Category: Climate Change

The case for seaweed

22/1/2021

By David Sheridan

On 28th January 2021, Green Angel Syndicate members and guests will be watching a presentation from a company that uses innovative biorefinery methods to develop food products and bio-packaging from sustainably-farmed seaweed.

Environmental Benefits

Seaweeds provide the planet with enormous environmental benefits. By removing CO2 from the atmosphere, seaweeds reduce the concentration of CO2 at the same time as reducing harmful ocean acidification resulting from man-made carbon emissions. Seaweeds encourage marine biodiversity both in terms of habitat and nutrients. Kelp, a seaweed that can grow as much as one metre long in a single day, is estimated to absorb five times more carbon than land-based plants. Seaweed farming is a new development designed to enhance the presence of seaweed while also providing a commercial return. By increasing the carbon sink effect of seaweed, it will increase the ocean’s capacity for carbon removal from the atmosphere..

Image by Ben Davies from Pixabay

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Can History offer any lessons for Climate Change?

20/11/2020

By Nick Lyth

In an unprecedented crisis never apparently experienced before, as Climate Change, is it possible to learn lessons from history?

We are considering Climate Change with no sense of previous experience to guide us. There is an explicit demonstration of this in all the language used. “Never before”, “existential”, “extinction” are all words appearing in accounts of the problem. The scale of the challenge is considered to be unique.

Has COVID-19 really changed what it means to be a successful green start up?

11/10/2020

By Daniel Smart, Executive Chairman,
The Green Recruitment Company

My name is Daniel Smart, I am the Executive Chairman of the Green Recruitment Company and a member of the Green Angel Syndicate. This is my first blog for the Green Angel Syndicate, and I thought I would tackle a topic that touches upon my experience in founding and scaling up businesses. I wanted to consider if COVID-19 really changed what it means to be a successful green start up? It is a sensitive topic, but the aim of this blog is to focus on what it means for entrepreneurs as much as possible.

Who needs a green recovery?

4/9/2020

By Jonny Hughes, WCMC Chief Executive Officer, UNEP-WCMC

This article was originally published on the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre Website on 11th August 2020.

The idea of the green economy is no longer the preserve of radicals and marginal campaign groups. Governments are now seriously waking up to the promise of what a new type of inclusive and sustainable economics could bring. Cleaner air, healthier, happier people living their lives in nurturing environments that not only provide a secure supply of food, water, medicine and raw materials for life but inspire and excite too. This new economics comes with the prospect of a new wave of ‘green-collar jobs’ providing millions with secure and fulfilling employment. A recent World Economic Forum (WEF) report on the Future of Nature and Business estimates that a transition to a green economy could create 395 million jobs globally and $10.1 trillion in annual business value by 2030.

What might degrowth mean for angel investors?

2/9/2020

by Johnny Stormonth-Darling

Many will now be familiar with emerging ideas and political movements around so-called green growth beginning to appear in the policies and manifestos of mainstream political parties around the world, often in the form of a Green New Deal. These tend to be visions of society-wide reforms, not only to tackle environmental issues such as resource use and global warming, but also social problems like wealth inequality which are increasingly being highlighted as intrinsic to the neoliberal capitalist project.[1–3] Putting those aside for a moment and focussing on ideas of green innovation, syndicates like Green Angel Syndicate are clearly in line with this leading edge of political thought seeking to transform our GDP lifeblood into something compatible with the planet’s biophysical limits; delivering wealth and prosperity and restoring the environment at the same time.

Summer Reads: Books to pack for the beach

8/8/2020

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By Nick Lyth

The enforced incarceration of lockdown is being followed by a curious, twilight holiday season. We can move around again, but not as before. Instead of the beach in the Mediterranean, we are being drawn to the beach in Britain that might not seem quite as inviting. But it is a good chance to catch up with the upsurge in publications on Climate Change. I have been reading some that took me by surprise, and can recommend two in particular.

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What’s the good of another tiny brick in the wall?

8/6/2020

By Nick Lyth

We’re dying of corona virus, the global economy is in nosedive, climate change is coming to batter us into submission, America is burning, and all we can offer is a new brick? Is it worth it? Who cares?

We care. It is worth it. It may be a tiny innovation, but it is an intelligent air brick, that will improve the regulation of ventilation and humidity in social housing, which in turn will raise the flow of clean air, and reduce the scale of polluted lungs and infectious diseases, and that will help to improve the health of the home owners, while reducing their expense on heating and the health system, and so will encourage a greater sense of well-being, at the same time as lowering energy use and carbon emissions, and thus help to lower global warming, minimise climate change, and lower the spread of corona virus, while reducing the toxic gap between rich and poor throughout the western world. It’s called AirEx, and we are arranging an investment in it right now.

