free” data is, of course, not actually free. Satellites must be built and launched, data centers developed and maintained, and most importantly,  the findings must be communicated in a way that is understandable and navigable by intended users. All of this requires funding. 

Historically, targeted advocacy efforts were more attractive to funders than supporting the infrastructure behind these campaigns. As Virgil Zetterlind, director of ProtectedSeas, said when describing the development of Navigator, an interactive map of critical marine areas: “Our initial global review of our tool took over eight years. These aren’t small projects, and they don’t result in immediate glossy sound bites or TikTok reels.” Not to mention all of these platforms need to be maintained and constantly updated. 

Sarah Bladen, chief strategy and external affairs officer for Global Fishing Watch had a similar take. “Tech funders believe in the power of tech for good but they’re also looking for something radical and revolutionary," Bladen said. "The question becomes, 'How do you take this excitement for innovation into funding the long trudge of maintaining this type of open data platform and being able to offer it forever?'”

Fortunately, philanthropists are catching on. Funders such as the Bloomberg Ocean Initiative, The Swedish Postcode Lottery Foundation, and the Anthropocene Institute recognize that impactful campaigns are turbocharged by the vital process of building this type of data backbone for the environmental movement.

“We think it’s important to not only fund open source data that drives science into advocacy and decision-making but also to facilitate transparency and accountability,” said Melissa Wright, who leads the Bloomberg Ocean Initiative at Bloomberg Philanthropies. “Now it’s possible to hold perpetrators accountable, ensure regulators are following through on enforcing policies, and show the opportunity for more action.”

Though there has been progress in funding the democratization of data, there are still key gaps that must be addressed. Data equity is imperative because of significant obstacles that prevent underserved communities from being able to engage in data and technologies, like a lack of access to the internet or a smartphone.

User support is another issue. You can’t build a platform and then just sit back and expect it to be used. Investments are needed to facilitate meaningful partnerships, so we can better understand what people actually need in order to create relevant solutions. Then, we must make sure that stakeholders understand how to apply the findings to bolster their vital campaigns to protect biodiversity and the climate, creating a more inclusive and robust environmental movement. 

Open-source data platforms coupled with artificial intelligence is a technological marvel and a game-changer for ocean advocacy and beyond. They provide vast amounts of information faster than ever before, which is vitally necessary at this critical juncture for planetary survival.

2030 is around the corner, and we’re nowhere near our goal of protecting 30 percent of the planet. We must make significant and rapid progress in a short amount of time, and we must make sure the process is inclusive and just. The rising tide of open-source data platforms can propel what needs to be done if we have the investments to expand and maintain these resources, continue working synergistically as a global movement, and do everything we can to form bridges between these powerful tools and those who bear the brunt of environmental harm worldwide.