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U.S. businesses were using small-scale wind turbines to generate their own electricity long before massive wind farms were commonplace. The small wind market is still struggling to reach mainstream mass, but the technology has improved over recent years and costs are coming down. New incentives are also available to make small wind projects a more attractive option for businesses seeking on-site renewable energy for themselves and their communities.

How do small wind energy systems work?

The small wind market includes two types of projects that sometimes overlap. Both have the potential to make a significant contribution to the nation’s renewable energy profile, as measured by the U.S. Department of Energy.

One type of small wind project consists of wind turbines that are literally small in size. Where local zoning regulations permit, they can be installed at homes, farms or small businesses to open up access to renewable energy. A 10-kilowatt turbine, for example, can generate enough electricity for a typical home.

On a national level, those small kilowatts can add up to make a significant impact. A 2002 small wind “roadmap” from the U.S. Department of Energy estimated that small wind turbines could produce a total of 50,000 megawatts of electricity by 2022, accounting for 3 percent of U.S. generating capacity. That rate of growth failed to materialize, with only around 30 megawatts of small wind units sold globally in 2021, according to research from the European Academy of Wind Energy, leaving much of this energy potential still to be tapped. 

The other type of small wind project refers to wind turbines of any size that provide electricity for use on the property where they are located, or for distribution to other electricity users on a local grid. Called “distributed wind,” these projects are also valued for their contributions to the nation’s generating resources. Farms, businesses or communities can use distributed wind as a buffer against energy cost increases, to provide backup power during outages, or to electrify things like water pumps and telecommunications towers in remote places, according to the Energy Department's Wind Energy Technologies Office.

Because distributed wind projects are typically specific to a single property or structure, they usually consist of just one turbine that is relatively small in size. However, larger-sized, multi-turbine projects are also becoming more common in the distributed wind field. 

Small wind is finally going mainstream

When small wind turbines became more popular on the heels of the 1970s oil crisis, the industry faced criticism for relatively inefficient technology, questionable sales practices, and the absence of uniform standards. Since the early 2000s, though, small wind manufacturers, the Energy Department and other stakeholders have collaborated to form a reliable marketplace characterized by uniform assessment and certification systems.

That multi-stakeholder support is beginning to show results in the distributed wind marketplace. This week, the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory summarized the state of affairs in its newly released Distributed Wind Market Report, showing that more turbines were installed in 2023 than in all of 2021 and 2022 combined.

The report links the sudden growth spurt in the distributed wind market to new tax incentives, including provisions of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. A new round of funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Energy for America Program also played a role.

Just as significantly, distributed wind projects are emerging in new markets, the report finds. Once mainly confined to farms, schools, government facilities and other institutions, distributed wind projects are finding their way into the manufacturing sector.

Larger-sized wind turbines are also becoming more common in distributed wind projects. The report tracked almost 2,000 new distributed wind turbines in 2023 with a combined capacity of 10.5 megawatts, most of which came from turbines with a capacity of 1 megawatt or more. 

Meanwhile, continued improvement in vertical axis wind turbine technology also makes development possible in smaller spaces. Unlike conventional wind turbines that sweep the sky with long blades, vertical axis turbines spin around a central pole like a carousel, saving a considerable amount of space and opening up a new field of locations for small wind projects.

More on-site wind power for U.S. businesses

One important indication of the increased confidence in distributed wind is the willingness of businesses to invest in larger turbines, and that is also reflected in the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory report.

While farms continue to be important markets for distributed wind, the report found that 42 percent of distributed wind projects were installed by the commercial sector in 2023, compared to 34 percent for agricultural operations.

One example the researchers cite is a new 2.8-megawatt wind turbine installed by the electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian for its factory in Normal, Illinois, representing a new market for distributed wind in the auto industry. The report also points to a trio of 1.5-megawatt turbines installed at the Martin Marietta lime plant in Woodville Township, Ohio, as examples.

Follow the money — and the guidance

A collaboration between the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Energy aims to grow the small wind market further by encouraging 400 farmers to install distributed wind projects on their properties. In support of that program, the two agencies are also tapping wind industry stakeholders for funding under the Competitiveness Improvement Project program. The awarded projects include small-sized turbines, rooftop turbines, and vertical axis turbines.

Concurrently, the Energy Department has assembled an online small wind guidebook for small businesses, farmers and homeowners. The guide includes a question-and-answer section to help property owners determine if a small wind project is feasible and beneficial for them.

One additional advantage for businesses is the visibility of wind turbines. Compared to rooftop solar panels, which are often difficult to see from street level, a small wind project — or a hybrid wind-plus-solar project — signals a business’s commitment to renewable energy. Despite the growing partisan divide, that’s a commitment worth emphasizing.

At the end of July, the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) — currently the world’s leading arbiter of corporate climate targets — released a long-awaited update on guidance for how companies can achieve Scope 3 emissions reductions. Scope 3 emissions are the indirect emissions that sit upstream and downstream in a company’s value chain. They can comprise 75 percent or more of a corporation’s total climate footprint.

Earlier this year, SBTi ignited an initial firestorm with its controversial announcement affirming the value of environmental attribute certificates (EACs) — such as carbon credits and sustainable aviation fuel certificates — and signaling an expanded role for them in corporations' decarbonization toolbox. Then came an abrupt about-face in SBTi’s end-of-July communications, which suggests a newfound skepticism around EACs, potentially disallowing climate investments made outside a company’s value chain from counting toward that organization’s carbon footprint.

