Category Archives: • Editing & writing services

Investing in the potential of carbon credits | CPP Investments

A white paper on behalf of Thinking Ahead, the thought leadership platform of CPP Investments, one of Canada’s largest pension funds.

Challenge: Debut CPP Investments’ commitment to develop nascent carbon credit markets via a partnership with Climate International. The project aims to foster high-quality forestry carbon credit markets in Peru and beyond.

Solution: A white paper establishing the need for carbon credits markets as a vital tool to help companies in hard-to-abate sectors reach net-zero, complemented by an introduction to a groundbreaking investment in Peru’s rainforests. Facilitated by Climate International, the project acts as a template to inspire similar community-focused investments elsewhere. Following some false starts with another writer, I was able to successfully execute this high-profile project, a centerpiece of the debut of CPP Investment’s thought leadership site.  

My roles: Research, SME interviews, data (research, composition and visualization), content (outline, write and edit), along with design direction.

View the full report at CPP Investments or download here:

 

Investing to enable an economy-wide evolution to a low-carbon future | CPP Investments

A white paper on behalf of Thinking Ahead, the thought leadership platform of CPP Investments, a Canadian pension fund.

Challenge: Establish the case to identify, fund and support the decarbonization of essential businesses that have high emissions, but lack an affordable, near-term solution to do so.

Solution: A white paper making the case for why the successful decarbonization of strategic sectors — such as agriculture, cement, steel and others — is not only essential to meet wider net-zero ambitions, but also to sustain economic growth, stability and a responsible transition.

My roles: Research, SME interview and review, data composition, chart design/recommendation, writing and editing, design/visual editing.

View the full report at CPP Investments or download here:

Financing the energy transition – Green bonds in climate finance | CPP Investments

A white paper on behalf of Thinking Ahead, the thought leadership platform of CPP Investments, a Canadian pension fund.

Challenge: Introduce experts to the fast evolving market trends around green bonds and related climate-focused financing mechanisms.

Solution: Contextualize and explain market growth, challenges and the outlook for green bonds as both a tool to raise climate-focused funds and as a investment opportunity.

My roles: Research, SME interview and review, data composition, chart design/recommendation, writing and editing, design/visual editing.

View the full report at CPP Investments or download here:

Rethinking plastics in a circular economy | EIU – Economist Impact

A research report / white paper in collaboration with Economist Impact, formerly The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

Challenge: Research and document emerging advanced recycling methods (chemical recycling, biological recycling, thermochemical recycling, etc). Document and critique existing policy regimes, and emerging policy options that might accelerate the growth of plastic recycling.

Solution: Contextualize and explain a financial framework to help guide investors and business leaders in this this process.

My roles: SME wrangling and interviews, data composition, chart design/recommendation, writing, copy editing, design/visual editing.

Check out the report at Economist Impact or view and download here:

The future of climate change transition reporting | CPP Investments

A white paper on behalf of Thinking Ahead, a thought leadership platform at CPP Investments, a Canadian pension fund.

Challenge: Make the case for more sophisticated tools to assess and compare companies’ ability to transition to net-zero .

Solution: Contextualize and explain an evolving financial framework to help guide investors and business leaders through the evaluation process.

My roles: Research, SME interview and review, data composition, chart design/recommendation, writing and editing, design/visual editing.

View the full report at CPP Investments or download here:

State of vehicle fleet electrification | SED

Working with the content director at Smart Energy Decisions, led the data graphic design and drafted the copy for this piece of original, survey-based market research looking at trends in vehicle fleet electrification, on behalf of NRG.

View the full report here, at Smart Energy Decisions: https://www.smartenergydecisions.com/research/2021/10/18/research-the-state-of-vehicle-fleet-electrification

Smart Energy Decisions presents The State of Vehicle Fleet Electrification, a first-of-its-kind study to explore key dynamics driving the transition to electrified commercial fleets. Sponsored by NRG Energy, exclusive survey results reveal drivers and barriers experienced as organizations advance toward fleet electrification. Among areas explored in the study are operating models, intentions to electrify, the decision-making process, where growth is expected, benefits already achieved, and how best to plan the journey. 

Or download directly, here.

Democratizing decarbonization… | NCX (SilviaTerra)

Democratizing decarbonization in a forest near you

Ghost writing / thought leadership on behalf of NCX, formerly SilviaTerra, 2021-05-10

How an innovative mix of remote sensing, AI analytics and a new marketplace is boosting incentives for owners of even small forest tracts to cut less, and keep more carbon locked up

Could trees turn out to be our best, not-so-secret weapon to fight climate change?

Amidst rising urgency to develop high-tech climate solutions — from direct air capture to geoengineering — trees are nature’s killer app, one of the most efficient, lowest-cost ways to remove substantial volumes of carbon. Yet, until now, we haven’t found scalable ways to harness their potential.

