Category: Green Investments

GAS portfolio impact assessment - February 2021

9/3/2021

By Antoine Pradayrol

A year ago, we published GAS’ inaugural portfolio impact assessment, calculating for the first time the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that are being avoided thanks to our portfolio companies. Last October, we released our first six-month update, and this is our third edition – our impact report for the second half of 2020.

Green Angel Syndicate is the UK’s angel syndicate specialising in tackling global warming and climate change – and we therefore measure our impact in terms of the quantities of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) that have not been emitted into the atmosphere thanks to the activity of our portfolio companies.

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Building back better: COVID, Nature and Sustainable Innovation

4/3/2021

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By Katie Critchlow, CEO of GAS Portfolio Company, NatureMetrics - First published on the NatureMetrics Blog on 12th February 2021

The year 2020 had been dubbed the super year for nature - critical global agreements on Sustainable Development Goals, biodiversity and the UN climate COP all hotly anticipated. But 2020 was instead famous only for COVID-19. But COVID, in its own terrible way, may change the way we view our relationship with the natural world, our relationship with risk and with our role as stewards of the future. From adversity, the green shoots of change are emerging in ways we could never have imagined at the turn of the decade.

Source: NatureMetrics

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£1 Billion Net Zero Innovation Portfolio: How and when can entrepreneurs fighting climate change apply for funding?

23/2/2021

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by Abi Siri Andersen

On 4th February 2021 Energy Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan announced £11 million in government funding in the latest round of the Energy Entrepreneurs Fund (EEF). This seeks to drive forward new clean technologies across all sectors of UK industry, turning ideas into ‘clean, green technologies that eliminate carbon emissions.’ This fund hopes to turn ‘green dreams into reality’ and has been issuing grants totalling £72 million since 2012.

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The case for seaweed

22/1/2021

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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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GAS launches the Climate Change Fund

8/12/2020

By Antoine Pradayrol

Green Angel Syndicate, the UK’s angel syndicate specialising in the fight against climate change and global warming, has just launched the GAS Climate Change Fund, for EIS and SEIS investors.

This marks an important change in the working life of Green Angel Syndicate. The success of our work over the past three years has convinced us that it is time for a widening of our capacity, so we can make more investments of a larger size, with more people supporting what we do, and hence, crucially, with a larger impact in the fight against climate change.

GAS portfolio impact assessment - October 2020

22/10/2020

By Antoine Pradayrol

Six months ago, we published GAS’s first portfolio impact assessment, calculating for the first time the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that are being avoided thanks to our portfolio companies.

As promised at the time, we are now publishing a six-month update - a great occasion for, in fact, three types of updates: (i) taking stock of the growth of each business and therefore of its impact; (ii) revising and improving our impact calculation methods where we could; and (iii) adding GAS’s new portfolio companies into the mix.

What sort of investments should we be making?

25/9/2020

By Nick Lyth

Some of you may have heard me saying that ESG is a worthless concept. Bankrupt. It is the invention of corporate PR departments cloaking the harm their companies do with an incomprehensible mantle of decency. What does ESG mean, even? It is an acronym, not a word. (“Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance”, for the many who still don’t know what it stands for. Try explaining that in one sentence to a child, and see what you come up with.)

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.

Dr Matthew Hannon opens the GAS Insights Programme

18/8/2020

By David Sheridan

Last Thursday (13/08/20) Green Angel Syndicate launched its Insights Programme, a series of talks designed and promoted by the GAS Members for the Members that will broaden our knowledge and insight into the issues raised by entrepreneurial investment into the fight against climate change and global warming.

Our opening speaker was Dr Matthew Hannon, Senior Lecturer and Director of Research at the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, attached to the University of Strathclyde Business School. Dr Hannon leads UK thought on the links between the energy transition we know needs to happen, the innovation that is required if it is to happen and the entrepreneurialism that is essential to bringing these innovations to life. In other words, Matt is one of the world experts on the very things that Green Angel Syndicate is striving to achieve.

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.

“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.

GAS portfolio survey shows long-term optimism

15/4/2020

By Chris Joly

Green Angel Syndicate is the only angel investment syndicate in the UK specialising in investments that are of benefit to the Green Economy. As such, its priority focus has always been resource use sectors, where innovations are needed to make the ways we use food, water, energy, waste and recycling more sustainable for the challenge we face.

Photo by Ross Stephenson on Unsplash

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GREEN ANGEL BLOG

GAS portfolio impact assessment - February 2021

Building back better: COVID, Nature and Sustainable Innovation

£1 Billion Net Zero Innovation Portfolio: How and when can entrepreneurs fighting climate change apply for funding?

The case for seaweed

Environmental Benefits

GAS launches the Climate Change Fund

GAS portfolio impact assessment - October 2020

What sort of investments should we be making?

Who needs a green recovery?

What might degrowth mean for angel investors?

Dr Matthew Hannon opens the GAS Insights Programme

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?

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

GAS portfolio survey shows long-term optimism

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Categories

INFO

ABOUT

Privacy

SMART INVESTMENTS. SUSTAINABLE CHANGE.

GREEN ANGEL BLOG

Environmental Benefits