This skepticism arises from three primary drivers. First, the definitions of what’s “in” versus what’s “out” when it comes to companies’ Scope 3 supply chain boundary, relegating projects like clean cookstoves and forest conservation to the category of "not my problem."

Next, the concern that avoided emissions and carbon offset projects don’t deliver the climate benefits they claim to, in which rightful attention paid to some lackluster projects has dampened the voluntary carbon market’s enthusiasm for entire classes of emissions-reducing projects.

And the disregard for the equally important human social and economic non-climate benefits that climate projects deliver, precisely at a time when we’re seeing corporations value so-called co-benefits more than ever.

The prospect is frightening for reasons few are talking about. If SBTi stays the course of its recent pivot, it could wipe out a vital incentive for desperately needed climate finance to flow from Global North corporations to Global South nations, projects, and people on the front lines of climate change. Millions of lives — and gigatons of avoided carbon emissions — hang in the balance, as London-based SBTi potentially turns its back on equitable decarbonization.

For example, every year, energy poverty kills an estimated 3.2 million people worldwide from smoke inhalation due to daily cooking on heavily polluting wood and charcoal stoves, according to the World Health Organization. That’s more than the total annual deaths attributed to HIV, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Those same toxic biomass fuels contribute about the same amount of climate pollution every year as the global aviation industry.

These are the very real people — and equally real carbon emissions — at stake in SBTi’s seemingly esoteric decisions regarding EACs and corporations’ value chain emissions. Yet across the 100 pages of SBTi’s new Scope 3 discussion paper, the Global South, emerging economies, developing countries, and climate justice are mentioned exactly zero times. On this front, SBTi could very well find itself on the wrong side of history. 

Equitable decarbonization and climate finance are both a moral imperative and a pragmatic issue of achieving global climate targets. The Global South’s inclusion in overall decarbonization efforts is necessary to achieve global net zero emissions. To succeed, climate investment in Global South economies needs to reach anywhere from $1 trillion, to $2 trillion or even $3 trillion annually. However, both investment and global emissions-reductions trends are seriously lagging.

Only 25 percent of global climate investment flows to Global South countries currently, and almost none of that is to least developed countries. The multilateral Global Environment Facility — the world’s largest funder of climate change response in developing countries globally — in its most-recent funding replenishment cycle saw pledges totaling just $5.3 billion for the four-year period spanning 2022 to 2026. That works out to $1.33 billion per year, a scant 1/100th of the at least $1 trillion annually that’s needed.

Against this backdrop, SBTi’s pending ultimate decision about companies’ Scope 3 emissions and which climate investments they can “count” against their inventories holds particular gravitas and perverse irony. The people of the Global South are customers of Global North companies. They consume Nestle and Unilever and use Google, Meta, Samsung and Apple to communicate. And herein lies the avoidable tragedy.

As the rules-maker, SBTi is currently hurtling toward a value system of Global North voluntary corporate decarbonization that tells companies to tackle the embodied emissions of the cell phones in Ugandan homes, while ignoring the deadly pollution from the smoky cookstoves in those same homes. It is a value system that cares about reducing the emissions of a copper mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that supplies Big Tech far more than it cares about saving a ton of emissions from deadly indoor air pollution in the home of a miner that works in and lives next door to that mine. 

SBTi is relegating investments into solutions such as clean electric cookstoves as “beyond-value-chain mitigation” and disallowing these investments from counting toward corporations’ net zero emissions bottom line. SBTi “encourages” companies to pursue these investments, but that’s a hollow endorsement. The history of corporate climate investments consistently reinforces that companies invest in what they can get credit for. It’s naive to suggest that companies will rush to voluntary investments they can’t get credit for, especially when such investments go above and beyond the already-voluntary rules of the SBTi net zero standard itself.

Those of us working to scale anti-poverty decarbonization projects in Africa see this dynamic playing out every day among the corporate sustainability professionals we talk to. The electric cookstoves we make available need huge subsidies to be accessible and affordable for the low-income households where emissions reductions also save real human lives. But when we approach companies to invest in promising projects, the typical response we get to these requests is, “It’s almost impossible to spend money on impact I can’t count.” Sometimes, the response is even more direct, “SBTi doesn’t sanction it.”

Some 2.3 billion people rely on toxic biomass fuels to cook each day. Every electric cookstove — made possible with would-be climate finance from Global North companies — could eliminate toxic indoor air pollution by removing wood fuels from daily cooking needs, preventing avoidable premature deaths. Measured through the lens of climate action, the potential is nearly 1 gigatonne of emissions reductions annually. 

Corporate work to achieve global net zero need not be an either/or dichotomy. We are not forced to choose between social impact and climate justice for the Global South on one hand and decarbonization of predominantly Global North companies on the other. Investments in solutions like electric cooking for the Global South are also investments in cost-effective climate action and decarbonization for all. This is true equitable decarbonization, yet current sources of voluntary climate finance are drying up.

If those with ideological aversions to companies claiming impact from beyond-value-chain mitigation investments successfully persuade SBTi to disallow such investments from counting toward corporate net zero calculations, it will further choke off a major source of funding that supports projects that benefit those most vulnerable to climate, poverty and health risks.

The world wouldn’t dare pull an about-face on aviation decarbonization nor on efforts to eradicate deadly diseases such as malaria. Yet, the world of voluntary decarbonization is being given rules that turn climate finance more and more away from an emissions problem and a human crisis that’s of the same magnitude: dirty cooking fuels. In doing so, SBTi is taking projects like electric cookstoves for the most-vulnerable people off the table of corporate climate investments. Imagine instead if corporations were encouraged to value human lives as much as they valued adherence to a dictate from the Global North on where exactly a supply chain starts and stops. We could get closer to global net zero, and save more lives, with the same level of investment. 

