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Cows are a significant source of methane emissions, primarily due to their unique digestive system. Milk and beef cows are ruminants, which means they have a specialized stomach chamber (called the rumen), which houses billions of microbes that facilitate the breakdown of fibrous plant material. The process is called “enteric fermentation,” and as these microbes work to digest the cellulose found in the cows’ diet, methane is produced as a byproduct. That’s a problem: The EPA identifies methane as being about 25 times more potent as CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Alga Biosciences leaps to the rescue, creating a new feed for cows that dramatically reduces how much burping goes on.
“Enteric methanogenesis, also known as cattle burps — is the single biggest source of anthropogenic methane emissions in the world. During the digestive process of cows, sheep, goats and other ruminants, microbes in the stomach of these animals break down food into smaller components, such as carbohydrates, proteins and fats. As a byproduct of this process, methane is produced and released into the atmosphere when the animal belches,” explains Alex Brown, co-founder/CEO of Alga Biosciences in an interview with TechCrunch. “When we got into Y Combinator, we put all of our money at the time into academic live animal trials to test our product, and found that methane emissions from beef cattle were undetectable with our approach. This is the first time results of this magnitude have been observed in live animals.”
Reducing belching has a side effect beyond just the environment. Methane is full of energy, and Alga claims that roughly 12% of all the calories a cattleman feeds his cow end up being wasted in the form of methane burps. This is a massive hidden cost for farmers, and it poses a huge opportunity for re-directing those calories to meat and milk production. The theory goes that kelp-based feed additives provide a direct avenue to reduce anthropogenic methane emissions; it could also be a massive economic benefit for farmers.
The company raised a round led by Collaborative Fund, and the company now has raised a total of $4 million in funding. In addition to Collaborative, Y Combinator, Day One Ventures, Cool Climate Collective, Pioneer Fund, Overview Capital and others also participated. The company has also received a grant from USDA Climate Smart Commodities.
Caroline McKeon (co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer), Daria Balatsky (co-founder and Chief Technology Officer), Alex Brown (co-founder and CEO). Image credit: Alga.
“The best climate tech startups will build solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions while being cheap, scalable and safe. We are thrilled that cattle farmers, like us, believe that Alga’s solution hits that trifecta,” said Tomas Alvarez Belon, investor at Collaborative Fund. “We are thrilled to support Alga Bio in this journey to create a methane-free world.”
The company is working on producing its feed additive for larger commercial pilots, and the company tells TechCrunch it can already produce at a scale of tens of thousands of head per day. There’s plenty of scale for growth; some sources estimate that there are around 1.5 billion cows in the world.
Alga Biosciences wants to help climate change, one bovine burp at a time by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch
For the last two years, climate tech was on a tear. To be fair, so were a lot of other sectors. But when a slowdown hit tech investing in the middle of last year, climate tech startups bucked the trend and kept racking up the deals.
Now the party might be over, if preliminary data from a new report holds up.
Climate tech deal-making in the first quarter registered $5.7 billion across 279 deals, according to a new PitchBook report. The amount raised was down 36% year over year with 35% fewer deals. That’s certainly suggestive of a correction.
Investors have been keeping a closer eye on their pocketbooks as fears of a recession continue to rumble through the markets. And yet key economic indicators show a striking resilience in the U.S. economy, with strong hiring keeping unemployment low while consumer sentiment remains high. That hasn’t stopped economists and big names on Wall Street from continuing to predict a recession in the coming months. (Certainly not the first time they’ve done that.)
Still, all that noise tends to give investors the jitters. Since no one wants to be left holding the bag, investor sentiment has a way of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you’re a startup squeezed for cash, you’ve undoubtedly heard from your investors, and it may feel like a recession is already here.
Yet climate tech’s resilience has led some to call it the ultimate “recession proof” investment. Is that still true?
Maybe.
Let’s break it down. For one, these are preliminary figures looking at data through March 31. It’s hard to say how many deals closed in the last few days of the quarter that weren’t picked up by this report. It might be billions!
Climate tech tapped the brakes in Q1. Will the slowdown continue? by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
A warming world is going to need a lot of cold drinks. Problem is, today’s refrigeration tech is anything but climate friendly.
The way we cool our food and drinks has barely changed in a century and the technology is still reliant on environmentally harmful refrigerants. Now, a German startup thinks it can freeze those refrigerants out of the market using little more than magnets and water while consuming up to 40% less energy.
Magnotherm has been refining its technology, known as magnetocaloric refrigeration, since it was spun out of TU Darmstadt in 2019. Though it’s only a seed-stage company, the startup has already shipped five display coolers to beverage giant Coca-Cola, TechCrunch+ has learned, and it’s on track to build another 55 that will be rented out for events.