Steady growth

Our forests hold more promise than you may realize. Letting forests regrow naturally has the potential to absorb up to 8.9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year through 2050, the Nature Conservancy estimates.

This process is already underway. For generations, the US has added more trees than we have harvested, thanks to shifts in farming patterns. Decades of steady surplus mean that today we have more forest than a century ago. And locked up in those millions of trees are billions of tons of carbon.

Perhaps more remarkable yet: This growing sink of carbon has flourished with few, if any, special incentives. Landowners tend to steward their forests. Some do so primarily to enjoy all the intangible benefits woodlands give us — from watershed management to biodiversity and visual beauty. And others do so for financial returns, to cultivate timber.

Today, select landowners can already do both: conserve their forests and harvest financial value from the carbon their trees hold. A small number already participate in markets that monetize the long-term value of the carbon locked up in their trees.

But the scale is limited. Conventional methods of measuring, modeling and documenting forests are costly. Typically, only large landholders can justify the huge upfront investment necessary to secure long-term deals.

This leaves most acres of forest out of play, and their carbon offset potential untapped. Roughly half of all forests in the US are owned by small landowners that, until now, have been excluded from these markets.

Democratizing decarbonization

At SilviaTerra, we’ve spent the last decade bringing to market a suite of innovations that can deliver these kinds of benefits at dramatically lower cost, more quickly, to more people. Broadening access to carbon offsets promises to help not just landowners, but buyers of offsets too and, ultimately, the environment.

At the foundation of our approach is a smarter way to inventory forests. By replacing painstaking on-the-ground surveys with satellite imagery processed by machine learning, we can characterize vast areas of forest with greater accuracy, down to the individual tree.

Yet data about forests, on its own, isn’t enough. The critical complement is a dynamic set of technologies that lets us model the probability a forest will be cut. The goal: to identify tracts more likely to be harvested and reward landowners to keep those areas growing.

Combining this forest and market data in our proprietary marketplace, the Natural Capital Exchange, lets us measure and value the carbon sequestered on a given property at costs far lower than conventional methods. We can then bundle and sell those carbon credits to a corporate buyer.

Buyers, in turn, benefit from a deeper, more reliable market. Greater transparency, together with increased certainty of offset quality, can help them plan and execute more ambitious, longer-term climate strategies.

Landowners, meanwhile, are rewarded yearly based on market rates for the value of the annual growth of carbon held by their trees. And if they do harvest some trees that year, they’re not paid for those offsets.

By year end, access to this market will be available to every landowner, across every acre in the US.

Cultivating carbon capture

The world needs countless more innovations to bend the arc of emissions towards net-zero and beyond. At SilviaTerra, we’re creating a combination of approaches to help forests thrive, and democratize the benefits of carbon-removing incentives.

As warming, drought, pests and wildfire take a growing toll on our forests, the urgency is greater than ever to manage the trees we have and to incent more new growth, through climate-smart strategies.

After all, nature has provided us an amazing technology to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Until now, what’s been missing is a better way to measure, track and trade its value.

Sources:

“Forests Can Absorb Carbon More Quickly than Previously Thought.” The Nature Conservancy, 23 Sept. 2020, nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-insights/perspectives/climate-potential-natural-regrowth-forests. Accessed 15 Apr. 2021.

Starre Vartan,  “More Trees than There Were 100 Years Ago? It’s True!” Treehugger, 2015, www.treehugger.com/more-trees-than-there-were-years-ago-its-true-4864115. Accessed 13 Apr. 2021.


Originally published here: https://blog.silviaterra.com/democratizing-decarbonization-in-a-forest-near-you/.

PDF version here:

Hydrogen’s new moment | CPP Investments

A white paper on behalf of Thinking Ahead, a thought leadership platform at CPP Investments, a Canadian pension fund.

Challenge: Survey hydrogen’s enormous potential role in the energy transition across multiple sectors for an audience of non-energy experts.

Solution: A short white paper overviewing fast developing news in the hydrogen space, offset by classic data visualizations: call outs, tables and explainers for emphasis.

My roles: research, writing, data composition, chart design/recommendation, writing, copy editing, design/visual editing.

View the full report at CPP Investments or download here:

The Energy Transition: Risks and Opportunities | GARP

GARP-Energy-Risk-White-Paper-2021

  • This white paper surveys changes sweeping the global energy industry as net-zero carbon policy and alternative technologies begin to displace fossil fuels.
  • Researched and wrote 5,000-word report, drawing on primary research, press coverage and subject matter interviews; researched and designed data visualizations.
  • Target audience: Finance, traders and risk professionals in the finance, oil/gas, utility and renewables sectors.
  • On behalf of the Global Assn of Risk Professionals.  Published February 2021. 
  • Download the full report here or at garp.org.