Equitable decarbonization is possible. This is the time for the world to embrace that ethos. SBTi can lead on this front, but only if it writes rules that incentivize companies to make more climate investments that help tackle pervasive Global South challenges.

Women in low-income countries are more interested in starting businesses and show more intention to do so, according to a report by the research consortium Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. These countries also have the highest startup rates for women, who tend to offer more innovative products and services than women in high-income regions. Despite this, women entrepreneurs often face greater challenges than men, such as barriers to accessing capital and developing the infrastructure needed to scale their businesses.

Founded in 2018 by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and Global Affairs Canada, the Catalyzing Women’s Entrepreneurship program aims to build women's economic power and reduce poverty in the Asia-Pacific region. Through this program, ESCAP addresses the challenges faced by women-led businesses.

Providing access to capital, business infrastructure and technology 

To date, the program has supported more than 220,000 women entrepreneurs and secured over $111 million in capital. The support available to women entrepreneurs varies on the specific context of the six countries the program targets: Bangladesh, Cambodia, Fiji, Nepal, Samoa and Vietnam, Elena Mayer-Besting, the program management officer at ESCAP, said in an email. 

The program offers a range of financial support options, from microloans to large-scale equity investments. It also provides short-term and long-term training, coaching, and networking opportunities in topics like information and communication technology, attracting foreign investments, and integrating climate adaptation and mitigation into business operations.

The women-founded financial tech company Aloi is one of 15 fintech and digital companies that received financing and technical support through the program. The platform makes financing accessible for informal micro-entrepreneurs in Nepal by digitally monitoring loans and repayments through cell phones, with no internet access required. 

To boost her income, Sumita Rai trained as a Safa Tempo driver — a popular form of public transport in Kathmandu, Nepal — with the aspiration of owning her own Safa Tempo vehicle and business. Through Aloi, Rai secured a loan to buy the necessary battery for her own electric vehicle.

With this support, Rai earns more, provides for her son's education and drives a more sustainable vehicle. It allows her to make more trips and reduce her carbon footprint, compared to when she was employed driving a less efficient battery-powered vehicle owned by someone else. 

"Addressing all of these [challenges] is important to ensure not only that women get the opportunities they deserve, but equally if we don’t deal with these topics now, we may even see a regression of women’s opportunities and a widening of gender inequality,” Mayer-Besting said.

Adjusting support to tackle challenges

Since the program’s inception, challenges and events like the pandemic and climate crisis required adjustments in supporting women entrepreneurs, Mayer-Besting said. 

"The climate crisis is already shaping the day-to-day of many women entrepreneurs we work with, while we still hear investors saying, ‘We’d love to invest in women-led climate solutions, but we just can’t find any women,’” Mayer-Besting said. 

To tackle these issues, ESCAP provided funding for local women's groups and organizations to help their members with climate challenges and adaptation strategies and established an accelerator to connect women-led climate tech companies with investors, she said.

Empowering women and adding trillions to the economy

“When women have an income [or] a higher income, their economic power changes," Mayer-Besting said. “They can make purchasing decisions. In many contexts, they experience lower rates of male violence … When these changes happen at an individual level, they change lives. When they happen at a larger scale, they change societies and create a better world for women and girls.”

Closing gender gaps in economic opportunities in Asia and Pacific regions will contribute and estimated $4.5 trillion to the region’s gross domestic product, according to research from the McKinsey Global Institute. Achieving this growth depends on three key factors: women’s participation in the workforce, promoting full time work, and boosting women's productivity by adding them more to industries with greater output.

“Every life we can change for the better is worth it,” Mayer-Besting said. “However, changes at the individual level can easily be ‘eaten up’ if the larger conditions, societal values, systems don’t truly let women thrive. That’s why we need programs that create sustainable solutions at scale.”

Changing seas are affecting swordfish behavior, and that’s having devastating effects on Nova Scotia’s sustainable harpoon fleet. To keep the fishery going, the fleet wants to add rod and reel gear as well as charters. In a new report, the fleet and the Ecology Action Center of Canada predict that charters could bring in annual income increases of $2.5 million CAD ($1.8 million USD). And by adding additional gear, license holders would raise their total catch, which has been lower than their allowed quota in recent years.

Solutions for a historic fishery at risk

“This fleet is one that has been happening in our region for well over 100 years,” Holly Isnor, the marine campaign coordinator at the Ecology Action Center, told TriplePundit. “It's a very clean, sustainable option [that] provides local jobs.” 

As a highly skilled trade, harpoon fishing is not something Isnor wants to see lost. “Proposing the options of rod and reel and chartering but maintaining the catches within the current quota would enable that increase in economic return that the fleet needs to stay afloat,” she said. 

The quotas for the swordfish harpoon fleet are already low, but the even lower returns have resulted in fewer boats going out, Isnor said. With the amount of time it takes to travel far enough offshore, the days spent at sea, and the cost of fuel, it’s not worth the trip if there aren’t any swordfish that can be harpooned. 

Dwindling catches aren’t related to the population. While swordfish have headed north into the colder waters of Newfoundland, their population has remained stable in Nova Scotia, Isnor said. Instead, lower yields among the harpoon fleet boats are due to a change in basking behavior. 

“[Swordfish] hunt deeper in the water column, and then they bask near the surface to regulate their body temperatures. And with a handheld harpoon, of course, it requires that a fish is actually at the surface where you can see it in order to be able to catch it,” she said. “With changing ocean conditions and sea surface temperatures, it's essentially meant that swordfish are basking at the surface in places and times that are less predictable than they once were for this particular fleet. So it's just making it a lot more challenging for them to find the fish to be able to catch them.”