But beverage coolers are just the tech demo: “We are really building a bigger box for supermarket cooling cabinets,” co-CEO Timur Sirman said. “This is where we can actually reduce energy costs and maintenance costs significantly.” The global market for commercial refrigeration is worth $37 billion, according to Grand View Research.
To capitalize on the opportunity, Magnotherm is announcing a seed round today. In an exclusive with TechCrunch+, Sirman said the company was shooting for €5 million, “and now, we’re actually oversubscribed.” Investor interest was so great that they’re closing the round with €6.3 million.
Extantia Capital led the round, with Hessen Kapital, Lauda Dr. R. WOBSER Beteiligungs-GmbH and Revent joining. Four investors from the Better Ventures Angel Club also participated.
The technology Magnotherm hopes to dethrone is broadly used and deeply entrenched. It’s not as efficient as it could be, but more troubling are the substances it uses to keep things cool. The refrigerator sitting in your kitchen gets its chill from the physical properties of its refrigerants, the gases that loop through the cooling system.
None of these refrigerants come without tradeoffs. First generation refrigerants — freon and its ilk — chewed a hole in the ozone layer. Newer ones are more ozone-friendly, but they are powerful greenhouse gases, warming the Earth hundreds to thousands of times more than an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide.
Countries are working to phase out their use, but finding replacements hasn’t been easy. One frontrunner, propane, is flammable, and regulators have hesitated to greenlight its use in larger refrigerators in case of leaks. Carbon dioxide is another contender, but it only works as a refrigerant under very high pressures, which makes the whole system more expensive.
Magnets and water net Magnotherm $6.9M seed round to kill hazardous refrigerants by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
Pity Donald Trump. He spent four years in office tearing up trade agreements and ranting about rewriting old ones, all to little avail. Now, a key U.S. climate law is doing more to change the dynamics of international trade than any blustering and bullying ever did.
The Inflation Reduction Act has been hailed as a win for domestic producers of minerals that are critical to electric vehicles and other hallmarks of the decarbonized economy. The most impactful so far have been the provisions that require a minimum amount of domestic sourcing and processing to be eligible for the $7,500 EV tax credit. That language alone has spurred tens of billions of dollars of investment in the U.S. battery supply chain.
But there’s no way the U.S. can produce all that’s needed — the country simply doesn’t have enough reserves, while China has a lock on many parts of the market. So the law also includes a handy loophole qualifying minerals from countries with which the U.S. has a free trade agreement. The law already qualified “North American” suppliers, and the free trade language opens the door further.
Late on Monday, the door opened a little wider as the U.S. and Japan announced a trade deal encompassing cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese and nickel, all minerals that are key components of EV batteries. The agreement opens up both markets to new supplies of the minerals, allowing battery manufacturers and automakers to benefit from the IRA’s minerals requirement.
For now, Japan is the only country to successfully negotiate a new agreement in the wake of the IRA, but it probably won’t be the only one. The EU, which has made no secret about its displeasure with the new law, is also in talks with the U.S.
In the seven months or so since the IRA was passed, the global landscape for critical minerals and battery manufacturing has changed rapidly, and a potentially steady stream of new free trade agreements promises to keep things fluid. For founders and investors alike, that injects a fresh dose of uncertainty.
Why startups should care about geopolitical repercussions of US climate law by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
One fusion startup is betting that a 70-year-old idea can help it leapfrog the competition, so much so that it’s planning to skip the experimental phase and hook its prototype reactor up to the grid.
The decades-old concept, known as a stellarator, is deceptively simple: design a fusion reactor around the quirks of plasma, the superheated particles that fuse and generate power, rather than force the plasma into an artificial box. Easier said than done, of course. Plasma can be fickle, and designing “box” around the fourth state of matter is fiendishly complex.
That’s probably why stellarators spent years in the fusion-equivalent of the desert while the simpler doughnut-shaped tokamak ate everyone’s lunch, and nearly all of their research funding.
But not all of it. Type One Energy is the brainchild of a handful of physicists steeped in the stellarator world. One built the HSX stellarator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, two more performed experiments on it, and a fourth worked on the Wendelstein 7-X reactor, the world’s largest stellarator.
Together, they founded Type One in 2019 and nudged forward their approach to fusion at a steady pace. The company wasn’t in stealth — TechCrunch+ identified it as a promising fusion startup last year — but it was operating on a slim budget.
