Recipients include Dunedin’s The Good Rating, which works to assess the environmental impact of packaged supermarket products.
The other recipients are data scientist Clive Pinfold, who collects real-time CO2 emissions data in the electricity sector, and Blue Carbon services based out of Castlepoint, who are researching the feasibility of using the ocean to sequester carbon.
The Good Rating founder Kate Oktay said the not-for-profit wanted to give manufacturers and producers a commercial reason to change.
“Our goal is to be an antidote to greenwashing so that consumers can see which brands are sustainable, and more to the point, which are not. There is currently a tidal wave of change.
“People don’t want to support products that cause climate change when there are so many that don’t. And surprisingly enough, that often doesn’t cost more at the checkout.”
Mr Pinfold said New Zealand would not be able to achieve the necessary emissions reduction results if it relied on average national data that was at least two years old to inform investment and maintenance.
His Subak-funded project was intended to show how faster, more efficient and cheaper emission reductions can be achieved with accurate data.
Blue Carbon founder Dr Robert Hickson said global warming is expected to cause the extinction of three-fifths of the world’s current species, even with global emissions reduction commitments.
“We think giant kelp is a powerful natural tool to curb this. Trees only store carbon in living organic matter, decreasing CO2 for 30 to 100 years,” says Dr Hickson.
“Giant kelp, however, grows much faster than trees, trapping carbon in both living and dead organic matter, and expelling abundant organic matter into the ocean, continuously and indefinitely.”
The carbon in kelp waste that sank into deep water sediments was trapped for hundreds to thousands of years.
“This allows an acre of kelp to continue to absorb carbon almost forever, rather than just three to 100 years.”
Subak funds projects from $22,000 to $165,000 and offers a curriculum of business, data, and technical training.