Having to leave their quota in the water threatens the long-term viability of the fishery and the jobs that it sustains, Isnor said. By adding rod and reel gear, fishers can catch swordfish where they are: lower in the water column.

Maintaining sustainability is a core value

The harpoon fleet in Nova Scotia isn’t the only fishery experiencing such changes. The Nature Conservancy promoted the use of deep-drop fishing gear off the coast of California to keep a sustainable catch going amidst a similar drop in basking swordfish. 

Unlike gill nets and pelagic longlines which can hook unintended species and endanger marine mammals and sea turtles, spearing swordfish with a harpoon requires the fisher to visibly identify each individual target, thus ensuring that other species are not harmed. Together with the harpoon fleet, the Ecology Action Center started trialing the rod and reel method in 2022.

While not as precise as harpoon fishing, the trial demonstrated that swordfish could be caught with minimal unintended catches of other species — none of which consisted of sea turtles or marine mammals — when harpooning was not feasible. Meanwhile, participating license holders could charge $20,000 CAD ($14,800 USD) for private charters with rod and reel gear for two passengers. 

“Giving this fleet the option to add a charter component to their business, it really enables them to have an additional stream of income while, again, remaining within their quota,” Isnor said. “So it increases the value of their catches overall. It doesn't increase the effort, it just increases the value and the income.”

Government approval is needed before changes can be made

To make these changes, the fleet needs the approval of government agencies. The Department of Transport Canada would have to approve the charter element, and rod and reel permissions are dependent on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Additionally, boats need to be assessed and approved individually, with some financial costs likely required to meet the requirements and ensure proper accommodations, Isnor said.

“We've worked quite closely with some government staff on the rod and reel gear trials, and they've been great to work with and supportive of the work that we're doing,” she said. “While I don't suspect that it will happen overnight, I am hopeful that we're moving in the right direction towards getting the rod and reel added to their licenses and then finding solutions to enable them to offer charters as well.”

By now, we're probably all familiar with some kind of “save the bees” messaging. We may even have some understanding of the alarming decrease in bee populations since the 1990s. The fact that’s often less apparent is how the bee crisis quickly translates to a food crisis, not just for humans but many other organisms that depend on their pollination.

Whole Foods Market has championed environmental stewardship as a part of its core values for some time. It’s this long-standing conversation with suppliers that allowed for ease of transition with its new pollinator health policy, Caitlin Leibert, the company’s vice president of sustainability, said during a recent Trellis webinar. 

“It starts with talking with our suppliers and better understanding the incredible work that they're already doing,” Leibert said. “We could not have made this policy as quickly as we did if the gap was so large. We've been talking for years with our key suppliers about the value of this.” 

This policy fundamentally mandates that all Whole Foods fresh produce and floral suppliers implement a pest management system that reduces the need for chemical pesticides by 2025. It also prohibits the use of nitroguanidine and neonicotinoids in potted plants by that time. These are groups of pesticides that can be particularly harmful to some insects, including bees and other pollinators. While these chemicals are intended to ward off pests that destroy and damage crops, they also affect major ecosystem engineers like bees. At the least, they affect the foraging, reproduction and flying ability of pollinators.

On a micro level, the use of these pesticides will reduce a growers’ crop or flower yield in the short term, but on a macro level it will aggravate the decline of the wild pollinator population. At least one third of the world’s food is produced with the help of pollinators. Flowers and ornamentals will also take a huge hit. So, pollinator loss can have a serious impact on our food systems. 

Whole Foods’ new pollinator policy demonstrates the role companies can play in driving change and making sustainable choices more available to consumers. By ensuring its suppliers comply with a method of agriculture that considers the health of keystone species like pollinators, Whole Foods is giving consumers an option to support conservation. 

“At Whole Foods, we believe food can and should be a force for good and positive change in our communities and environment,” Leibert said. “Because of that, you really have to sort of codify that in a policy to drive change. It's not enough to say we care, that's important, that's step one. But in order to drive meaningful change, we really have to think about policy.” 

The company announced the new policy in December, but it won’t take full effect until 2025, which gives suppliers time to create a transition plan. In the meantime, some of its longtime suppliers that have been a part of the conversations that birthed the policy are helping share alternative practices. 

“We're partnering with suppliers like Rainier Fruit to promote pollinator-friendly practices, including dedicated pollinator habitats and Bee Better certified orchards,” Leibert said. “Again, I think what's really important about this policy is that ... it starts with talking to our farmers.” 

Dedicated habitats and achieving Bee Better certification, which ensures farms are practicing pollinator and biodiversity conservation, are a great start. Some suppliers have already begun to make the switch. But beyond that, Whole Foods understands they might need additional support to make the transition.

“We certainly provide technical tools as needed,” Leibert said. “I think Rainier [Fruit] is a really good example of that. We have a long history of investing within our supply system, as well.”

A network of suppliers sharing best practices isn’t new to Whole Foods. In 2021, the company implemented a regenerative agriculture policy that employed a similar information-sharing method to ease the transition for suppliers. And these policies don’t just come from anywhere. 

“I think our quality standards team is such a unique team,” Leibert said. “There are around 20 subject matter experts, everything from animal welfare to seafood to agricultural practices. So the credit goes to this team largely for creating this policy. They're the policy experts. What's really cool about this work though is, again, the theme of interconnectedness. We want to make sure that when we're talking about pollinator health, we're not doing so in a vacuum. We're recognizing it as a key part within a larger resilient climate and nature health.”

