Climate change is supercharging the growth of new markets

sustainability space and impact investing have been around for years. But in this past year we've seen how the new urgency of climate change regulations from around the world and the new generation of startups and ambassadors have really supercharged the growth of new markets, governments and automakers around the world have set ambitious targets to transition to emission three vehicles. Many analysts now warned that we may run into supply issues to be able to meet these targets. There's a number of components in a battery, there's a cathode nano to separator of structure, the electrolyte fluid and then the circuitry and the management of that. The major parts are the raw materials, but it's a principally a lithium battery. I'll say there's three basic traditional ways to get lithium open pit mining of some kind of a resource, whether it's spot you mean or clay. That's a long slow process that takes months from first scoop out of the ground to final product. Then there's the older, more traditional path, which is the large evaporation ponds in south America the Solares, It can take 20-30,000 hectors of land to build the large evaporation ponds and it takes them more than a year from wellhead to finish product. So control thermal resources. We've built our project with very much a serious approach to being environmentally sustainable. The direct extraction processes very rapid, especially compared to both of those. It's about, it's less than one hour from wellhead to finished product. The brian comes under artesian float to the surface. We extract what we're looking for and reinject that back in to maintain fuel pressure So the actual production rate, demand and delivery to the market is extremely quick in comparison will go commercially operational in 2023. And then in 2024 we start producing the lithium chemicals in commercial operation. I think that demand will exceed supply well past 2030. If you just calculate the number of companies that said, We're going to produce this many cars, the industry will eventually catch up But there will be a significant lag over the next. We'll save 5-15 years. Big banks have been investing trillions of dollars in fossil projects alongside their impact investing portfolios, but in recent years we've seen really a number of sustainability focused startups that have grown and matured. An aspiration especially is aiming to go public by the end of this year, aspirations of ways for people and businesses to embed sustainability into what they're already doing on a daily basis with an aspiration spend and save account all of your deposits are fossil fuel free, will never allow any of those deposits to be used to fund oil and gas pipelines and drilling. And you have your debit card. You have a mobile app that allows you to see your own personal sustainability score and make spending decisions Based on how businesses are treating people on the planet. Then we help people going further, we do things like let you plant a tree with every purchase that you make, we call us plan to change and we do that by rounding up that purchase to the nearest dollar, ask questions planted over 35 million trees over the past year. The fact of the matter is, is the major financial institutions in the world are the major drivers of climate change because that's where the money comes from. And so every time you deposit your paycheck into a bank account at a traditional bank, there's a portion of every single one of those dollars that's being used to fund oil and gas pipelines, drilling or other things like that. The biggest banks in the world are investing $10 billion dollars every single day. And that's a big driver of the climate crisis that we're living. We think of aspiration as a company that's in the business of fighting the climate crisis with so many people working or learning from home over the past year, cities worldwide are dealing with increased waste from home deliveries and grocery bags to take out containers and protective masks. Many of today's plastic so are too costly and complex to recycle and end up in landfills, incinerators or our oceans and the robotics is a colorado startup that is applying artificial intelligence to help solve the problem. Mhm There really is value in this plastic, There's value in this metal, There's value in the paper. The challenge has been the cost of separating it out. Getting the plastics by themselves, getting the paper by themselves is quite costly. And so what we get excited about is the idea that technology like ours can significantly reduce the cost of sorting. That now allows you realize that value. The core piece of our technology is really this artificial intelligence that allows us to identify material. You have a camera that sits over a conveyor belt, identifying bottles, cans, paper, you name it, shoes, diapers, you see all sorts of stuff when it sees a piece of material that our system once it will send a signal to a robot that's just a couple of feet down the conveyor belt robot says, okay, there's the bottle I want, it's coming at me at this velocity, it'll be within range in a second or two. It then reaches out, uses a suction base gripper to grab the item and then throws it into a trash can or a bunker where that material is being collected. If you look at recycling facilities all over the world, you see opportunities for tens of thousands of robots and we've deployed, you know, 100-200 robots at this point. So we're just at the front end and facilities are just beginning to understand the implications of robots for their busy. The exciting thing here is not only sort of less stuff going to landfill and less pollution, but in particular, greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced significantly by expansions and recycling. I really believe in my core that technology can help make doing the right thing easier and cheaper. But I think consumer concern is actually driving a lot of what's going on. The pandemic and the accelerated pace of climate change have really supercharged the development of many industries that we've seen over the past year. And these very visible challenges have inspired a new generation of entrepreneurs to come up with solutions, Paving the way for new industries and new markets five and 10 years down the road.