This week, we're looking at how the Paris Olympics is seeking to cut emissions in half, commitments from major banks to channel finance into protecting nature, and how a new start-up is making the development of solar projects more efficient.

Olympics goes for the green: The organizers of the Paris Olympics this summer have pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by half compared to levels at the two most recent Games in London and Rio de Janeiro. With climate change and extreme weather causing challenges for both the Summer and Winter Olympics, this year’s event will be a test for the organizers. Key areas of focus will be ensuring structures built for the Games continue to be utilized in the future and embrace natural ventilation and low-carbon cement, 40% recycled water in the aquatics center pool, no diesel generators for media broadcast operations, and less meat on the menu for athletes. 

UBS invests in biodiversity: UBS held a conference dedicated to biodiversity for the first time, demonstrating its interest in developing a strategy for the firm to "unblock finance" to protect natural capital. The bank brought together 250 institutional investors, corporate clients, family offices, and practitioners for the event. The film is working on its first debt-for-nature swap, which helps nations refinance debt in return for conservation commitments. Other institutions with active teams focused on nature finance include JPMorgan Chase, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest, and Standard Chartered.

New financial instrument targets supply chain decarbonization: A new product developed by a former managing director of Goldman Sachs, the law firm Linklaters, and London-based nonprofit Scope 3 Climate Capital is working to develop a new product to advance supply chain decarbonization. The sector-transition acceleration contract, or STAC, serves as an alternative to carbon credits and offers a direct transaction where a company rewards their suppliers for emissions cuts, such as placing a budget for credits into escrow accounts that can be released when suppliers meet climate milestones. 

$20M for solar farm development: California-based startup Planted Solar received $20M in Series A funding from Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Khosla Ventures. The firm aims to reduce labor and land needed for solar farm development, speeding up the timeline and reducing costs for deploying new farms. The approach, which leverages modeling software and robotic construction, will aim to develop solar farms on terrain typically too challenging to develop. 

$48M commitment for carbon credits: The Frontier Fund—backed by companies like Stripe, Alphabet, and Meta—will pay $48.6M to Stockholm-based Exergi AB to capture and store carbon. The utility burns biomass at its power plants, reducing the carbon released by decaying materials like branches and sawmills, and aims to trap emissions in its processes. The project will be one of the first biomass projects to be deployed commercially. Exergi anticipates capturing as much as 800,000 tons of CO2 annually and is part of a project funded in part by a $193 million grant from the EU Innovation Fund.

Climate books for summer reading: The Financial Times outlined some of their favorite books on climate to browse this summer, including The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives by Ernest Scheyder, which discusses the urgent need for minerals that are often dirty to extract, and Possible: Ways to Net Zero by Chris Goodall, which outlines how to cut emissions in hard-to-abate sectors. 

Climate champions: Bloomberg Businessweek compiled a list of 13 leaders working across the climate sector, tackling issues ranging from making the apparel industry more sustainable to scaling climate finance for developing nations to rallying youth advocates to advance policy reform to tracking methane emissions.

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