As climate concerns intensify, one particular source of emissions, animal agriculture, has come under intense scrutiny due to its contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. Animal agriculture accounts for roughly 14.5 percent of the world’s total emissions, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. 

Cattle farming in particular poses several environmental challenges, primarily due to methane emissions, an especially potent greenhouse gas. Livestock and feed production are often drivers of deforestation, habitat loss and water consumption, leaving many to wonder if cattle farming can coexist in a world increasingly focused on decarbonization and biodiversity.

When asked if animal agriculture can ever be compatible with a sustainable, healthy planet, fourth-generation dairyman Ken McCarty said, “I spend a lot of time thinking about that. What I think it comes down to is that we all have to eat. As global populations increase and demand for protein increases, we as food producers have a responsibility to the world to do as good a job as we possibly can … Every farm has very specific regional or geographic limitations, and every farm is going to differ in technical and financial capability. To take a prescriptive stance on what regenerative agriculture is or isn’t leaves people out of the conversation when what we need to be doing is engaging more farmers and producers in this conversation and meeting people where they are at.” 

On-farm practices

McCarty’s farm, MVP Dairy, is jointly run by two families, and they are transforming the ways in which they manage their farm operations. “We view sustainability as an all-encompassing drive for restoring and sustaining human and environmental communities,” McCarty said. “Being able to sustain an industry for the next generation is critically important and near and dear to our hearts.” 

McCarty’s approach to farming begins with soil health. He deploys a variety of different practices to enhance vitality of soil, such as minimum till or no-till methods that minimize the disruption to soil structure. In turn, that increases water retention and carbon sequestration. 

He also uses cover crops, which deliver many benefits. “Cover crops provide an opportunity to bring more biodiversity to any acre of land, enhance microbiological and fungal activity of the soil, and minimize wind and water erosion,” McCarty said.

Crop rotation is another key strategy for McCarty’s operations. By rotating different crops, he can break up weed and pest cycles and reduce the need for chemical interventions, like pesticides and herbicides. 

“Minimizing the use of chemicals is part and parcel to our regenerative agriculture strategy,” he said. “This approach not only supports soil health but also improves the overall biodiversity of the farm.”

However, McCarty emphasized that regenerative practices are site-specific and a farming practice that works well in one area may not translate to another location with different climate and soils. 

“Not every region is suited to easily adopt cover crops,” he said. “Our farms are spread around different geographies, so the challenges and opportunities we face in deploying different regenerative and sustainable practices in different regions give us the ability to always drive progress.” 

The business case for regenerative dairy

Regenerative farming practices can be environmentally beneficial, but some farmers struggle with making the business case to invest in the equipment and education needed to transform conventional operations into regenerative. Farmers have to take a long view, McCarty said. 

“To put a [return on investment] on the deployment of regenerative agriculture practices, you have to measure in a long-term time scale,” he said. “Converting to no-till takes different equipment, and equipment is expensive. It takes time to grow that skill set.” 

This can make it difficult to determine the financial success of certain practices in the short term, especially when business is in a down-cycle. "Agricultural margins are extremely thin and volatile," McCarty said. "If a farmer is focused heavily on survival, shifting gears to risky ventures like adopting a new method of running your farm and business can be a daunting task. Figuring out ways to de-risk those conversions is important." 

However, there are some immediate financial benefits. For example, using composted manure solids in place of commercial fertilizers can offer savings, though the exact return on investment can vary year to year based on fertilizer prices and the amount that needs to be applied, McCarty said. Moreover, practices like integrating livestock into crop systems can introduce valuable micronutrients into the soil, boosting crop health. 

McCarty is also optimistic about emerging markets for regenerative products, such as carbon credits, though he stresses the importance of integrity in these markets. “These marketplaces have to be done with integrity,” he said. “We as society can’t afford to slow down the pace of that progress because bad actors get involved and taint the integrity of those markets.” 

Progress over perfection

Regenerative agriculture is not a silver bullet for the climate crisis, but McCarty believes that the incremental gains are important. 

“Our dad always drilled into us that the one thing that is exciting about agriculture is that there is always something to work on, always something that we can improve upon and do better,” McCarty said. “We believe in progress over perfection, and regenerative agriculture is a part of that. It just so happens that this kind of improvement makes the world a better place too.”

Until just a few years ago, utility-scale solar arrays were considered incompatible with farming. The situation is different today. Solar developers are learning how to design projects that enable farmers to continue working the land between solar panels. The idea is catching on quickly among farmers, too. Now the big question is whether or not the combination of solar panels with agriculture, called agrivoltaics, can scale up and become a significant force in the energy transition.  

The agrivoltaic solution

Farmland offers multiple benefits to utility-scale solar developers, with utility-scale referring to large arrays of 10 megawatts or more. Farms consist of vast stretches of tree-less, sun-soaked terrain largely uncomplicated by habitat and biodiversity conservation issues. On their part, farmers were, and still are, attracted by the steady income from solar leases.

To reduce hardware costs, developers typically place solar panels close to the ground, which requires measures to keep vegetation from covering the panels. Some developers reseed the ground with low-lying plants like clover to reduce the cost of mowing and trimming. Others use sand or gravel to reduce or prevent undergrowth, in effect rendering the land permanently unsuitable for crops.

Reuters reporters P.J. Huffstutter and Christopher Walljasper described the destructive impact of using sand as a ground treatment on a farm in Indiana. They underscored the damage done by a ground treatment strategy focused solely on cutting costs.

