The quaint windmills of yesteryear still dot the Dutch countryside. Huge white tower-and-tine jobs now pepper the fields and plains. There are even small pinwheels on rooftops, capturing the uneven urban breezes.

Yet all these rely on natural airflows to turn them. But anyone who’s ever changed a tire while semi-trailers cannon past; or stood at the entrance to a subway tunnel as the train approaches, knows just how much wind — kinetic energy — these machines generate. Yet this force, powerful as it is, blows wastefully away, dissipating in some field or side-tunnel somewhere.

Traffic rolls past a median strip in Palembang, Indonesia. Photo by Ujuk Safar / Unsplash

Wait a minute! Wait just a doggone minute, what if we could harvest this energy into power to light our homes and run our machines? What has been lacking are specialized turbines, with blades small enough to harvest this energy along a busy road or a tight tunnel, feeding it to the grid for use in our other human endeavors. And, as vehicle-generated wind is inconsistent, “the design of a wind turbine must include the storage of energy and a system to distribute the generated power effectively,” notes Altenergymag.com.

There have been several attempts to interest the world in such turbines but currently, so far as we can determine, there are only a few companies actually doing so.

Capture Mobility prototype roadside wind turbine. Photo source: Scottish Funding Council.

There is a startup in Turkey, testing their turbines on a busy Istanbul busway, while Capture Mobility, the brainchild of Sanwal Muneer, who formed the idea while standing at the side of an auto racetrack, has built a prototype near Dundee.

A vertical axis Twisted Savonius-type wind turbine. Photo by Popolon. Photo source: Wikipedia

These turbines stand vertically and do not need long blades in order to capture favorable winds. They take up a tiny footprint, standing just a few meters tall and spinning without horizontal blades, so they are appropriate for a sidewalk, a center median, or a highway shoulder. Turbines set in the center can capture airflow from traffic going in both directions, for even more efficiency.

Deveci Tech ‘Enlil’ vertical hybrid wind turbine as part of a
pilot program in Istanbul, Turkey. Photo by u/montemole

The Turkish model, Enlil, by Deveci Tech, stands in the median on a busy busway, and captures both natural and vehicle-generated wind. There is a small solar panel atop the unit to capture even more energy, while the storage battery is below ground. Further, the structure is equipped with smart tech, interfacing with the electrical grid of course, but also capturing seismic data, air quality, wind patterns, CO₂ levels, and more.

The design also contains a connection for driverless vehicles and a wi-fi emitter. Each of the Enlil units is expected to generate more than a kilowatt of electricity each hour, enough, the company claims, “to meet the power requirements of two homes.” At scale then, along a highway or busy thoroughfare, there is vast power available from energy that is currently wasted, buffeting off buildings or whistling along avenues and open fields.

Turbine blades in Edenfield, England en route to the Scout Moor Windfarm.
Photo by Paul Anderson. Photo source: Wikipedia

This model is also an advantage in urban areas, where the thirst for power strains even the largest grid at peak, but where the huge, iconic blades of most turbines are problematic. Such turbines have wingspans up to 100 meters (325 ft.), a soccer pitch or so. When we consider that the broad Champs-Élysées in Paris is only 70 meters wide, it’s clear these behemoths are not meant for urbanites.

Champs-Élysées. Photo by Pedro Gandra / Unsplash

In addition, unlike offshore farms and mountain passes, city winds tend to be localized, with complex flows, vortices and updrafts due to the heights and shapes of a cityscape. Winds generated by traffic flows, however, are relatively constant, moving in a uniform direction each time a vehicle passes. The smaller turbines are also less vulnerable in hurricane-like conditions and are not problematic for birds or other flying creatures.

Photo by Luis Vilanova.

So far, the upright traffic-driven turbine is in the testing stages, but we hope to see this concept proliferate. It’s the kind of elegant solution we at Valutus like: Simple, inexpensive, easily scalable, and easy for governments large and small to understand and to purchase.

Vertical wind turbine in Cap-Chat, Quebec, Canada.
Photo by Christian T. Photo source: Wikipedia

The cost of the turbines is quite low compared to building a standard windmill. The cost of the wind? It’s something for nothing.

Amazing Stories, Issue #1, April 1926. Photo Source: Wikipedia

Before you close the book in disgust, consider this: perhaps the humans in the story represent researchers from Washington State University. Maybe the aliens are thermophilic bacteria living in Yellowstone’s superheated, geothermal pools. And just possibly, those bacteria hold a key to saving our home planet.

Oh, and yes, really, don’t get too close. If you fall into certain of these pools, the sulfuric acid and heat will dissolve you. The potentiostat? Beam that up too; it’s real.

Bacterial biofilm mats on a Yellowstone geyser. Photo by Nicolasintravel / Unsplash

It has long been understood that some bacteria can break down, or ‘eat’, various pollutants, chemicals and biological agents. The electrical properties of some bacteria have also been previously studied. But now, the critters living and creating biofilm matts in certain Yellowstone thermal pools have been found to do both. These microbes could be made to generate enough electricity to power small electronic devices while gobbling PCBs and other environmental toxins for lunch.

“Such bacteria can ‘eat’ pollution by converting toxic pollutants into less harmful substances and generating electricity in the process,” according to Science Daily, and the Journal of Power Sources wrote that microbial fuel cell (MFC) reactors are “able to generate electricity by capturing electrons from the anaerobic respiratory processes of microorganisms.”

Many toxic chemicals and radioactive substances have been dumped in harsh land and marine environments, in ditches and pools at industrial sites, or at nuclear waste sites, which is why these creatures may be perfect for the work at hand. “The bacteria perform their useful tasks while in spore form, a dormant stage of growth that can handle extreme heat, radiation and lack of water — all useful traits for an organism that might be employed in some of the worst manmade environments,” relates Live Science.

Potentiostat. Photo source: Public Lab Wiki

When these tiny workhorses will be put to practical use is unclear, but researchers at MIT are currently working on the problem. “The vision is to harness the most-powerful bacteria for tasks like running fuel cells or purifying sewage water,” explains Forbes.

It may read like science fiction but, down the road, we may be powering our phones and computers with these earth-based, pollutant-munching, electron-streaming aliens. In the meanwhile, steer clear of their pools and hold on to your potentiostats.