Fusion startup Type One Energy gets $29M seed round to fast-track its reactor designs by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
Concrete is ubiquitous. A mainstay of the construction industry, over 10 billion cubic meters of concrete is used every year. It’s also responsible for up to 8% of CO2 emissions: one ton of ordinary Portland cement creates somewhere between 800 and 900 kilograms of CO2 emissions. Finnish startup Carbonaide has just raised €1.8 million (~$1.9 million at today’s exchange rate) in seed funding to knock down concrete’s carbon emissions, but not the construction industry.
“Our goal at Carbonaide is to create a more sustainable future with cutting-edge tech that doesn’t just reduce the carbon emissions of construction materials like concrete, but that traps more CO2 than they emit throughout their lifetime,” explains Tapio Vehmas, Carbonaide’s CEO. “It is very natural that the constructed environment becomes a CO2 sink, as it is the largest volume of man-made material.”
Carbonaide’s process binds carbon dioxide into precast concrete using an automated system at atmospheric pressure. By reducing the quantity of required cement content and mineralizing CO2 into the concrete itself, Carbonaide believes it can halve the carbon dioxide emissions of traditional Portland cement concrete. If it can introduce industrial waste products, for example, industry slag, green liquor dregs, and bio-ash into the process, it has the potential to produce concrete with a negative carbon footprint.
The next step for Carbonaide is to scale the technology into a production line at its factory in Hollola, Finland, which is where this seed funding round comes in.
“The goal for this funding round is to scale the technology into an industrial-scale pilot factory. With the funding, we can implement the technology into a precast concrete production line that allows carbon curing as a part of the industrial process,” says Vehmas. “When we have done that, we will know exactly the cost structure and needed parameters for effective curing,” because it does need to add up.
“Can we develop technical solutions that also make sense commercially? Low-carbon products have to have a lower price than normal products. Otherwise, we can’t be sure that our technology will prevail,” says Vehmas.
Carbonaide has calculated that a fully operational chain could mineralize up to five tons of CO2 per day and increase production by 100-fold of its carbon-negative concrete products, but it’s not just about making this type of concrete industrially scalable. Carbonaide also needs to bring the naturally conservative construction industry with it.
“The technology must fit in perfectly, otherwise, it won’t make a change,” says Vehmas. “The industry is very conservative, but there is a good reason for that. We build structures that are meant to last, and by being conservative, we can ensure that they will remain in the future.”
It’s easy to say that if something isn’t broken, it doesn’t need to be fixed, but Vehmas recognizes how the carbon footprint of concrete is breaking the Earth, and it does need to be fixed: “I want to see how a low-carbon industry can become a reality in highly conservative markets. If we can make this happen, maybe our generation will have some hope to pay our carbon debt for future generations.”
Importantly, Vehmas has experience in the construction industry that he can bring on this quest, and he believes that the investment that Carbonaide has raised validates both its necessity and viability.
“I also have 20+ years of experience working with concrete, meaning I have dealt with industry my whole adulthood. I basically live and breathe concrete. That helps a lot when introducing new technology into a highly conservative industry,” says Vehmas. “This investment is a sign of good progress for us because we’ve received the support and backing of players in the industry already.”
Backing for Carbonaide comes from Lakan Betoni and Vantaa Energy, which led the seed funding. The round was completed with public loans and in-kind contributions from Business Finland and other Finnish concrete companies and strategic investors.
The concrete and energy companies supporting Carbonaide are doing so in more ways than just financially. They are also able to provide CO2 for Carbonaide’s processes, because believe it or not, while too much carbon dioxide is fizzing its way into the atmosphere, the captive kind that we need for everything from concrete to soda is in short supply.
If Carbonaide’s pilot factory goes to plan, Vehmas hopes that it can have a planet-saving impact on the construction industry.
“After the piloting, our goal is to commercialize the technology. We want to make this process easy to implement by packing the technology into a modular unit that is easy to install and enables easy implementation of the technology on-site,” says Vehmas. “If everything goes as I dream, our technology will start a process where the constructed environment becomes a carbon sink in the future, not a source of massive emissions.”
When life gives you carbon, make Carbonaide by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch
The funding landscape remains very tough for technology startups, but there are still some pockets, and specific companies, driving a lot of interest among investors because they look like they’ll break through whatever current macroeconomic trends that are gripping the world.
Today, a startup out of Munich called IntegrityNext announced that it has raised its first-ever funding, an equity round of €100 million ($109 million), for a new twist on supply chain software: a platform that helps organizations with lots of suppliers automatically audit and monitor those companies for compliance with environmental and sustainability governance (ESG) rules, both those that companies set for themselves, as well as those coming from a growing body of regulation.