The Indiana solar project was built in 2019, at a time when researchers were just beginning to assemble the agrivoltaic case. Since then, solar developers have begun to work with, not against, food systems and land conservation. An agrivoltaic array typically deploys taller racks to raise the solar panels higher off the ground, allowing farm activities to carry on.

Combining solar arrays with native plants and pollinator habitats for crop support or grasslands for grazing livestock are two of the earliest agrivoltaic practices to gain widespread currency. They still remain the most common examples, but researchers and farmers are beginning to experiment with human food crops that tolerate some degree of shade.

How to accelerate the agrivoltaics revolution

Although agrivoltaics is a relatively new science, word is spreading fast, raising the potential for rapid scale-up if certain hurdles can be overcome. 

Information is one of the key missing pieces. A new survey from the Solar and Storage Industries Institute found that 30 percent of farmers were opposed to large scale solar development on farmland. But it also found that these same farmers were less likely to know about agrivoltaic solutions. That opens up the possibility for outreach and education to change minds.

The survey assessed that the overwhelming majority of farmers are already informed about agrivoltaics, finding that up to 70 percent of farmers approve of utility-scale solar arrays if they are based on agrivoltaic principles, which often reduce their concerns around farmland and solar development.

“The research shows most farmers are interested in exploring solar, provided that they have enough information to make good business decisions and continue farming,” David Gahl, executive director of the institute, said in a statement.

Meeting farmers where they're at

Improving access to information about agrivoltaics is not a one-size-fits-all solution. The survey identified another barrier in the form of race-based differences in farmer attitudes. The survey showed that farmers of color were less likely to approve of utility-scale solar projects. These same farmers were also less likely to be informed about agrivoltaic solutions, compared to their white counterparts.

“This finding suggests a need for a wide variety of trusted voices to help disseminate agrivoltaics information to communities,” according to the report.

The institute, which is the nonprofit educational branch of the trade organization Solar Energy Industries Association, notes that at least 30 percent of farmers surveyed trust the information they get from farm associations, extension services, universities and solar developers. That indicates that a more race-sensitive outreach campaign will encourage farmers of color to support agrivoltaic development. 

Agrivoltaics, brand reputation and the bottom line

As the survey indicates, trusted solar developers can help strengthen the outreach and information network to enlist more farmers in support of utility-scale projects. But that depends on reaching a critical mass of developers experienced with agrivoltaics, and there is still a wide gap to fill. Most of the 600 or so agrivoltaic projects under way in the U.S. are relatively small, with less than 10 percent described as “large-scale,” according to the institute. 

In consideration of the rising opposition to rural solar projects, the brand reputation factor could motivate more solar developers to avoid harmful, solar-exclusive development strategies and instead adopt agrivoltaic solutions, according to the institute.

“While developers are interested in pursuing farmland solar projects because they can be easy to develop in many respects, they are interested in pursuing agrivoltaic system designs because it preserves farmland and enhances the reputation of their company within the community,” according to the report.

The bottom line benefits to farmers are also emerging, as measured by land use efficiency. In Europe, where agrivoltiaic development is catching on more rapidly, researchers are already assembling evidence that the balance of crop yields with solar energy production is significantly more efficient when combined in one field.

Help is on the way

In the United States, additional support for the agrivoltaic movement is already in motion. The  survey, for example, is the first step of a two-part program supported by the the U.S. Department of Energy in partnership with the Solar and Storage Industries Institute, the National Farmers Union, and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. The second phase will explore case studies.

As another indication of support, the conservation organization American Farmland Trust identified agrivoltaics as a pathway for protecting farmland from urban sprawl and other permanently destructive development.

Also contributing to the case for agrivoltaics is a new land use tool developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin. The research team produced a first-of-its-kind map that identifies almost 30 million acres of previously cultivated land that has been abandoned since the 1980s.

There are still many knowledge gaps left to fill, but a new paradigm in the U.S. and global agriculture industry is taking shape, in which farmers and solar developers collaborate on clean energy and farmland conservation, too. 

One of the 19th century’s great scientific minds, William Thomson, better known as Lord Kelvin, famously said, “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” More than a century later, his maxim is being ignored, and as a result, the global community is failing to take all the steps necessary in the battle to reduce carbon emissions and prevent runaway global warming.  

Most of the world’s governments and major companies are lining up to make carbon neutrality pledges and looking for ways to invest in carbon sequestration in order to remove this climate-warming gas from our atmosphere. Businesses are joining the effort, leaning into voluntary carbon markets and investing in projects that trap carbon as a way of offsetting the emissions they create elsewhere. And celebrities purchase carbon credits in an attempt to offset their carbon footprint as private jets whisk them from airport to airport.  

But how do you actually pull carbon from the air and put it somewhere safe at a global scale?  

There are two very large natural habitats that do this work: oceans and forests. Together, these habitats absorb over half of the excess emissions we produce each year. But today, we need to turn up the carbon-absorption capacity of these big carbon sinks. That is where forests have gotten a lot of attention because the way to make forests absorb more carbon is to grow trees. However, we have lost almost half the of the world’s forests already, and the majority of the remaining forests are not large mature forests. Instead, they’re a mixture of secondary or degraded forest. Meaning there is a lot of space globally for improving forests’ capacity to pull carbon from the air. 

So why isn’t this happening all over the world? The answer, as Lord Kelvin would say, is measurement. Yes, nations spent billions to put satellite technology in place to monitor forests from space, but satellites cannot see carbon. And unless they are calibrated by measurements on the ground — the same measurements, made in all forest types, in all forest conditions, all over the world — they can’t measure carbon with the accuracy the world needs. 

