Scaling Carbon Negative Solutions: Industrial Hemp
London Climate Action week is an annual event bringing together world-leading climate professionals and communities to find practical solutions to the global climate problem. Rare Earth Global delivered a speech on scaling carbon negative solutions using Hemp, addressing CDP’s assertion that 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global CO2 emissions. We spoke among other delegates including representatives from the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Royal Geographical Society, Chatham House and the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG).
CDP is a charity that runs the global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states and regions to manage their environmental impacts. They identified in 2017 that Scope 3 emissions, of the Science Based Target initiative (SBTi), were responsible for 90% of the emissions from the 100 companies analysed by them. Scope 3 emissions are the result of activities from assets not owned or controlled by the reporting organization, but that the organization indirectly impacts in its value chain.
Scope 3 emissions can include:
Automobiles, aircraft, engines, motors, power plants, buildings and appliances
Petroleum products, natural gas, coal and crude oil
Refrigeration, air-conditioning equipment and industrial gases
Apparel (requires washing and drying) and food (requires cooking and refrigeration)
Industrial hemp was presented as a solution to offset emissions and to provide alternative products to replace predominantly fossil fuel emissions from the 100 companies identified by the CDP. The key determinant of the speed that industrial hemp could become mainstream was the unit economics of the products compared to their fossil fuel alternatives. With the fossil fuel industry still heavily subsidised by governments, the “Green Vortex” concept coined by Nina Kelsey (George Washington University) was referenced whereby policy incentives could foster a faster uptake of hemp as a solution.
What was apparent, though, was that industrial scaling was also dependent on addressing bottlenecks in the industry including insufficient education about industrial hemp, farming confidence in a new crop, a lack of processing infrastructure and a secure commodity market backed by offtakes. We are at a tipping point for the industry, where we are able to tackle each of these problems, such that industrial hemp is a viable scalable solution.
Image source: www.londonclimateactionweek.org