In July’s ReFi Singapore meetup, we gathered to shoot the breeze about repurposed spent grains. This sector has gained popularity in recent years, with several companies in Singapore already using spent grains in various products. 

The sector falls within the “Waste-to-X” category of circular economy businesses, which basically treats waste as a resource, rather than a problem to be disposed of. 

Leveraging her background in pharmaceuticals and MedTech, Florence Leong co-founded KosmodeHealth with the aim of reusing spent grains into health food. She’s now looking for partners and investors to commercialize the intellectual property that she’s accumulated over the years. 

Because I know absolutely nothing about this, Henry Soediarko, who runs the Climate Impact Asia Fund at First Estate Capital Management, kindly agreed to step in to offer some insights based on his experience investing in climate startups and FoodTech. 

Is Waste-to-X an emerging business and investment opportunity? Yes, was the answer. But there are regulatory obstacles preventing it from taking off. 

Hat tip to Varden (co-founder of Moonbeam) for lending his phone to record the chat, which includes the happy sounds of beer cans being opened. 

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Professor Ben Horton, Director at the Earth Observatory of Singapore and Professor at the NTU Asian School of the Environment, weighs in on Neal Stephenson's climate change epic Termination Shock.

Basically, Pina2bo is a terrible idea and if you had shitloads of money, you should be donating it to a think tank to decide what to do with it. 

This podcast features Horton, his dog Atlas, the occasional hay fever-induced sneeze, and my two parrots in the background.

Read the podcast highlights on Medium here.

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In our conversation, former head of water strategy at Bayer and co-founder of Ixo, Hannah Oh, chats about how Ixo's "internet of impacts" Web3 infrastructure is being used to harness carbon financing to improve the lives of rural communities via... clean cookstoves.

Founded in 2017, Ixo is an impact-focused blockchain company that has been building its technology stack via grant funding.

But it's now focusing on commercial use cases via it's new base in Singapore.  Alongside it's work in Web3, Ixo also deploys its digital measurement, reporting, and verification (dMRV) infrastructure for companies to track their corporate social responsibility (CSR) investments, or to track the progress of their decarbonisation strategy.

Read the highlights from our conversation on Medium here. 

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By 2050, there is going to be almost as many decommissioned solar panels as newly installed solar panels. That’s according to data from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), dating back to 2016. 

Fast forward eight years. It’s 2024. Solar panel prices hit an all-time low in November 2023 and haven’t moved much, driving some European homes to opt for solar panels as garden fencing material. 

But with regulations regarding solar waste lagging behind, it’s a time bomb waiting to be dealt with when these panels are decommissioned 25 to 30 years from now. Especially since China, once the world’s largest importer of waste plastics, decided to literally stop dealing with trash in 2017.

To understand where the industry stands, I spoke to Dr Jeremy Ang, newly minted startup founder at Ambiguity Navigation and former research fellow at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). He’s created a process to extract silicon from decommissioned solar panels at higher purity and lower cost (aka “urban mining”) and is pushing for the solar energy industry to adopt circular economy principles. 

As with all ReFi Singapore meetups, the ask-me-anything session turned out to be surprisingly insightful, with friends from EDP Renewables (which acquired Singapore-based solar energy supplier Sunseap in 2022), Ong Gin Keat, Director at waste processing facility Envcares, and Henry Soediarko, Head of Portfolio Management at First Estate Capital Management chipping with industry insights. 

No time to listen to the whole thing? 
Read the writeup on Medium: https://medium.com/@shihan.fang/solar-waste-recycle-6be6f4cb2a82

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While the rest of the carbon world was caught up with debates about whether Verra's REDD+ offsets were "worthless", and the drama involving South Pole's Project Kariba, Australia's carbon credit system was facing a crisis of its own. 

Carbon offsets produced under Australian government standards are known as ACCUs, or Australian Carbon Credit Units.

In March 2022,  Professor Andrew Macintosh, the former head of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee (ERAC), which approves ACCUs, described the government's forest regeneration scheme (known as Human Induced Regeneration, or HIR) as a "fraud". 

Shortly after this podcast was recorded, Professor Macintosh and a group of researchers released a paper showing that HIR projects had limited regeneration in areas issuing ACCUs, and compared to baseline areas outside the crediting zone, HIR projects were non-additional. 

Read the Guardian article on the paper for more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/27/australias-carbon-credits-system-a-failure-on-global-scale-study-finds 

In this podcast, I chat with Guy Dickinson, the founder of Betacarbon, Clima, and Gondwana. These are a trio of companies that tokenize ACCUs, provide carbon advisory services, and develop carbon credit projects respectively. 

Whistleblowing is tough, and so is developing a carbon market that’s built upon science that’s constantly evolving. 

Dickinson says that there’s going to be a crunch in ACCU supply as the ERAC tightens its criteria for new projects. He also chats about upcoming regulatory developments in Australia, thoughts about Professor Macintosh, and getting transparency and access to the Aussie carbon market via the BCAU token. 

Read the highlights on Medium: https://medium.com/@shihan.fang/australia-accu-hir-betacarbon-d1801e7d45fc

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Lawrence Xiao, co-founder of Nika.eco shares how his company is moving the carbon market forward into the digital age.

