In this week's brief, we're looking at new national strategies to cut food waste, investment in smaller nuclear reactors, and an international push for climate finance.

White House announces strategy to cut food waste: Food represents the single largest volume of material going to landfills and incinerators, with roughly 30% of it thrown away or wasted. Uneaten food breaks down and becomes a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. The strategy the White House announced will encourage businesses and individuals to reduce waste, support research to extend the shelf life of perishable foods and seek to turn food waste into usable products like compost, gas, or animal feed.

Smaller nuclear reactor receives big backing: TerraPower broke ground this week in Wyoming on construction for a new type of smaller and cheaper nuclear reactor. While the company has more than $1 billion in investment from Bill Gates, it faces a series of likely obstacles, including Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval and cost overruns. To lower costs, the TerraPower team has redesigned reactors from scratch, using liquid sodium instead of water to allow it to operate at lower pressures and recede the need for thick shielding.

Reducing volatility in the electricity market: A startup seeking to build a new exchange for electricity futures called ElectronX has raised $15M from investors led by Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s venture capital firm, Innovation Endeavors. Starting in Texas, the company will help companies hedge volatility risks from changes in renewable energy supply and extreme weather events. The company was founded in 2022 by Philip Krim, former CEO of Casper, and former power trader Evan Caron.

G7 leaders to call for more climate finance: Following an unsuccessful two weeks of UN negotiations in Bonn, G7 leaders in Italy are set to pressure wealthy nations like China and Saudia Arabia to ramp up climate finance for developing countries. The discussions will center around replacing the previous $100B annual goal set more than a decade ago, but assessing the level of financial commitment from the historical heavy emitters and the emerging economies continues to prove challenging as leaders try to pave the path to a deal at COP29 later this year.

Cooling parks: Researchers at Princeton are exploring low-cost ways to cool public parks. Using designs inspired by kirigami, the developers are considering design structures that can control wind speeds to maximize cooling, spraying small water droplets that quickly evaporate and cool the air, cold tubes that contain water pipes to repel humidity, and simple sun shades with fabric covers.

EDF to fund geoengineering research: The Environmental Defense Fund will start issuing millions of dollars in grants to research ways to cool the planet artificially. The main focus will be studying the effects of solar radiation modification, which seeks to reflect more of the sun's energy back into space by injecting aerosols into the stratosphere or brightening clouds.

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