A small innovation with a domino effect rippling through the entire social, economic and medical fabric of our community.

Jonny Hughes of UNEP-WCMC talks conservation and restoration of the natural capital

4/6/2020

By Antoine Pradayrol

On 28 May 2020, Green Angel Syndicate had the great pleasure to host Jonny Hughes for the second of our series of online fire-side chats. The event was well attended with 50 of our members and guests joining.

Jonny is the Chief Executive Officer of WCMC (World Conservation Monitoring Centre) a UK charity that works in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme as UNEP-WCMC, a global centre of excellence on biodiversity based in Cambridge. UNEP-WCMC aims to ‘put nature at the heart of decision-making’, offering science-based solutions to policy making as well as helping governments and non-state actors implement policies on the ground - working in 107 countries across the world.

What is the best-kept secret about behaviour change?

19/5/2020

By Nick Lyth

That it is NEVER rational, it is only enforced.

Since the start of the 1990’s, when the facts about climate change and global warming had become obvious to all; when the problems with resource use and resource allocation were overwhelmingly clear; when the Brundtland Report had articulated a new system for global social and economic self-preservation which was adopted by all the World leaders at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit; Behaviour Change has been referenced as a necessary pre-condition for solving these problems.

Chris Stark, CEO of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change, talks Covid-19 and climate change

11/5/2020

By Antoine Pradayrol

On 7 May, Green Angel Syndicate organised a Zoom-powered ‘fireside chat’ with Chris Stark, CEO of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change. The event drew strong interest, with 82 attendees dispersed in as many thumbnails on the screens. Its timing was perfect, just a day after the CCC had published a letter to the government with precise, crystal clear advice on how to embed climate-positive actions in its plans to drag the economy out of the profound recession caused by the Covid-19 crisis.

This blog summarises the main points made by Chris, in our own words.

“You’ve got to do something now, or you’ll all be in trouble…”

11/5/2020

By Nick Lyth

The recent history of our world – the last thirty years, let’s say – has been a story of repeated warnings that have been ignored. The warnings were all concerning the dangers of climate change. Reports that go back further than 30 years have been emphatic in their view of the dangers approaching.

Is this the end of angel investment?

3/4/2020

By Nick Lyth

The Question

In these dark days of lockdown and economic paralysis due to Covid-19, many ask whether it will be possible to continue an angel investment syndicate?

Green Angel Syndicate’s first portfolio impact assessment

6/3/2020

By Antoine Pradayrol

Tackling global warming and climate change, by supporting businesses that develop solutions to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and more generally that help the environment. That is Green Angel Syndicate’s core mission – and we are determined to make the largest possible positive impact.

But what is this impact? How can we measure it? In our view, it must be measured as the impact that our portfolio companies are making, as a group. Indeed, this aggregate impact is what Green Angel Syndicate Members’ investments are making possible, by helping these companies grow.

Climate Catastophe - The Role of Green Angel Syndicate

5/3/2020

By Nick Lyth

There is a clear separation between Economic Policy, and Economic behaviour. The one is designed to control the other. Governments exist to define the society they represent according to its values and interests. Sadly, the theories behind the Free Market Economy which started in the 80's then grew in impact and momentum through the collapse of the Communist block, up to the crash of 2008 - which should have taught us a lesson, but didn't (as per Mariana Mazzucatto) - were entirely misplaced.

Climate Catastrophe – is shareholder pressure the cause?

7/2/2020

By Nick Lyth

In the explosion of public protest concerning climate change that we saw last year, there has been an element of radicalisation. This has led to explicit claims that capitalism is to blame and has to change from, among others, the Extinction Rebellion. Among the assertions made, shareholder pressure is isolated as a cause for the harmful growth of the companies whose products cause us the most harm, and increase the dangers of climate change.

<<Previous

GREEN ANGEL BLOG

The case for seaweed

Environmental Benefits

Can History offer any lessons for Climate Change?

Has COVID-19 really changed what it means to be a successful green start up?

Who needs a green recovery?

What might degrowth mean for angel investors?

Summer Reads: Books to pack for the beach

What’s the good of another tiny brick in the wall?

Jonny Hughes of UNEP-WCMC talks conservation and restoration of the natural capital

What is the best-kept secret about behaviour change?

Chris Stark, CEO of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change, talks Covid-19 and climate change

“You’ve got to do something now, or you’ll all be in trouble…”

Is this the end of angel investment?

The Question

Green Angel Syndicate’s first portfolio impact assessment

Climate Catastophe - The Role of Green Angel Syndicate

Climate Catastrophe – is shareholder pressure the cause?

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SMART INVESTMENTS. SUSTAINABLE CHANGE.

Environmental Benefits