Impact in numbers – June
Our pick of the eye-catching statistics about the impact world.
12%
Nature loss could pose a greater risk to the UK economy than the Covid-19 pandemic and wipe £300 billion off economic growth if measures are not taken to slow it.
Green Finance Institute (GFI) scenario analysis indicates that biodiversity loss and environmental degradation create major risks for the UK economy and financial sector and could slow growth by as much as 12% in the coming years.
GFI is a forum for public-private collaboration in green finance backed by the UK government.
300,000
The European Parliament has adopted stricter legally-binding air pollution limits that must be complied with by 2030. Air pollution causes 300,000 premature deaths in Europe each year.
The EU’s goal is to reduce that number by 70% over the next 10 years.
The new rules also make currently fragmented air-quality indices across the EU comparable, clear and publicly available.
$20bn
$20 billion from the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), created in the US Inflation Reduction Act, is to be largely invested in projects ranging from home energy retrofitting to off-grid renewable energy in communities that have not had access to green financing.
Selected organisations will create a national clean financing network that will help kickstart projects over the next seven years. These are expected to reduce or avoid up to 40 million tonnes of climate pollution annually. It’s the first time federal dollars will be directly given to local non-profit organisations.
57
The vast majority of carbon dioxide emissions since 2016 can be traced to 57 fossil fuel and cement producers. The findings come from Carbon Majors, a database of historical production data from the world’s largest fossil fuel and cement producers, produced by non-profit think tank InfluenceMap.
They include nation states, state-owned and investor-owned companies, which produced 80% of the world’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement production.
The world’s top three CO2-emitting companies are state-owned oil firm Saudi Aramco, Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom, and state-owned producer Coal India, the report said.
360
Solar power beamed from space has taken a step closer after a British company electrified LEDs using wifi. Space Solar, based in Belfast, has demonstrated the world’s first 360-degree wireless power transmission – an important milestone of the technology, which could bring limitless green energy.
The company lit up an LED sign of its name by beaming power through the air in a special anechoic chamber at Queen’s University, Belfast. The team plans to launch its first prototype Cassiopeia satellite within three years, which will power a house from space. It will be followed by a larger version by the end of the 2020s, which could fuel a village.
Solar panels in space can produce up to 40 times the amount of power than on Earth because the sunlight is not reflected or absorbed by the atmosphere.