When Simple Tools Were Enough
We’re heading to an important meeting in heavy traffic, unfamiliar terrain, a slick road, and a worrisome rattle in the motor. A glove box filled with folding maps, wrenches, and a roll of dimes for a payphone isn’t the best we can do anymore. Today, a GPS, cell phone, and live traffic data – all of which didn’t exist in the not-too-distant-past – are essential.

Materiality Hasn’t Been Up to the Task
In the same way, we can’t get where we’re going on sustainability – in the time we have – with outdated tools. We’ve just weathered a pandemic, a market crash, supply and labor instability, and socio-political unrest. Now, we’re having biblical floods and massive fires along with hurricanes and tornadoes in unprecedented places. We could really, really use some gleaming, state-of-the-art tools to assess priorities and inform strategy.

Photo by Yegor Kumachov

Sustainability is a luxury no longer but a critical strategic necessity, essential to the company’s present and future. Today’s executives, especially those championing sustainability, must be incredibly nimble and determined but, most of all, they must be informed. Materiality is a key tool we rely on for context, and insight, and we simply cannot afford materiality as staid and dusty as that map and wrench. We rebuilt it for the modern world, so it better addresses both impact on the business and impact on the world (“double materiality”).

Four Dimensions
To provide real value, materiality must illuminate four key dimensions of strategic context. Three of these give us a clearer view of the present:

1. What really matters: which issues are important and to whom
2. What is expected of the company and by whom
3. How well the organization is doing on the above issues, and on its core purpose

The fourth focuses on the future:

 4. What is coming over the horizon, and how fast it is approaching

Traditional materiality doesn’t cover all four; at best, it helps with the first. It was designed for a vanished time in which sustainability / ESG were seen as separate from the business, one where both the landscape and expectations changed slowly. In today’s fraught and frantic world, with sustainability so important and highly visible, materiality simply must address all four.

Why Does Traditional Materiality Fail Us? It’s Too Limited
Traditional materiality is too limited in terms of (a) number of stakeholders and (b) perspective.

Number of Stakeholders: Many companies query internal staff, a few customers, and their own supply chain and partners. Just this year a multinational corporation produced an analysis with input from fewer than 50 total stakeholders. Fifty! At a bare minimum, many times that number is needed.

Perspective: Traditional materiality – and even many new attempts to address “double materiality” – are too limited in perspective. Truly understanding impact on the world (half of “double materiality”) is impossible without rigorous, quantitative answers to all four questions above.

Because impact on the world is a combination of what’s most important to the world and what a company’s impact is, it’s not possible to get a good answer without:

• Being able to see what issues are most important to Tier 2 stakeholders (see below) and those stakeholders whose focus is the company’s impact on the world (#1)
• What those stakeholders’ expectations are (#2) for the company’s specific contribution to those issues
• How well the organization is performing on those issues (#3)
• What issues are becoming more important to the world (#4)

Photo by Naderaalbalawi Nader

Net Size Matters
It’s not just more input, it’s casting the net far beyond the boundaries of the business. Stakeholders with a direct connection to the business – what we call Tier 1 stakeholders – are valuable, but the very relationships that make them easier to contact also affect their perspectives. While it’s true they know more about what the company is thinking and planning, which is positive, it is important to seek out other perspectives as well.

Unfortunately, those stakeholders with no direct relationship to the business – Tier 2 stakeholders in our vernacular – are often neither sought nor queried. They necessarily have different opinions about priorities, performance, and the future than Tier 1 stakeholders, and a great deal of context, expertise, and over-the-horizon vision is lost by excluding them.

Recognition Wanted
Even when Tier 2 stakeholders are included, traditional materiality results don’t distinguish between their responses and those of Tier 1 stakeholders, so their insights are lost or garbled. This is a critical mistake for the business as well as its sustainability functions. It gives up powerful advance warning of upcoming changes, risks, and opportunities, and it leaves little time to sidestep risks and beat competitors to the punch.

Falling Flat
Flat materiality asks if stakeholders care about various issues but fails to ask their opinion about where the company stands with respect to them. Are you killing it vs projections? Hanging in? Way below expectations? Are you up but headed down? Knowing how the company is doing is essential, and this is especially true when an issue is, in the eyes of stakeholders, increasing in importance.

If Time is Money…
Let’s be clear: the old method of materiality takes too long! A Fortune 100 firm recently took six months to complete one. At the same time, a 4D Materiality engagement got input from almost twice as many stakeholders yet took just two months – 66% less time. Consider the frantic pace of change during any six-month period over the past two years and ask yourself if taking three times as long is good enough

In the same way, is it good enough to look in the rearview mirror every two years? Clearly not, yet that is the plodding cadence of traditional materiality. In contrast, our Stakeholder Science offering quadruples the clock speed by updating key information every six months (or more often, if desired), while adding over-the-horizon data from our E3Evolution and Valutus Issues Early Warning System (VIEWS) offerings and integrating with our Customer Science research capabilities.

E3Evolution Screenshot of Issues That Are Rising & Falling in Importance

Static Cling
Finally, prior-era materiality results are static, far less flexible and informative than an interactive display that can be mined, refined, and selectively sorted in real time. A static report is just as outdated as that folding map, and less useful. This again is where those gleaming, state-of-the-art tools would come in handy – and where 4D Materiality shines, adding dynamic, compelling outputs that inform and inspire action.

4D Materiality Screenshot

We Fixed It!
In our true hour of need, materiality has been failing us. But materiality can be the comprehensive, multidimensional powerhouse we all need. Better input, sharper analysis, the inclusion of time and evolution, faster outcomes, and dynamic, compelling outputs: a materiality that does this – and more – is possible. In fact, it’s here. 4D Materiality has arrived and it’s built for today’s world.

A Better Materiality
We leave home every day with devices that can calculate the trajectory of a trip to Mars, while playing video games and taking our vital signs. We drive to work with an unimaginably powerful communication and navigation array at our fingertips. We relax at home with automated, AI-driven thermostats, televisions, and cameras.

How can we justify relying on flat, sluggish, outmoded materiality processes for our strategy? Our companies, and our planet, deserve better. They deserve full-spectrum, multidimensional, 4D Materiality.

Consider the wrecking ball: the majestic equations that govern its lordly swings, the unstoppable force that conquers immovable objects in its path.

