This Climate Business

The job of transitioning the primary sector from cows to plants will be a long but necessary journey. So if you were looking for someone to show the way, you’d do worse than Jade Grey. He’s managed a farm and a supermarket butchery ran a meat processing plant in China, and launched a chain of pizza stores in Beijing called Gung Ho! Pizza, which was China's first B Corp certified Food and Beverage...

Every year, New Zealanders drive 35 billion kilometres by car – the equivalent of Earth to Mars and back 325 times. Māori and Pasifika miss out far more than other groups on visiting GPs because of lack of transport. Transport accounts for 43% of New Zealand's carbon dioxide emissions, and more than half of these come from private vehicles. This country’s transport system has problems. Finding sol...

There’s a thing called the SIN List. Standing for Substitute It Now, the list identifies the chemicals in our textiles, furniture, food, and daily life that are slowly poisoning us, killing our bodies and environment. Replacing that list with nature-based alternatives is the mission of Humblebee, the ambitious biotech startup of Veronica Harwood Stevenson. You may have heard of Humblebee, sometime...

I speak with Dr Terri-Ann Berry, Associate Professor at Auckland’s Unitec and the co-founder of the Environmental Solutions Research Centre and the aptly named Sustainable Construction Avengers. Each year, the construction and demolition industry creates 1.7 million tonnes of waste – making up 60% of total landfill. So much of that waste is recoverable, recyclable, and unnecessary. No one cares mo...

This week Vincent is joined by Professor Dave Frame, Director of the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute (CCRI) at Victoria University and a lead author on the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This is the third part of our series on IPCC report, so Vincent asked if Dave could give us an insider’s view of how the IPCC works, on the science of warmi...

In more than 150 cities around the world, Covid 19 has been what you might call a shot in the arm for walking and cycling. To encourage social distancing, they added cycleways, extended footpaths and replaced parking spots with outdoor seating. What did New Zealand do? For the answer, we spoke to researcher Dr Kirsty Wild, co-author of a Waka Kotahi report into streetscape reallocation in this cou...

Buildings are responsible for around 20 percent of New Zealand’s carbon footprint. Which makes the building sector a critical part of the ambition to be  net-zero by 2050. And yet our homes are notoriously damp, cold, and energy inefficient. And get this, the construction sector emits the equivalent of one million cars on the road every year. Who knew? Andrew Eagles does. The chief executive of th...

Olivia Wannan is one of a handful of New Zealand journalists to attend COP26 in Glasgow, rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful to watch as the world’s climate policy is argued and hopefully agreed to. Oliva is a climate reporter for Stuff.co.nz and she joined Vincent on the close of day five to talk about protestors, methane, and Indonesian reticence.

If you think you're seeing more e-bikes on the roads, you're not wrong. In New Zealand, their sales are soaring. But it wasn't always this way; the e-bike revolution started with motivated people and, in this country, one of the early movers was Mike Tritt, a former Greenpeace staffer who founded the retail chain Electrify NZ. Mike talked with co-host Ross Inglis about the business of e-bikes and...

Last week Climate Change Minister James Shaw’s announcement was met with stinging criticism. Generation Zero said it was a ‘disgrace’. Forest&Bird described it as a ‘clear lack of policy. Newsroom Marc Daalder called it ‘disappointment’. So what’s all this then? The criticism was a response to the just-announced Emissions Reduction Plan Discussion Document, which is neither a plan, nor a draft of...

How do you kickstart New Zealand’s hydrogen fuel network? Enter Ports of Auckland. It is one of the world’s first ports to open a hydrogen refuelling facility, the first stage in an ambitious plan that will eventually see the ports running on green hydrogen manufactured on-site. With a green hydrogen plant in the South Island now in scope and a fleet of hydrogen-fueled trucks already plying the ma...

Suburbs are the invention of another era. Far flung from the city centre, removed from places of work and largely made of stand-alone houses, suburbs could only have happened thanks to the motorcar. But with transport our second largest GHG emitter, it’s time to rethink the way we move – and it all starts with where we live. A clutch of new approaches are emerging, from intensification to careless...

If your family is like Vincent’s, then you’ll love meal kits but hate the packaging –polystyrene meat trays, foil bags and more plastic wrap than a Grey Lynn building site. Is there a way to get the convenience of a meal kit with the discernment of a sustainable shopper? Toby Skilton reckons there is. He and partner Elise Hilliam have launched MenuAid, a meal kit for the conscious consumer. 

