Green Era #1

Welcome to Green Era, a newsletter about climate change and its solutions, from someone trying to make sense of it all.

We'll focus on solutions to the climate crisis, including updates and breakdowns on the latest technology, companies, policies, and more. We'll keep things high level most of the time, while breaking down difficult concepts for non-science types (like myself!).

Fun Climate Fact: Silicon Valley neighborhood, Menlo Park (where Meta is HQ'd), announced plans to electrify 10,000 buildings by 2025.

Summarizing the Netflix 2021 ESG Report

For those deep into the climate tech media landscape, My Climate Journey has become a beacon of hope and plethora of knowledge. After listening to dozens of podcasts with host Jason Jacobs, we've decided to summarize some of the more salient episodes.

Just a few weeks back Jason interviewed Netflix's Head of Sustainability, Emma Stewart. She discussed her journey to the tech giant and her first dizzying six months on the job.

In the episode, Emma highlights the importance of Netflix in terms of its dominance in the tech space and its responsibility as one of the world's largest media organizations. The responsibility of Netflix and its storytelling related to climate change seems daunting, but Emma has built a very smart team to work on sustainability challenges within the company.

We may all know by now that ESG stands for Environmental, Social, Governance, and refers to a companies evaluation of social goals. In the same way that GAAP accounting is audited, ESG reports are being similarly audited by third parties*.

Not only does Netflix have the top-down pressure of reporting ESG metrics as a public company, but it's now facing pressure from consumers to focus on climate-related storytelling. Emma highlights an interesting finding among Netflix subscribers, sharing that "...in 2020, 160 million households around the world chose to watch at least one title that explicitly was about sustainability."

Emma also shares that they surveyed "16 different markets around the world and found that two thirds of our consumers would like to see more climate and sustainability stories on screen." No wonder 'Dont Look Up' broke several streaming records (even if just an allegory for the changing climate).

Below I've highlighted some of Netflix's achievements in their latest report:

(*This report was audited by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB))

Netflix energy consumption:

• Scope 1 - 33,408 MwH

• Scope 2 - 123,148 MwH

• Percentage grid electricity: 100%

• Percentage renewables: 100%

Netflix emissions reductions or avoidance:

• Reduced or avoided more than 14,000 MT, translating to cutting Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 10%

Tactics they are deploying reduce or avoid emissions:

• Work with utilities, landlords, streaming partners to switch to renewable electricity

• Swapping in renewable diesel on physical film productions

• Test trialing EVs on physical productions

• Replacing diesel generators with mobile batteries or hydrogen power units

• Buying sustainable aviation fuel

Takeaways:

• Despite being a company for more than 20 years, Netflix is only in the first mile of the marathon to decarbonize their company and production operations

• Netflix's public stock (a part of the high-tech, public cohort of companies aptly monikered FAANG) was hit hard due to slowing subscriber growth; public markets have yet to care about which companies are more sustainable but we imagine it will be reflect in stock prices within the decade

• "Clean technology solutions exist, but not at scale" - Even some of the most well funded and equipped companies find it hard to decarbonize (or reduce emissions to near zero), showing the difficulty all companies face to do the same

Climate Company Fundings and Announcements:

• Grove Collaborative begins trading on the NYSE under the ticker GROV.

  • Grove creates and curates 150+ sustainable, high-performing brands with a goal of eliminating plastic from all products

• This week, the Department of Energy awarded $39 million to 18 projects focused on creating buildings that become "carbon sinks" rather than "carbon sources"

  • I want to shoutout BioMason from my hometown (Bull City, NC!) who were awarded $1.8 million for their carbon negative bio-concrete concept

Thanks for reading our first issue. What’d you think of the topics? Want to dive deeper into anything? Let me know by responding to this email.

- Matt