Yet, for all our elegance of design and materials when creating buildings, their deconstruction invariably ends in a massive pile of amalgamated rubble with a side-dish of toxic dust.

Demolition in Dresden, Germany, Plauen district (2010). Photo by Stefan Kühn, Wikipedia

Even in this world of masonry guilds and hard-hatted contractors however, the notion of circularity is slowly trickling in, and architects are now working to end structures as thoughtfully as we begin them, a methodology known as Reversible Buildings. It’s a concept that just might leave the wrecking ball rusting atop one of its own scrap heaps.

Just as structures made of Legos or building blocks can be torn down over and over, this strategy “allows products, installations or even entire buildings to be deconstructed and their components used again to reduce waste and carbon emissions,” notes Dezeen.

Symbol for reversibility in chemical reactions. Source: Wikipedia

“‘Reversibility’ is defined as a process of transforming buildings or dismantling its systems, products and elements without causing damage to building [sic] and its parts and materials,” and represents the “backbone of circular building and circular economy in construction,” according to BAMB2020’s Explorations for Reversible Buildings.

Currently, most of the built structures designed for reversibility are of the pavilion type: relatively small and temporary in nature. As Surface Reporter noted of the BUGA Fibre pavilion in Heilbronn, Germany, it “offers visitors an astounding architectural experience and a glimpse of future construction.” A BBC studios semi-permanent installation on the beachfront in Cannes, France, was another such. [Images of this building are available here.]

Yet not all reversibles are of this ilk. Some are surprisingly large and solid and, for ‘future construction’ that is the question. Can this method of temporary, light-building design and materials actually be adapted to large-scale, permanent structures such as homes, businesses, skyscrapers?

Triodos Bank reversible building, Zeist, Netherlands. Photo by Wouter Hagens, Wikipedia

But how are such buildings actually made? There appear to be two basic models. The first, and the one more often in actual real-world use, is of simple materials such as cross-laminated lumber – a renewable material that sequesters carbon – using screws rather than permanent fastenings, in modular components installed so they can be taken apart again and moved or stored.

This is the method used for one-and-two story, more-temporary structures such as the BBC studios in Cannes – which was assembled in 6 days and can be taken apart just as quickly – trade-show structures, event pavilions and other semi-permanent multi-use buildings that can be con-and deconstructed in a few days.

‘Lego House’ rooftop, Billund, Denmark near the Lego company headquarters. 
Photo by Frederik Merten

But there is another approach – what Hennes de Ridder calls a ‘legolizing’ construction model – which is just getting off the drawing board, involving prefabricated building-block-style bricks, essentially using the children’s toy as a model for real-world construction. One company is marketing fully reversible foam bricks, and at least one other is building homes in two or three days from prefab insulated pressed-wood Lego-style reversible blocks.

But the coup de gras for this model was built just this June in Changsha, China: ten stories prefabricated from shipping containers and built in a single day. The structures can be, say the developers, deconstructed just as easily and moved somewhere else. The idea has been on the table for several years and the architects claim buildings utilizing this template could rise hundreds of stories. If true, it could truly legolize our cities and completely revamp our current construction paradigm. One circular advantage to this approach is that no new material would be needed. Indeed, as InHabitat noted in 2019, “there are millions of shipping containers all over the world just sitting in various ports,” and they are, indubitably, simple and inexpensive to transport.

 Modular construction known as ‘Container City 2. Built of repurposed shipping 
containers at Trinity Buoy Wharf, London. Photo by Cmglee. Source: Wikipedia

Shipping containers as construction modules – known as ‘cargotecture’ – has been around for some time and an early modular movement in Japan – known as Metabolism architecture – actually built several structures, which were prefabricated at a shipping container manufactory.

The semi-modular, mixed-use Nakagin Capsule Tower, Tokyo, opened in 1972.Designed
by Kisho Kurokawa, a founder of the ‘Metabolism’ architecture movement. 
Photo by Jordy Meow. Source: Wikipedia

But what about cost? How does this approach stand up to current construction models? Here too, studies as far back as 2005 show clearly that reversible buildings are a solid, perhaps a superior, investment. Profits on most structures are seen as a measure of the revenues they generate over the useful life of the building, its so-called ‘service life.’ Such buildings are often prematurely demolished due to market conditions, dramatically reducing the profits they could offer if they stood for the full measure of years determined by their engineered design.

Reversible buildings, however, can be modularly deconstructed, repurposed, relocated, made into other buildings, or incorporated into extant structures. Their useful lives, therefore, transcend market conditions and all their materials are valuable after deconstruction. This makes such buildings far safer investments over time than the standard brick-and-mortar monolith because net present value (NPV) of reversible design is higher based on smaller risk of early demolition.

Image by Ralf Kunze / Unsplash

Reversible buildings appear to be a clear path to circularity in construction. The only real question now is whether we can take the wrecking ball to our current model of construction.

In Vietnam the one constant, the common denominator, the thing that has bound this thousand-mile-long land together for ten thousand years, is rice. From the scalloped slopes of Sa Pa to the city limits of pancake-flat Saigon to the vast breadbasket in between, the emerald currency that pumps through every heart is rice.

Indeed rice is so important here that, when inviting guests to sit down to any meal – regardless of the menu – a Vietnamese person will smile, gesture toward the kitchen and say, mời anh chị ăn cơm[5] , ‘please, come eat some rice with us.’

Southeast Asian rice at various stages of processing. Photo by Damien Loverso.

As we’ve written elsewhere, rice is the single most essential food crop on Earth, the staple food of billions. Yet around the world, many rice varieties – and millions of other plant species – are being sorely tried by climate conditions they aren’t genetically adapted to.

Still, some varieties can manage higher temperatures, wetter or drier conditions, and various elevations, better than others. Once identified, such varieties could be used to supplant those that cannot adapt, allowing this incredibly important food to flourish even as the climate warms.

Vietnam is an ideal place to search for such varieties because, though it is rarely more than 60 miles (96 km) wide, it stretches almost 15 degrees of latitude north-to-south[6], more than 1,200 miles (1,931 km).

