Climate tech investments ignoring emissions; WhatsApp takes UPI to 500 villages in India; plus, Minecraft hits its trillionth view
Investment in climate tech is continuing to show strong growth as an emerging asset class, with a total of $87.5 billion invested in the second half of 2020 and the first half of 2021, accounting and consultancy firm PwC says in a new report, State of Climate Tech 2021. H1 2021 saw record investments, over $60 billion. This represents a 210 percent increase from the $28.4 billion invested in the previous 12 months. Climate tech now accounts for 14 cents of every venture capital dollar, PwC says. However, there’s an opportunity to shift capital towards solutions with untapped climate impact potential. Of the 15 technology areas analysed in the PwC report, the top five—which represent over 80 percent of future emissions reduction potential—received only 25 percent of climate tech investments between 2013 and H1 2021. WhatsApp is running a pilot programme to bring digital payments to rural India, the Meta company said in a press release on Wedesday. Under the pilot programme, WhatsApp has adopted 500 villages in the Indian states of Karnataka and Maharashtra, where it will bring its ‘payments on WhatsApp’ feature to villagers—the feature uses India’s popular Unified Payments Interface. The pilot called ‘Digital Payments Utsav’, started on the 15th of Oct, 2021 in Kyathanahalli village in Mandya district of Karnataka, where on-ground facilitators familiarised villagers with various aspects of digital payments including signing up for UPI, setting up a UPI account and safety best practices of using digital payments, the company said in a press release. Google has told its employees they will lose pay—and will eventually be fired—if they don’t comply with the company’s Covid-19 vaccination policy, according to internal documents, CNBC, which reviewed the documents, reports. Employees had until Dec. 3 to declare their vaccination status and upload documentation showing proof, or to apply for a medical or religious exemption, according to a memo circulated by Google’s leadership, CNBC reports. After that date, Google would start contacting employees who hadn’t uploaded their status or were unvaccinated, as well as those whose exemption requests weren’t approved. Employees who haven’t complied with the vaccination rules by the Jan. 18 deadline will be placed on “paid administrative leave” for 30 days. After that, the company will put them on “unpaid personal leave” for up to six months, followed by termination, according to CNBC. New criminal offences and major changes have been proposed in the UK's landmark Online Safety Bill, which seeks to regulate social media and big tech companies, BBC reports. A new parliamentary report calls for adding scams and offences, like sending unwanted sexual images and promoting violence against women and girls. A named senior manager at the big tech companies should also be made personally liable in court for failures, it said, according to BBC. The draft bill and this report both lay out exemptions for journalism, public interest, and free speech, but critics — such as Adam Smith Institute, a think tank — fear that may not be enough, according to the BBC report. Minecraft, a platform that started as a simple video game that became a canvas for millions of players to create their own content, got its one-trillionth view, The Verge reports. YouTube, in collaboration with Minecraft developer Mojang, is celebrating an unprecedented trillionth view with a snapshot of the game’s unique and transformative history on the platform, according to The Verge.