And because we have not invested in the fundamental nuts-and-bolts calibration — our “standard weight” for earth-observation satellites — we have essentially built a fantastic space-based solution to a global challenge and then failed to connect that solution to the problem it was built to solve.  

The result is large-scale skepticism in the carbon markets. It is very hard to get excited about a market if you can’t keep track of the thing you are investing in, and it is very hard to agree on how many credits to award for a project if you can’t easily measure the carbon in the forest. Without a global, reliable system for the impartial measurement of forest carbon, no current or future participant in the process can be sure of what they are buying and selling, making it impossible for the market to achieve the viability and vitality needed to significantly offset carbon emissions. More perilously, without a rigorous, open system of measurement, it is difficult to track changes in the ability of forests to absorb carbon as climates change.  

Today, that system is being built. It is called Geo-Trees, and it is a structure being built collaboratively by leading scientists at the Smithsonian, the European Space Agency, two of France’s research centers, the University of Leads, and leading scientists in Colombia, Brazil, the Philippines and Côte d’Ivoire. They’re working side-by-side with earth observation and forest-focused partners around the world. 

The goal is to establish a global network of forest plots that cover all types and conditions of forest. In each of these plots, we will identify and measure all the trees, use drones and planes to get ultra-high-resolution imagery of each forest, use ground-based laser-scanning to create detailed maps of the architecture of each forest, and sample below-ground carbon biomass. 

All of this data then "speaks" to satellites looking down on earth, creating a codex to interpret, enrich, calibrate, and translate real-time information from space into reliable measures of forest carbon — in any forest type, in any forest condition, anywhere in the world. This work on the ground is what is needed to accurately use satellites to measure carbon at the scale that landholders, investors and governments need.

This is a global initiative, supported by the Bezos Earth Fund, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the European Space Agency and others. It’s connecting forest researchers from around the world, and linking a broad range of ground-based and space-based technologies to provide a globally accessible codex to carbon in the world’s forest. 

The Geo-Trees network is starting in the tropics, the most carbon-rich forests in the world, and establishing research sites across the world. In the coming years, the program will extend to all forests, providing hundreds of monitoring sites where satellite-based measurements of forests can be combined with detailed information on tree identity, wood density, tree architecture and soil carbon.  

Upon completion, the measurement of carbon in a particular forest, and the impact of human actions on that carbon, will be almost as seamless and simple as measuring the weight of your apples when leaving the store. You don’t worry about the quality of the scale at the check-out counter because the scale has been calibrated. This is the foundation needed to support and reward actions that pull carbon out of the air and put it in trees all over the world.

Far more important than his rhetoric, Lord Kelvin devised the scale that established absolute zero, which became an international standard for temperatures that still bears his name. He should serve as a reminder of, and an inspiration for, the work we still need to do to establish a measurement to contain the damage of carbon emissions. 

What do Simone Biles, Michael Phelps and Shaquille O’Neal all have in common? 

Olympic gold medals? Not quite. They all won Olympic gold, but O’Neal threw his medal out the window driving home from the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia.

The answer we were looking for is that they’ve all been featured on a box of Kellogg’s cereal. 
One of the things that got those athletes to the pinnacle of their sports was the support they received throughout their youth, be it from their parents, community leaders, sports organizations or schools.

Unfortunately, not every child or young teen has access to those support systems. That’s why WK Kellogg Co. started its Mission Tiger program five years ago to fund middle school sports programs. Since 2019, the Mission Tiger program has donated over $4 million across more than 3,000 schools in all 50 states.

Doing good, and doing good for business

“We really believe that in order to withstand the test of time as a company, we need to do initiatives like Mission Tiger that do good and do good for business,” said Sarah Ludmer, chief wellbeing and sustainable business officer at WK Kellogg Co. “We can’t just make good, delicious food anymore and that be our only business approach. We know consumers expect more.”

Consumers do make purchase decisions based on a brand’s environmental and social sustainability efforts, according to an analysis by the research technology firm Glow, in partnership with TriplePundit, our parent company 3BL and panel partner Cint. The effect of consumers switching brands for sustainability reasons in the U.S. alone amounts to $44 billion annually.

When deciding on which initiative to invest time and resources in, the Frosted Flakes cereal mascot Tony the Tiger’s history of promoting youth sports made the choice clear.

“We found that middle school is the biggest time when youth are dropping out of sports,” Ludmer said. “Knowing Tony and knowing he’s always been for activity and helping kids, we just felt like this was the right fit for us.”

The program has provided 2 million "sports experiences" for youth, defined as anything the program does to help students play sports and the number of students it affects, from providing uniforms to field maintenance and everything in between.

Without partners, there is no Mission Tiger

The Mission Tiger program could not be managed without its partners. The company leans on the help of four important partners to bring its youth sport engagement objectives to life.

The Aspen Institute is Mission Tiger’s research partner. It identified the gap in middle school sports and found that youth in sports do better in school and have better social acumen. 

DonorsChoose is the nonprofit partner that identifies the schools in need, allowing donations to be delivered directly.

Retail stores that sell Kellogg’s cereal are also major partners. “Whether it’s Walmart, or Meijer, or name your local retailer, they’re on a similar journey to identify programs that can reach their communities,” Ludmer said.

And the customer plays a pivotal role in the program. By purchasing Kellogg’s cereal, then uploading their receipt online, consumers trigger a $3 donation to the Mission Tiger program.

“This goes back to that doing good and doing good for business as well,” Ludmer said. “It’s one thing for a brand to tell a consumer this is what we're doing. It's another to say, ‘Hey, this is a big problem. Will you come help us solve it?’”

How can other organizations build a similar program?