Köppen–Geiger climate classification map for Vietnam (1980 – 2016).
Map by Nature Scientific Data. Source: Wikipedia

As such, within its slender curves Vietnam boasts temperate zones, tropical rainforests, mountain highlands, monsoon-swept flatlands and – to the south and east – more than 2,000 miles (3,260 km) of corrugated, cyclone-prone coastline. Farmers in all these areas – amid a riot of exotic fruits, coconut palms, banana trees, mangroves, and vegetables – grow that slender, backbreaking, emerald-green cereal known locally as lúa: rice. Beyond that, these many terroirs – as the French who once colonized Vietnam would call them – are also proxies for the various climatic conditions, elevations, and soils where rice is grown elsewhere in the world. A climate-change-winning variety in Vietnam is highly likely to be useful somewhere else as well.

Rice varieties for sale in Đà Lạt, Lâm Đồng province.

A study published in June applied genetic sequencing to the problem and analyzed the genomes of more than 670 Vietnamese rice varieties, looking for specific traits from various regions, and comparing them to other Asiatic rice strains. These researchers went about thoroughly “scoring phenotypic measurements,” classifying “quantitative trait loci,” and “unique genotype-phenotype…associations,” and other things even more obscure to all but the most ardent experts.

In the end they identified several Vietnamese rice varieties – notably members of the ‘Indica 15’ subpopulation – containing alleles, or specific pairs of genes, that can help “develop a new generation of sustainable ‘Green Super Rice’ with lower input needs, enhanced nutritional content and suitability for growing on marginal lands.”

Bingo! Rice with more nutrition that can handle tougher conditions and doesn’t require as much water, fertilizer, or as much of the exhausting labor that smallholder rice farming engenders.

Relaxing in Hoi An, Vietnam. Photo by Kiril Dobrev / Unsplash

Some of the desired traits for Vietnam are those that resist “increasing sea levels causing overflow of salt water, and consequential drought in the upland areas,” noted the Earlham Institute, which was involved in the research.

These same qualities are badly needed around the world, as the impact of both desertification and salinity intrusion from rising oceans are global issues. While rice is a staple in Asia, it is also an important crop in sub-Saharan Africa, India, Europe, Central and South America, and for many island nations. As the Institute points out, “the new genomic data they have generated will significantly support efforts to breed resilient rice crops for optimum global production.” 

Thankfully, there is an enormous fund of genetic information on this plant already available, and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) has genetic readings on more than 3,000 rice varieties, so the research noted above didn’t need to start from scratch. The IRRI also has an active breeding program which, if it takes this current research into account, may contribute to addressing rice’s climate change issues. This is by no means an academic exercise. Whole populations may soon be dependent upon the success of such a breeding program.

Rice on banana leaf. Photo by Thoa Ngo / Unsplash

‘Climate smart’ varieties, the so-called ‘super green rice,’ the specific genetics of which this research has identified, if it can indeed withstand the rigors of a changing climate, may allow billions to live, to thrive, and even to invite guests to dinner with a friendly, mời anh chị ăn cơm!

In early 2020, we forecast the coming legal challenges to unsustainable behavior in Blame: The Worm Will Turn. That April, almost exactly a year before the landmark legal decisions described below, we wrote about forensic climate accounting, saying:

As costs and damages from human-driven climate events continue to rise dramatically, so will lawsuits against Big Carbon industries and governments who have supported fossil fuels.

“Blame: The Worm Will Turn” (Valutus, 2020)

Not all our prognostications have come true (as we detailed in this accounting of our 2020 predictions), but our belief in the growing legal efforts on behalf of sustainability was a bull’s eye. Virtually all the climate chickens forecast for years by scientists came home and roosted this year, and both costs and lawsuits are at record levels… and Big Carbon is taking a hit.

Any period in which fossil fuels are held accountable is a good one for sustainability but the last week of April 2021 was the kind of watershed environmentalists have been dreaming of for a generation. And the kind that makes it clear that companies are increasingly being held accountable for their GHG footprint – that is, the era of Total Carbon Ownership (TCO₂) is upon us.

Abandoned filling station. Photo by Falkenpost.

It was a week of shareholder revolt, as 48% of shareholders demanded Chevron reduce emissions to net-zero by 2050. Then there were three climate activist seats elected to Exxon’s board; and a Dutch court ruled that R.D. Shell must ramp up to a net-45% carbon reduction (compared with 2019 levels) by 2030. If this is a dream, don’t pinch us: we never want to wake up.

But wait! Australia’s courts also said fossil fuel polluters can be sued on behalf of the young and the fifth-largest pension fund in the world – with half a trillion dollars in assets – is amping up investor pressure by divesting from fossil fuels. Mister Sandman, let me keep on dreaming!

Hold on though, because in Germany their highest court, the Karlsruhe, decided in favor of a slate of environmentalists who brought suit saying the government’s carbon plans did not go far enough. Given the flooding that devastated Germany in July, this decision was not, to say the least, in the nick of time, yet once again the thrust was that young peoples’ rights were being infringed by having to deal with a thawing / heating / flooding / burning planet.

All of this was unthinkable just a short time ago. Courts, governments, investors, and activists, all working together to massively curb emissions from Big Carbon?

Consider that, in 2010 Coca Cola set a goal to reduce their absolute carbon output in developed countries by what was viewed then as a whopping number: 5% within five years. This was an example, said experts[1] then, of a strong, meaningful target. Now, that goal would be seen as weak, insufficient, window dressing at best.

As remarkable as the last few months have been, however, they are part of a larger sea change – though some of the more dramatic events escaped the front pages and cable news cycles.

One such is a shift in stance by the highly influential International Energy Agency (IEA) which, just recently, published a special report saying the road to net zero is achievable and will bring jobs and an economic boom. This from an agency about which many complained that “oil, gas and coal companies use (their) flagship World Energy Outlook (WEO) annual report to justify further investment – undermining the Paris goals.” Now, the IEA has blown that reputation up and put 1.5˚C at the center of their 2021 WEO.

Photo by Selina P.

Many of these changes were foreseeable in that some of the bedrock institutions that underpin modern business – namely insurance underwriters and investors – have begun to see climate change as a top risk. We recently wrote that, odd as it seems, few utilities were retooling for renewables, and, even among those that were, there was continued major investment in fossil fuels. Can that trend continue though, if activists gain control of their boards? If investors demand they switch? If the courts force them to dramatically reduce emissions?

How much more powerful will these forces grow when they are fully armed with the latest climate science and attribution methods? As a June 2021 article in Nature noted, existing climate lawsuits (of which there are over 1,500) often don’t make full use of cutting-edge science – yet that science is becoming more provable and exact, and hence more accepted by courts.