The company provides pre-project feasibility reports for carbon project developers and investors. It also provides digital measurement reporting and verification (dMRV) services at two stages of the carbon credit issuance process: to establish the accuracy of the carbon claims prior to issuance, and continued monitoring of the project after the carbon credits have been issued. 

In this sharing session at ReFi Singapore's April meetup, Xiao talks about:

- PlanetGPT, a one-stop platform for carbon prospecting that Nika.eco is building in stealth mode
- The new VM0048 methodology by Verra
- The skill sets required in the carbon markets as the industry moves forward into the digital age
- Why human verification is still needed even as dMRV becomes the norm

Read the highlights from the AMA on Medium: https://medium.com/@shihan.fang/machine-learning-artificial-intelligence-nika-eco-redd-6cde1acd390b

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Digital Mission Ventures, also known as DM Ventures or DMV, is a Singapore-based venture capital firm that aims to build the redemptive startup ecosystem in Southeast Asia.

A startup with a redemptive business model can probably be described as a business built upon Christian values, rather than one that is purely driven by profits.

To understand how a redemptive business model works, I spoke to the former head of GrabPay, Chris Yeo, who co-founded DM Ventures. He’s also serving as the CEO of Doku, a Jakarta-based fintech payments solutions company.

In our conversation, he talks about:
- how he recognised that serving God shouldn't be a retirement hobby
- being open about his Christian identity while leading a Muslim-majority company
- the three tenets of redemptive startups
- the heart posture of a founder running a startup based on the redemptive framework

Read the highlights on Medium: https://medium.com/@shihan.fang/digital-mission-ventures-christianity-faith-startup-43b087868d99

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Rather than heading down the academic rabbit hole in search of what lies ‘after growth’ (i.e. "post-growth" and "degrowth), I thought I’d tap on some ancient wisdom that’s been passed down the ages. 

In this series on faith-based business models, I speak to folks in the startup world who have successfully integrated their religious views into their everyday lives. This includes making business decisions based on religious ethics, in addition to seeking profits and growth. 

My guest for this podcast is Umar Munshi, Managing Partner at Hasan VC, a venture capital fund that invests in and supports startups that comply with halal standards. He’s got a preference for “camel startups” - check out his LinkedIn post to see if you qualify. 

In this episode, we talk about:
- Why buying a sports car as a fledging startup founder is a monumentally stupid idea
- Why Islamic finance offers a less predatory mode of financing for businesses
- What kinds of camel startups Munshi is looking for
- Applying the concept of justice in business
- How Islamic finance integrates philanthropy and charity in business-as-usual
- How Islam can be applied universally as an ethical framework

Read the written highlights on Medium here: https://medium.com/@shihan.fang/umar-munshi-hasan-vc-islamic-finance-53f6e5f91378

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I first reached out to Rene Velasquez, former head of carbon at environmental commodities exchange CBL, for insights on what happened the first time retail traders got access to the voluntary carbon market.

It ended badly, with Verra, the world’s largest carbon standard and registry, banning crypto company Toucan from tokenizing retired carbon credits in May 2022.

But the brief carbon-crypto affair proved to the world that there was appetite among retail traders for carbon credits. More importantly, that could provide new funding opportunities and liquidity for the voluntary carbon market, which, if deployed correctly, addresses deforestation and climate change concerns. 

Velasquez is now working on a “Robin Hood for the carbon market”, a blockchain-based platform for retail investors to trade carbon credits. He shared some insights during the ReFi Singapore meetup on 19 March on what went on behind the scenes during the Toucan/KlimaDAO/Verra kerfuffle, and what lies ahead as the voluntary carbon market braces for disruption.

Read the highlights on Medium here.

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Dr Riza Suarga, Chairman of the Indonesia Carbon Trade Association (IDCTA), has a long career in Indonesia’s forestry sector which began with work in a timber plantation. He crossed the fence, so to speak, in the 2000s after finishing his PhD thesis on illegal logging, converting former enemies at Greenpeace and WWF into allies along the way.

Today, alongside his position at the IDCTA where he works on communicating the needs of the carbon market to the government and vice versa, he’s also the President & CEO of Agraus Resources, a carbon investment firm.

I spoke to Dr Riza to get his thoughts on whether changes to carbon regulations are afoot, with the new Indonesian administration due to be sworn in later this year.

Here are some highlights:
- The new administration under the leadership of  Prabowo Subianto, is likely to favour the voluntary carbon market to hit Indonesia's emissions targets, rather than a result-based payment scheme
- The lack of clarity as to how the presidential decree 98/2021 will be implemented is unavoidable as the regulators themselves are learning how to govern the nascent carbon market
- IDCTA is lobbying for the national registry to accept carbon credits issued by both international and domestic standards; buyers should have a choice
- On-ground sentiment is shifting in favour of conservation: most forestry companies in Indonesia prefer to participate in the carbon market, rather than the timber market
- Doubt on the integrity of deforestation avoidance carbon credits is having a perverse effect on conservation

Read the writeup of the interview on Medium. 

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