“It’s super important to find programs that matter to the brand, matter to the consumer and help your retailer,” Ludmer said.

Many business-driven purpose programs, like Mission Tiger, so often fail because they become more of an add-on to the budget than a return on investment, she said. Without the business benefits, support for the project could easily fade. WK Kellogg Co. is seeing a return on its investment. 

“The awareness and brand equity that we’ve seen through this, that’s one thing,” Ludmer said. “We've also seen customer response to be extremely strong because they love having community events and it gives them a way to give back — both of those from a business standpoint are beneficial for us. And then on top of that, it makes our people happy, and there's no better value or return on investment than your employees being proud of the work that your brands are doing.”

Is Kellogg’s cereal a healthy choice for youth?

“100 percent yes,” Ludmer, a dietician by trade. “I’ll be honest, cereal gets a bad rep, but it’s the number one source of whole grain and fiber that exists in the American diet.”

And the added sugar? It depends on the type of cereal, but on average, “cereal contributes less than 5 percent of the added sugar in the American diet,” Ludmer said. “The other piece to remember with this too, is it's the first meal that a kid actually makes on their own. It drives a choice level and that's super empowering for a kid.” 

Empowering kids is what Kellogg’s and Tony the Tiger are known for, and who knows, one of those kids might just feature on a box of Frosted Flakes with the Olympic rings one day.

For years, the business of consumer packaged goods was built around the core principles of production and rapid, single-use consumption. Success was measured around the demand and use that businesses can encourage — and the profit this generates. 
 
It's now become clear that this model had a huge impact on the planet, leading to irresponsible consumption. So, when it comes to sustainability, these businesses now have a crucial part to play and a responsibility to reverse this behavior. 

Research has repeatedly shown that consumers view brands as equally accountable — if not more so — than governments in driving responsible consumption. According to a recent Nielsen IQ survey, for example, 46 percent look to brands to take the lead on creating sustainable change. 

Consumer packaged goods companies (CPGs) need to recognize and embrace that significant change will only happen if they help lead the way. 

Balancing consumption drivers

The challenge is that driving responsible consumption is push and pull. On the one hand, it’s about changing what consumers expect and will accept by using innovation to answer those evolving needs. Promises of low cost and high performance will always be a priority for consumers, so it’s up to brands to show consumers that sustainable consumption doesn’t have to mean a compromise on those key drivers.

But equally important is the realization that behavior has evolved to the point of consumers expecting and seeking instant gratification — the quick hit of dopamine that comes with so many fast-moving goods. People are buying into experiences and feelings with every single-use purchase. So, alongside making the sustainable choice convenient and cost-effective and addressing functional requirements, brands need to address this and rewire what satisfaction looks like. 

Fashion sites like Vinted and Vestiaire Collective have taken some great strides here. As fashion resale sites, they have made the thrill of the sustainable chase exciting and turned it into strong social currency.

CPGs need to do the same. It’s arguably harder with a cleaning product or bottled water to land on what that thrill could look like. Method was an early example of a brand recognizing that the sustainable option could offer the style and cultural cachet worthy of a social media grid. While sustainability metrics have moved on since then, the brand still shows how a conventional, functional or even ‘boring’ category can change the game.

A more recent example is Evian launching its (Re)new product, a refillable water dispenser bringing Evian natural mineral water into the home using 60 percent less plastic packaging, back in 2021. Developed and launched with the late Virgil Abloh as creative advisor, it marked an ambitious step in the brand’s move away from single-use bottles. 

Uncovering the secondary benefits

This is where brands can have significant impact. If sustainability goals force them to explore new product and pack experiences, why not look at the whole consumer journey to revolutionize behavior? Through this process, they can potentially identify other pain points, where the solution goes hand-in-hand with the more sustainable option. It’s such a golden chance to rethink engagement and interaction — and influence consumption for the better. 

Take concentrated toothpaste tablets for example, such as Smyle or Pärla. They were driven by the need to eliminate the transport of excess liquid around the world, which is also needed in the formulation of conventional toothpaste, but they have the added benefit of being more portable. Who walks around with a tube of toothpaste in their clutch bag? Taking two tablets on the go is much more convenient. 

Suddenly, in your drive for sustainability, you can meet an unmet need and deliver a secondary benefit to really encourage a shift.

Shifting the single-use mindset

The key is to realize and embrace that the single-use mindset can only take you so far in an age where more and more legislation against it is on the horizon. In France, for example, supermarkets are being forced to address single-use plastic. By 2030, 20 percent of their floor space will need to be dedicated to refill systems. But there are so many companies that are still not doing enough on reuse, reduce and return. Startups often lead the way, with refill deodorants, direct-to-consumer subscription toilet paper and refillable cleaning products. Large global players need to keep up. 

In addition to addressing the single-use mindset, companies need to invest in wider sustainability drives. Take inspiration from Patagonia’s repair centers across the world, U.K. retailer M&S following suit with its own clothing repair services, or Nestlé investing in a new plastic recycling plant in the U.K. 

Looking at services that support more sustainable consumer behavior is just as important as product innovation. This goes right down to thinking about last-mile logistics to help your products travel shorter distances and encouraging a more decentralized and bespoke approach to sustainable solutions. 

Ultimately, brands need to realize that the call for sustainability isn’t just another trend. It’s an imperative. It must be brand and government led; we cannot afford to wait for it to become fully consumer led. Moreover, it requires radical changes. With innovation, brands often want to start small to see how much traction an idea will gain. But the time for viewing sustainability as a niche part of your innovation pipeline is over. It must become the fundamental tenet your brand is built around.