More science, more success? We’ll take it!

And just in time, too. In this space we have talked about our risk model that accounts for not only the likelihood and magnitude of various risks, but also vulnerability to those risks. With the likelihood of government / court actions increasing dramatically, and with investors rebelling against management and demanding climate action, it’s clear that recognition of businesses’ vulnerability is growing. It’s difficult to stonewall, obfuscate, lobby, and campaign for carbon interests if members of your own board aren’t having it. That’s not a good scenario for recalcitrant carbon purveyors, and it changes the balance of risks significantly.

Source: Valutus

As we noted in the same article, Valutus has developed a next-generation risk dashboard that includes standard business risks but also encompasses the very risks that companies and governments are now slamming up against: a rising tide of government green regulation, sustainability-supporting legal decisions and now, internal activism.

Not every week will be like that last one in April. There are still pipelines and Arctic drilling and fracking and plenty of emissions. The fossil fuel industry, though back on its heels, is by no means dead. Indeed, it is very much alive in U.S. legislative battles.

There is still a vast war against the worst of the climate crisis to prosecute, but it must be admitted that winning a bunch of battles – as happened in April – besides helping with eventual victory, is just plain good for morale.

References:
[1] Mohin, Timothy J., Changing Business from the Inside Out: A Tree Hugger’s Guide to Working in Corporations, Greenleaf Publishing, Ltd., ©2012

Grab a few eggs from the domesticated Ibis, pull up some totora roots from the lakebed, and start your omelet. The glare from early morning sun on Lake Titicaca is blinding so you re-enter your house, never noticing that it is dipping and rising a little more than usual today. Must be the wind across the small, floating island of some dozen houses you share with others of your tribe. 

Of course, this is all taking place in the Peruvian Andes, 12,500 ft (3,800 m) above the ocean and sea level rise is not exactly a concern. But the Uru peoples’ floating homes can be instructive for those of us who dwell a little lower down.

Manhattan entrance of the Brooklyn-Battery (Hugh L. Carey) tunnel, New York City flooded by
storm surge during Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. Photo by NYC Metropolitan Transit Authority.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

As we’ve been documenting, in the next few years, hundreds of millions of people are going to be permanently or periodically underwater unless we find creative solutions to hold back, manage, or adapt to higher sea levels. Managed retreat, forced relocation, call it what you will, whole societies will need to live differently. If it’s possible to find space inland or on higher ground, so be it. If not, well, adapting to the Uru model may be just the ticket.

The Uru drive Eucalyptus pilings into the lake bottom and build homes atop root-and-reed matts tethered to them, to form small floating islands, and they have been doing so for generations. These are not boats. They are floating homes.

The essential difference between the above and house ‘boats’ is permanence. Houseboats are simply mobile boats on which people live. Floating houses on the other hand are built in place or towed to their destination, designed to remain there either attached to floatable foundations or, as with the Uru, tethered to the lake, river, or seabed.

Floating house, made famous in the film Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Seattle, Washington.
Photo by Brian Teutsch. Source: Wikimedia Commons

With the air warming, seas rising, and storms surging, others around the globe who may never have heard of the Uru are floating their homes as well, with many more to come.

Indeed, adaptation to rising oceans is so urgent the magazine Science recently dedicated an entire issue to the matter in which they remark that “globally, sea level rise alone could place 340 million people on land projected to be below annual flood levels by 2050.” In other words, approximately the population of the United States will be displaced, and their communities permanently or periodically inundated, within the next 30 years.

It seems clear that floating homes must be a part of the solution: there are simply too many places where relocation is impractical or impossible. 

Floating homes in Nassau Harbor, Rotterdam, Netherlands 

Holland, for example, now has floating communities on rivers in several towns including Amsterdam and Rotterdam, homes attached to anchored ‘moorings.’ Like the Urus’ homes these are not boats: they are permanently tethered to the bottom and fitted with all modern conveniences – no ibis omelets but plenty of heat, light, and plumbing. 

The placid Rotterdam waterway in which these new homes are moored – the Nieuwe Maas – is nonetheless connected to the rough and intemperate North Sea at the nearby port. As such, these structures are subject to changing sea levels and bob up and down with the tides every six hours or so.

“The height difference between the extremes of the ebb and flow – high and low tide – ranges from one and a half to two metres in the Nassau harbour. This was taken into account… during the construction of the floating homes,” according to a Rotterdam newsletter.

Image by Janrye / Pixabay

This model is helpful for expanding a city, making use of previously unusable river and canal banks, and proofing homes against floods from rising baseline sea levels.

But what about areas where the full force of climate change – ever-more-frequent and violent storms, higher storm surges, inundation, and flash floods – hit the area? Places like the southern US coastline, the eastern coast of India, and Singapore where the land is just above current sea level, also may benefit from floating homes.

Photo by Bophomet Zhang / Unsplash

If communities expected to be submerged or chronically engulfed by storm surge are to survive, they will require homes that can withstand such conditions. Higher ground is, of course, the simplest option but not all communities have the will, resources, and land needed to move.

Many communities – consider the Florida Keys, the Maldives, the ports on the southern Mississippi, and nations like Bangladesh – are in flat areas where ‘higher ground’ does not exist.

The Bolivar peninsula off Galveston, Texas after Hurricane Ike in 2008. 
Photo by U.S. National Weather Service. Photo source: Wikipedia

Galveston, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico, is such a location and, in 2008, Hurricane Ike levelled a community on the Bolivar peninsula in Galveston Bay. Many of these structures were already on stilts in case of storm surge, yet they were nonetheless washed away by a sea swollen to 17 feet above its usual height. Homes that could float, however, might have a better chance of weathering such an event.

This brings up another significant issue for managed retreat and for floating houses in particular. The Urus’ homes are made from local materials plucked from the bottom of the lake or traded for with shore communities. Those being built in developing countries such as Vietnam and Bangladesh are also relatively inexpensive. 

The homes detailed above in Europe and America, on the other hand, cost many thousands, or hundreds of thousands, to build, dock, and maintain. Household income per capita (HIPC) in the Netherlands, for example, was almost $38,000 in 2018 compared to about $600 in Bangladesh[1].