New Zealand grows great oats and makes excellent oat milk, in Sweden. Yes NZ oats are shipped to Sweden where they are processed and returned to our shores to be bottled and sold as NZ-made. That hardly seems the sustainable alternative we all hope for. The madness of that scenario is finally being redressed by a new player - the Boring Oat Milk. Vincent speaks to Boring founder Morgan Maw.   Bori...

Coming up: an election you probably won’t vote in for an entity you’ve probably not heard of. That’s right, it’s the tri-annual vote for the Entrust board, the majority shareholder of Vector Energy, Auckland’s electrical lines company. But wait, before you turn over and go to sleep, this time around it’s different.  A consortium of climate campaigners and motivated professionals is challenging the...

This week Vincent is joined by Professor Dave Frame, Director of the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute (CCRI) at Victoria University and a lead author on the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This is the third part of our series on IPCC report, so Vincent asked if Dave could give us an insider’s view of how the IPCC works, on the science of warmi...

This week, Vincent asks Rod Oram to explain the implications of the latest IPCC for business. Does the stark reality set out in the report change what’s required of the business sector? Or does it simply reinforce what’s already happening. How exactly is business, here and overseas, responding to the need to decarbonise? And who are the leaders and laggards in this journey? Rod Oram, is a climate...

Why has the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) –said human influence on climate is now unequivocable? Didn’t we already know that? And what impact will this report have in the run up to COP26? Vincent was joined by Marc Daalder, climate change reporter for Newsroom and Dr Victoria Hatton, Director for Sustainability and Climate Change for PWC. See Marc’s IPCC s...

What future does sheep and beef farming have in a climate changed world? Serial entrepreneur and relentless optimist, Melissa Clark-Reynolds sits on the board of Beef & Lamb and sees a bright future for New Zealand farmers if the sector and government can get the settings right. Hint: it doesn’t involve pine trees. In a wide-ranging interview covering turtles, synthetic meat, Al Gore and of course...

Climate Venture Capital Fund is a new venture investment fund that invests in, you guessed it, climate ventures. It’s the first of its kind in New Zealand and has just made its maiden investment, in Australian energy company MGA Thermal. Vincent is joined by two of the founders of the fund, Rohan MacMahon and Dr Jez Weston. Disclosure: Vincent works for this very fund as an advisor.

This week Vincent spoke alongside PWC’s Annabell Chartres at Spark Innovation Studio about Sustainability in Tech, one in a series put on by the Spark IoT team. Hosted by Randall Miekle, agile coach at Spark the session started with the key question: what does sustainability mean to you? About Annabell Chartres  As the ESG Co-Leader at PwC New Zealand, Annabell is driven by finding innovative busi...

Chris Morrison does not stop. He’s the founder of Phoenix Drinks, All Good Organics and Karma Drinks (makers of Karma Cola). He co-founded the Sustainable Business Network, has been a director of the country’s main organic certifier BioGro, and chairs Organics Aotearoa New Zealand. This year he received an NZOM for services to fair trade and sustainable business and, along with his wife Deb, has f...

Pippa Coom is a rare Auckland Councillor who is championing climate change action and a faster shift to active transport. So how does she rate the council’s actions on transport, buildings and climate justice? And what’s it like to be an activist on the city’s front bench? Pippa is deputy chair of the Auckland Sustainability and Climate Change Committee and co-chair of the Hauraki Gulf Forum. Befo...

EcoStore’s Tony Morpeth has been making environmentally friendly household cleaners for more than 20 years. Back then he was a pioneer, working for Stephen Tindall and then Malcolm Rands. Now his products are in pretty much every supermarket, from here to New York. So what goes into an eco-cleaner, and what stays out? And how can EcoStore can stay ahead of the competition and keep driving to green...

In the heart of Mt Albert, Auckland, is one of the oldest gardens in NZ. The Sanctuary Mahi Whenua Community Garden was first planted by Maori in pre-European times and hasn’t been built on since. The vege gardens and food forest have been lovingly cared for over the years and flourished under the ownership of Carrington tech, now Unitec. But they face an uncertain future following the sale of the...