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Financing social impact with PlusValue
Shaken Not Burned
June 06, 2024
Shaken Not Burned
Highlighting changemakers and solutions
Welcome to another week of Shaken Not Burned!
With Felicia on holiday, Giulia and Heather discuss a 61% drop in the market value of voluntary carbon offsets, according to Ecosystem Marketplace calculations, showing that demand has fallen for the second year in a row. The Biden Administration’s statement of principle to develop the VCM has been hailed as a positive step to rebuild trust, but the market may need stronger measures to recover from criticism.
Next, we talk about Vermont’s passing of a new bill that requires fossil fuel companies to compensate residents for their climate impact, becoming the first US state to ‘make the polluter pay’. Having suffered $1 billion in flood damage last year alone, the State will now demand compensation based on historical greenhouse gas emissions.
Finally, Giulia speaks with Filippo Addarii, co-founder and chief executive of social innovation agency PlusValue, about how to invest private capital to help people's lives while generating financial returns. One instrument is the social impact bond, a tool first launched in the UK and now rolled out globally across 251 initiatives to reduce homelessness and help convicts build a livelihood outside of prison, among other things.
Thanks for joining us and don’t forget to listen to this week’s episode wherever you get your podcasts. We hope you enjoy the newsletter and if there’s anything you’d like to see more information about, myths you’d like dispelled or terms you’d like clarified, you can email us at [email protected].
Glossary - Circular economy
In the circular economy, the materials that make up our products never become waste, but are kept in circulation through models such as reuse, repair or recycling. The concept is posed as an alternative to the dominant linear economy, where finite resources are extracted from the Earth, made into products that have a limited lifespan before being wasted.
As consumers, we can choose to take part in the circular economy by buying from circular brands or second-hand, repairing our products instead of replacing them, and borrowing items that we may only use a handful of times. Businesses can introduce these alternative models or explore technologies and partnerships that allow their waste to be repurposed.
Busting a myth - “It’s been cold and wet so far this year. Maybe we don’t need to worry about global warming”
There is a clear distinction between weather and climate. Weather indicates short-term conditions in the atmosphere and can be affected by a range of factors, such as temperature, atmospheric pressure, cloud formation, wind, humidity and rain – even a minimal change in one of these can bring a major change in weather.
Climate is a definition of weather patterns over longer periods of time. Global warming caused by humans exacerbates extreme weather conditions, some of which may be unseasonably cold temperatures and abundant rainfalls. In fact, a warmer climate means
the air can hold more moisture, leading to heavier snow and rainfall than usual. This is why the warmer seasons in temperate climates are getting wetter, with increasingly intense storms.
What we’ve been reading this week
Scientists at ETH Zürich have made a sweet breakthrough with the development of a chocolate formulation that reduces land use and global warming potential by using the pulp and husk of a cocoa pod rather than just the beans.
Advisory firm ISS has joined Glass Lewis in calling for Tesla shareholders to vote against chief executive Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package, which was voided by a Delaware judge earlier this year.
The UK has decided to implement its Sustainability Disclosure Requirements, intended to address greenwashing in the financial sector, from January 2026.
South Korean campaigners have challenged Seoul’s classification of blue hydrogen – which is produced with fossil gas and carbon capture and storage (CCS) – as “clean”. If they win the court case, blue hydrogen projects may no longer access certain subsidies.
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