    The Arkup floating home hybrid. The structure is motorized and can move in placid waters However,
it is also fitted with 40-foot retractable stanchions which can stabilize the home on
the seafloor and raise it above the waves

A floating home recently built on London’s river Thames cost more than half a million U.S. dollars, utterly out of the question for most of those who must adapt or relocate in the coming decades.

A pilot has been underway in low-lying Bangladesh, which has endured nine cyclones in the past eight years and where in 1970 cyclone Bhola claimed some half-a-million lives. Mean elevation above sea level is about 30 feet (9.1 meters). Some “13.3 million people could be displaced by climate change by 2050, and 18% of its coastland will remain inundated by 2080,” according to the IPCC, making floating homes a probable necessity in this battered land.

Brac university in Bangladesh is piloting floating homes for less than $2,000 American, still high by local standards but achievable. To make it workable, the Brac team suggested a standard by which each home “should generate at least enough income through its own food production that families can run the house cost-neutrally. The building materials must come from regional, renewable resources. Energy costs must be kept as low as possible, which requires the use of solar energy and good insulation.”

Brac is also working to float homes along the Mekong delta region of Vietnam. In both cases, as in the Netherlands and elsewhere, “these amphibious homes rise with flood waters and settle back to earth when the flood recedes. In Vietnam the emphasis is on retrofitting existing homes with buoyancy aids, while in Bangladesh entirely new floating homes are designed and constructed with full participation from the community.”

Raised toilet in Bangladesh, 2011, which functions even during flood conditions.
Photo by Saif Uddin, Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA).
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) 2008 report on migration and climate change suggested many nations consider migration simply “a failure of adaptation.” Yet the report made little mention of realistic methods for those facing sea level rise to adapt and remain in place.

Things have progressed however, and the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does note, in its 2019 special report on the oceans, that floating houses and gardens are one of several ‘accommodations’ coastal communities – especially those most vulnerable in Asia – must make, along with better drainage systems, raising houses on stilts, artificially raising land heights, and more. As yet though, relatively little action on housing adaptation is actually underway on the ground – or the water.

Indeed, as the New York Times reported recently, Native Americans along the coast of Alaska and elsewhere are already finding their land under encroachment from rising oceans. Yet the government has, essentially, refused help to relocate their homes and schools. With a median income of around $11,000 per year, it is not possible for these people to relocate without support.  

A tethered neotropic cormorant used for fishing by the Uru, on Lake Titicaca, Peru.
Photo by Quinet. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Uru have been floating their homes with simple materials for hundreds of years. The Dutch, with so much of their land already below sea level, have been adapting to encroaching seas for centuries as well, and are apparently embracing the notion of floating their homes.

But the world, with a vast population on the brink – and nearly in the drink – must pull out all stops to float many such communities, and with dispatch.

Otherwise, they will be underwater; there is nowhere else to house many of them; and floating homes turn out to be resilient, hardy, and economical. It is an elegant solution to what is soon to be an intractable problem.

With or without tethered cormorants, some of the world’s housing stock will likely be afloat before mid-century.

References:
[1] 2016 statistics most recent available

Well, if it’s good enough for the father of motivational research, it’s good enough for us. Yet until now, measuring sustainability’s impact on consumers has mostly been short on fact and high on emotion. We want consumers to care about sustainable products and responsible businesses and to demonstrate that when they purchase. But do they? Do they really?

Ernest Dichter.

Recently, Northeast River Supplies (NRS), one of the largest paddling and water-sports outfitters in the world, asked Valutus and Triple Gap for some ‘factual and unemotional clarification’ on this very point.

NRS has been a sustainability and social responsibility leader for years but refrained from using that as a selling point. They’d been working hard to reduce and improve packaging, to source sustainable materials, and to do right by stakeholders, planet, and social fabric, but had never shouted out those facts. Even when their retiring founder elected to convert NRS to 100% employee ownership rather than sell to outside investors, they kept it low key. Look, we get it: why boast about simply doing the right things?

Even so, recently the staff – ahem… the owners – at NRS began to wonder what might happen if consumers knew of their values, their commitment to doing the right thing – just because it is right? Would that… could that increase revenues? More importantly, could we learn how much value the market places on brand-level commitment to sustainability vs. product-level initiatives?

Now, we at Valutus have always believed – and have shouted long and loudly – that values create value. Not just value for the planet, nor even for the satisfaction of doing good, but value in actual, countable, spendable money. We’ve known from our previous research over the years that both brand and product-level awareness of sustainable commitment would have an impact on consumer choice. Here was a chance to add a great deal more evidence in a different market segment.

Mimeograph machine. Photo by Joonas Suominen. Source: Wikimedia Commons

First though, we had to collect it. In Dichter’s time such research was done by mailing out hand-typed, mimeographed, and stamped surveys. Fortunately, there are now online services and email databases – and our research made use of both – that allowed us to contact an incredible 220,000 people, receiving some 23,000+ responses.

Partnering with Triple Gap, we polled NRS’s own mailing list and also compared the responses to those of representative US consumers who weren’t NRS customers, to see if there was a systematic difference. This combination gave us reach both deep and wide to test whether communicating a given product or company’s sustainable / responsible nature made people more willing to buy.

We also wanted to learn how price sensitive preference for these attributes might be. Sustainable manufacturing and operations can come at a cost and, though NRS’s pricing is competitive with that of its peers, sometimes doing the right thing might mean doing the more expensive thing. If a price increase were necessary, could sustainability blunt the impact?

Source: Valutus and NRS

To find out, we used our Customers Science approach, which differs from traditional research by avoiding questions that may not be answered accurately, such as “would you be more likely to buy a sustainable product?” Instead, we had people choose between real products, with prices, reviews, etc. appended (though with no visible brand markings and little additional verbiage).

We did this in two ways:

• Presenting consumers with a choice between one NRS product (e.g., a life jacket) and its top competitor
• Giving them a choice between identical products in different colors (e.g., commodities such as shirts)

Would adding sustainable qualities to one of the products or companies make a difference? Would more people select that one, all else being equal?

To find out, we added sustainable attributes to an item – such as being made from 100% recycled fabric, being Fair Trade Certified, etc. – in each comparison. Then we again had consumers choose.

Next, we did the whole thing over again – same products, same attributes – but we increased the prices of the recycled, fair-trade, and responsible versions. This enabled us to see the changes in consumers’ price sensitivity.

