Tom Raftery's Weekly Tech for Good Newsletter - Issue #33

It's Wednesday again - later this week than usual because this is a busy week. Working from home, but busier than ever - funny how that happens, right?

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Anyway, on to the stories...

Tech for Good stories of the week

China lands its Zhurong rover on Mars — www.bbc.com

NASA's Perseverence rover has been joined on Mars by a Chinese rover. This is China's first mission to Mars, so to land a rover on the planet on the first attempt is no mean achievement

Nations Must Drop Fossil Fuels, Fast, World Energy Body Warns — www.nytimes.com

The International Energy Agency released its Net Zero by 2050 report this week and it is stunning in how the once very conservative IEA has gone all in on renewables

Sustainable BusinessEnd of wind power waste? Vestas unveils blade recycling technology — www.reuters.com

Wind turbine blades have until recently proven difficult to recycle at the end of their life- Now Vestas has unveiled new technology on Monday which it says enables wind turbine blades to be fully recycled, avoiding the dumping of old blades

Google Moving Workloads Between Data Centers to Use Greener Energy — datacenterfrontier.com Google is moving workloads between data centers to boost its use of renewable energy, shifting the data processing for YouTube videos and Google photos to locations where green power is plentiful

Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC all-electric aeroplane heading for record breaking flight in coming weeks — www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk

Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC has developed an electric plane. One that sets speed records. And it is eyeing the future of flight as electric

GPT-3's free alternative GPT-Neo is something to be excited about — venturebeat.com

GPT-3 is an AI with a stunning ability to write comprehensible text. Now it has an open source rival. GPT-Neo performs on par with GPT-3 on several key benchmarks, but unlike GPT-3, it's open to anyone who wants to use it.

Cranes: Flying giant returning to Ireland after 300 years — www.bbc.com

And finally, the restoration of bogs that were dried out to produce peat for fuel is enabling the return to Ireland of cranes. The giant bird that has been part of Irish folklore and was often kept as a pet in medieval times is returning to the island after an absence of more than 300 years

Digital Supply Chain (DSC) podcast

On the Digital Supply Chain podcast this last week:

• we had the second episode of our Industry 4.0 for Fridays series. In this episode Alex Altermann and Nils Herzberg talk about Industry 4.0 bilateral, and multilateral partnerships, what they are, why they are, and where to from here with them. Check out that episode here

• Lenovo has one of the largest supply chains in the world shipping 3-4 items per second so I was delighted when Dr. Ajay Dholakia (aka @ajaydholakia on Twitter) agreed to come on Monday's episode of the podcast to discuss Lenovo's supply chain and how digitisation has helped them. You can check out that episode here

Climate 21 podcast

On the Climate 21 podcast earlier today I talked with

• Deloitte's Marc Van Caeneghem - Marc is Deloitte's Global Climate and Sustainability Leader and a member of Deloitte's Executive Committee. Marc and I had a fascinating conversation, where we talked about Deloitte's aims to reduce its own emissions, and crucially how it helps clients reduce their emissions. You should check it out (click here)

Chart of the Week

From the Internal Energy Agency's Net Zero 2050 report, the red line in the chart above shows the needed growth of wind and solar between now and 2050.

Wednesday whimsy

This photo was taken of the lunar lander containing Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong by Michael Collins from the window of the lunar orbiter. Because the Earth containing all of humanity is in the background this photo came to be known as Everyone But Collins!

And finally...

Thanks for your interest and attention. If you like this newsletter, tell a friend. Heck tell all your friends!

And, if you have any comments/questions/suggestions on how to make it better, feel free to let me know :)

Have a great rest of your week