Renewable Energy Climate Change

UK-based green FinTech Tred has selected global B2B payments company – Nium  – to be its card-issuance partner for its new sustainable product – the Tred green debit card. This will be the UK’s first green debit card that lets users track, reduce and offset their carbon footprint as they spend, and plants trees with profits.

Demand for green fintech solutions is booming and the financial sector is also embracing this trend, showing strong industry-wide support for ethical and sustainable financial services. Testimony to this demand is Tred’s waiting list, which has seen 122% growth since the start of 2021, and their recent crowdfunding round, which raised £1million from over 1000 investors. The card-issuance service provided by Nium will target UK residing customers and Tred will look to add reward programmes and benefits centred around the socially and ecologically conscious ethos as the programme progresses. “At our core, Nium’s mission is to enable businesses to meet their needs and goals through employing financial technology. 

We are so happy and proud to join Tred on a mission to help people spend and live more sustainably through offsetting their carbon footprint with virtual financial services. This partnership will bolster Tred’s vision to be the platform that brings managing money and lowering our impact on the planet, effortlessly in one place”, says Frederick Crosby, Nium Chief Revenue Officer. Read more...

Alternative energy. Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) was conceived of by the French engineer Jacques D'Arsonval in 1881. OTEC is a potential alternative energy source that needs to be funded and explored much more than it presently is. The great hurdle to get over with OTEC implementation on a wide and practically useful level is cost. It is difficult to get the costs down to a reasonable level because of the processes presently utilized to drive OTEC. Ocean thermal energy would be very clean burning and not add pollutants into the air. However, as it presently would need to be set up with our current technologies, OTEC plants would have the capacity for disrupting and perhaps damaging the local environment. Read more... 

DISTURBING accounts of a mouse plague gripping the east coast of Australia have served as a reminder of the growing severity of climate change and what could lie ahead for Scotland, if farmers aren’t properly equipped to tackle the impending challenges.

Heart-breaking reports from farmers living through the infestation and horrific footage to match, hardly begins to capture the extent of the damage millions of mice have inflicted on people’s crops, sheds, machinery and even their homes. Australian farmers have battled through years of bush fires and droughts, only now to have their crops destroyed by a mouse plague which isn’t looking like it is slowing any day soon. The recent dry conditions, coupled with a reduction in predator numbers due to the bush fires, has allowed breeding to explode. I spoke to one farmer who said the scale of the problem is “out of this world”. He spoke of farmers who had set traps, catching hundreds over night, but still weren’t even making a dent in numbers.

In desperation, the Australian government has applied for approval of a currently illegal poison known as bromadiolone to try and get to the bottom of the problem. A poison so powerful, New South Wales’ agriculture minister likened its potential use to “napalm for mice”. Read more...