The results? Outstanding. As it turned out, adding any of these attributes generated a small, but significant, increase in preference. As expected, more traditional attributes such as style and color mattered much more, but when comparisons on those points are relatively equal, sustainability and CSR considerations can tip the balance.

Backpackers at Upper Gospel Lake, Idaho. Photo by N. Wassmuth courtesy NRS

Product Environmental and Fair-Trade Attribute

• When the “100% Recycled” attribute was added, preference for an NRS life jacket – already priced higher than its competitor – rose. Even after a price increase of more than 10%, the recycled life jacket was preferred as much or more than when neither was sustainable. The words “Fair Trade Certified” also lifted preference when there was no price increase and kept that lift even when the price was higher
   
• A different NRS life jacket saw the number of people choosing it rise significantly when either “100% Recycled” or “Fair Trade Certified” were included. Both also beat their original preference even after 10%+ was added to the price
   
• An NRS shirt with a lower starting preference score (i.e., its baseline was lower), was selected far more frequently when it was sustainable. Once again, even after an increase in price, the shirt maintained much of its preference gain

Okay, so now we know. When a product self-identifies as responsible or sustainable, people show increased preference for it. But what happens when, rather than the product, the company that makes or sells it is so identified?

That is a far more abstract idea, and we needed to know what the impact would be. So we did another round, but this time we tested what happens when the manufacturer is an environmental or social leader.

Company Social and Environmental Responsibility / Leadership Attributes

When the verbiage was about the company itself, rather than its wares and materials, preference increased again… big time. Below are a few examples:

• One NRS shirt saw a truly significant bump when manufacturer environmental leadership was present, and even a slightly higher one when social responsibility was tested
   
• A different NRS shirt saw preference rise by double-digits from environmental leadership, and by a slightly higher amount with social leadership included

Wow. When customers know a company and products are more sustainable, that lifts preference enough to make a real difference? This is good news – very good!

Photo courtesy NRS

Where Do We Go from Here?

The question now is, what does all this mean in terms of revenue for an actual real-world company? The apparel market’s overall growth rate is forecast to be just over 5%, well below the preference gain we found. Consider the impact at scale if even a portion of a corporation’s offerings saw results like ours. It could add the low-hanging revenue they would have to work long and hard to achieve otherwise.

In the case of NRS, of course, no massive course-correction is needed, since they already care about doing business the right way. Still, though they’ve already earned their credibility, based on these findings, NRS is doubling down on its long-held philosophy that doing the right thing is doing the smart thing.

“We’ve always believed in the importance of doing business the right way,” noted NRS Marketing Director Mark Deming, “but it was still powerful to see that benefit quantified in sales-and-dollar terms. Working with Valutus, and using their Customers Science research method and InVEST financial valuation model, we were able to demonstrate the business benefit of values-based actions in a way that was both credible and actionable.”

Their task now is to build on what they are already doing and to communicate effectively with distributors and consumers, something that can be done with very achievable marketing changes.

“We’re using the results to shape marketing, product development, and strategic decisions,” Deming continued, “in order to build on our existing environmental and social commitments and get even more value from them.”

Kayaking in Vác, Hungary. Photo by Tamara Bitter / Unsplash

For other companies, capturing the benefits we uncovered may involve truly leaning into sustainability to allow values to bring them value. But how much value? Will the results be worth the investment? The answer appears to be yes – the benefits will be much, much more than worth it.

Quantifying Value

As NRS’ Deming explained above, we ran scenarios using the Valutus InVEST model (Interactive Valuation of Environmental & Social Transformation) and found that the effect of people seeing a company’s values had a significant bottom-line impact. Doing good, we found, does indeed lead to doing well, so long as people know about it.

As Dichter once aptly noted, the time has indeed come. We now have “a little factual and unemotional clarification,” on the value of values.

(The Value of Values…catchy. Might make a great book title! Keep an eye out for The Value of Values, coming soon.)

____________  

Note: NRS presented on this work as part of a panel on Consumer Preferences and Behaviors, in San Diego on Monday, October 18^th as part of the 2021 Sustainable Brands conference.

A decade ago however, tourists in line for the Observation Deck elevators found themselves inside an exhibit detailing the half-billion-dollar energy retrofit the building was about to receive.[2] The renovation mostly focused on lighting and window insulation, but pointed up the fact that skyscrapers were built for style, or for status, for profit or pride but, until recently, they were definitely not built with energy efficiency in mind.

These structures are “an energy-saver’s nightmare, with their vast glass facades, electric lighting everywhere, overly generous use of air conditioning and heating, and elevators by the dozen.”[3]

Consider then, the coal- and oil-based emissions in a city like New York, which boasts more than 284 buildings over 150 m (492 ft) tall, with more than 30 more under construction.[4] And New York’s not alone. China is listed as having over 2,000 such structures, and globally there are well over 600 in development.[5]

And that’s concerning because a 2019 survey by The Times of London found that just six buildings in the London downtown area were responsible for “more than 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year,” equaling the output of more than 3,000 automobiles.[6]

There are some analyses seeking to calculate the average greenhouse emissions of skyscrapers[7] but using London’s 2,000 tonnes of CO₂ per tower as a rough baseline, it seems these structures in the aggregate are responsible for something like a staggering 4 million tonnes annually, with far more on the way.

Keep in mind this is only structures over about 500 feet – roughly 35 stories. There are many supertalls, thousands less tall. Because, according to the U.N., “buildings and their construction together account for 36 percent of global energy use and 39 percent of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions annually,”[8] the footprint of the largest buildings matters.

But what if a tower could be turned into a full-scale solar farm? Not just the roof, but the whole exterior? Could that help reduce emissions enough to stem the tide? Or looked at another way, is there any scenario under which we can substantially reduce tower emissions without doing something like this? While LED lighting and better insulation can have an impact, farming sunshine with these structures is low-hanging emissions-reduction fruit, if such can be said of anything so tall.

Aside from lighting, floor insulation and other interior fixes, these structures can have vast solar farms built into their façades, rooftops, windows, and masonry, a process known as building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), or can retrofit existing structures with many of the same solar solutions.

Let’s take a skyscraper with the same dimensions as the boxy, cuboid North Tower of the old World Trade Center in New York City. The building stood 1,368’ high by 209’ wide on every side,[9] just a touch under 286,000 sf – about 6.5 acres’ worth of solar contact surface on one side of the tower alone.

That’s a lot of real estate. A ground-based solar farm that size can generate a little more than 1.6 MW of electricity.[10] Add a full acre of panels on the roof, plus three other sides of the building all of which can be embedded with the same materials to capture direct or ambient light, and suddenly a building which was belching tens of tons of CO² may be at net zero.

BIPV may take the form of “classic (framed) modules, flexible crystalline or thin-film on metal substrate, roof-tiles with solar cells, transparent monocrystalline modules, modules with colored solar cells, semitransparent micro perforated amorphous,” and more.”[11]

Currently, the international gold standard for a building’s energy emissions is the Net Zero Energy Building platform, which advocates for “buildings that, through renewable means, produce as much energy as they consume, when accounted for annually.”[12]

As noted by PV Magazine last month, “vertical PV installations are a necessity if urban districts are to hit NZEB goals, as rooftop panels alone are not sufficient.”[13]

Vertically aligned PV systems also achieve a “higher peak irradiance either side of midday than horizontal setups, diminishing the mismatch between energy production and demand.”[14]

Indeed, it would behoove us to start immediately as “carbon emissions related to buildings are expected to double by 2050 if action at scale doesn’t occur.”[15]

Double! It’s difficult to know how we’re going to reduce buildings’ energy use dramatically without building and refurbishing buildings in this manner. The output of these towers can’t be offset with just smart lights and insulation, and governments know action must be taken.

New York city, for example, has passed significant laws requiring “buildings of more than 25,000 square feet (2,300 square meters) to reduce emissions by 40 percent by 2030 from their 2005 levels. It will affect the approximately 50,000 buildings that emit one-third of the city’s greenhouse gases.”[16]

It should be noted that some interesting issues arise when building facades are solar-equipped. For one thing, as the PV absorbs light, far less light reflects back to other buildings in the area and a ‘darkening effect’ may occur.[17]

In addition, due to placement within an urban matrix, available sunlight, etc., some buildings may not get all the way to net zero.

Nonetheless, a survey by “NREL found that 62% of office buildings, or 47% of commercial floor space, can reach net-zero energy use by implementing current energy efficiency technologies and self-generation (solar PV). By redesigning all buildings to comply with current standards, implementing current energy efficiency measures, and outfitting buildings with solar panels, average energy use intensity can be reduced from 1020 to 139 MJ/m2-yr, an 86% reduction in energy use intensity.”[18]

The bad news here is the amount of work, and grit, getting this done will take. The good news is, we have the materials and the technology to do it. Watch this space.

References: Vertical Solar 2
[1] Wikipedia, Solar Panel/History
[2] RSES, Empire State Building Exhibits Benefits of Energy Efficiency,2011
[3] Phys.org, New York Takes Aim at Skyscrapers’ Sky-High Energy Usage, June, 2019
[4]Wikipedia, List of Cities with the Most Skyscrapers
[5] Ibid
[6] The Times of London, Skyscrapers Pump Out Thousands of Tonnes of CO2,July 2019
[7] Procedia Environmental Sciences Vol 38, Saroglou, et al, Quantifying Energy Consumption in Skyscrapers of Various Heights, 2017
[8] UN Environment, Global Status Report 2017, 2017
[9] Old Skyscraper, New York’s Super Slenders, Oct 2016
[10] GreenCoast, Solar Farm Land Requirements: How Much Land do you Need?June 2019
[11] PV Resources, Building Integrated Photovoltaic Systems, Aug 2018
[12] NZEB, Definitions/Policies
[13] PV Magazine, How Much Verticle BIPV is Too Much? July 28, 2020
[14] Ibid
[15] Curbed, How Do Buildings Contribute to Climate Change, Sept 2019
[16] Phys.org, New York Takes Aim at Skyscrapers’ Sky-High Energy Usage, June, 2019
[17] PV Magazine, How Much Vertical BIPV is Too Much? July 28, 2020
[18] University of Michigan Center for Sustainable Systems, Commercial Buildings Factsheet, 2019

We recently recounted[1] a number of major initiatives from the likes of Microsoft, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and others, totaling trillions in assets and billions in funding for sustainability education, carbon programs, and carbon-capture research. Those are some large and meaty thumbs added to the environmental side of the scales.

It’s clear that governments have a powerful role, for better or worse, in the climate battle, that it cannot be won without them. It is equally clear they alone are nowhere near enough. Any realistic chance of reaching perigee with the IPCC’s 2030 deadline for carbon, ever more companies will have to commit to aligning around renewables, carbon negative operations catalytic work up and down their supply chains.

And, while all companies have a climate footprint, some have much bigger feet. So, while every business must work hard to make their operations sustainable – from Ted’s Towing to Tesla – having the heavyweights on board is necessary to the equation.

Danone, the European yogurt giant, and parent of such U.S. brands as Dannon, Activia, and Oikos, is the most recent of these, as it has now committed to putting €2 billion ($2.18 billion) over the next three years into a “climate acceleration plan” that is designed to create a “climate-powered business model,” according to Danone’s CEO and Chairman, Emmanuel Faber[2].

Danone is not proposing a one-time expenditure, but is, according to Faber, intending to suffuse their business with sustainable ideals and practices.
In specific, according to its chairman, Danone has now committed to:

• €2 billion overall over three years for climate programs
• Evian and Volvic water brands carbon-neutral in Europe this year
• 100% recyclable PET bottles in Europe by 2025
• Eliminate deforestation in supply chain by 2020[3]
• 50% cut in carbon intensity[4] by 2030 and net-zero by 2050.[5]

Every company jumping on the pile is helpful, and every billion spent towards carbon reduction is meaningful. Yet there remain thousands of companies – including many of the true behemoths of industry – who have not yet stepped up to the plate.

Hopefully, in the months ahead, it will not be so noteworthy when a huge company pledges billions to lighten its footprint.

References:
[1] Valutus.com, Davos Declarations, Feb 2020
[2] Food Business News, Danone Investing €2 Billion in ‘Climate-Powered Business Model,’ Feb 27, 2020
[3]Danone Climate Policy,Had previously reduced carbon intensity by “46% since 2007”
[4]Danone Climate Policy, 24.7 million tons full-scope GHG emissions
[5]Ibid