The funding is coming from a single investor, EQT Growth, and it will be used to continue building the breadth of the platform as well as the company’s go-to-market position. IntegrityNext has a growing number of customers — there are even a few would-be suppliers — across the U.S. and Europe, so the plan is to build more capabilities to meet that opportunity.
Those capabilities will stay in the area’s environmental and ethical labor commitments, and for now, there are no plans to loop in audits around, say, whether a supply chain implicates a company in the act of breaking embargoes on countries over political disputes or issues of national security.
The crux of the product is a platform that acts like a big data ingestion engine, sourcing information that is publicly available to help develop risk profiles for different markets and different companies, complemented by regular contact with businesses in the supply chain to supply details. All this is compiled into a database that then provides a warning system and audits for IntegrityNext’s customers to better understand what is going on in their supply chains.
What they do next is up to those customers, though: they can then use this to help either require their partners to change things, change the partners themselves, send in human auditors for deeper investigations, or I guess nothing at all. But ultimately, this is about building a way to manage what might be thousands of suppliers for some companies.
“You have to find an efficient way to manage that,” said Dominik Stein, a partner at EQT Growth. “You can’t go to every company and do every check yourself; it just doesn’t work.” (Stein’s joining an advisory board with this round.) From what I understand, a typical customer might pay $60,000/year for the service, but the figure could be significantly higher or lower depending on the size of the supply chain.
IntegrityNext, and this round, are part of a group of startups that have grown impressively over several years but flown under the radar. The startup has been profitable since 2004, and has been completely bootstrapped until now. On its own steam, it’s picked up a 200-strong list of enterprise customers, including Siemens Gamesa, Infineon and SwissRe, with a supply chain database that monitors close to 1 million suppliers across 190 countries.
According to CEO Martin Berr-Sorokin, who co-founded the company with Simon Jaehnig (CRO) and Nick Heine (COO), they decided to raise capital now to essentially strike while the iron is hot. The company had never taken outside funding, but it had no shortage of inbound interest, he said, and the state of the market and the fact that raising might not be as easy later swayed things.
“We wanted to have a strong partner for our next growth phase,” Berr-Sorokin said in an interview. “We were getting to the next phase, and we need support for hiring, extending our network, sales and marketing, and going into new markets in Europe and the U.S. We didn’t have to do it. It was an option, and we feel lucky to have done it.”
ESG is evolving rapidly as a market opportunity. On one hand, consumers, thanks in part to social media, have become significantly more aware of how a business’ supply chain might effectively paint that business with the tar of labor exploitation and poor environmental practices, and that is putting a lot of pressure on those businesses to do better. The businesses themselves, meanwhile, are at the end of the day run by humans. Some may be hard-nosed when it comes to getting business done at any cost, but a good number have a conscience and want to do right by that, not just for the sake of appearances.
On the other hand, there have been notable developments playing out in the regulatory realm that might make whatever “nice to have” that has swirled around ESG into more of a “must do.” In Germany, companies with more than 3,000 employees are required to provide audits and reporting to demonstrate their own ESG compliance — compliance set by regulators — lest they face fines and other penalties. That number is coming down in 2024 to 1,000 employees. In Europe, there is regulation in progress that will place similar requirements on EU companies, bringing down the number of employees even more, to 250.
And that opportunity is definitely one being spotted by others: Worldfavor and Prewave are also building platforms that automate the process of businesses auditing and monitoring suppliers. Others like Salesforce have started to put ESG supplier monitoring into their sustainability product sets, and a startup in France, Sesamm, is building AI tech to help companies with their sustainability commitments.
That’s not the whole story, though: there will be inevitable pushback on these regulations, and there is a big question mark over how all of this will play out in one of the biggest and most industrialized nations in the world, the U.S., where some legislators have floated the idea of not only staying away from any regulation of this kind, but even proactively discouraging developments on this front as counter to economic progress. Businesses are also not all on board.
“Yes, some companies complain, but others see it as a competitive advantage to be good in ESG,” said Berr-Sorokin. “Of course the regulatory regime helps us, but if it gets pushed back, we still have trends in our society and good corporate practices.”
IntegrityNext raises $109M for a platform to audit supply chains for ESG compliance by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch
The European Commission has laid out another piece of its Circular Economy Action Plan today — adopting a proposal to set common EU rules which are intended to make it easier for consumers to get faulty products repaired.
The “right to repair” measures are aimed at reducing e-waste by preventing repairable products from being prematurely junked.
A Commission proposal last year set out to expand the bloc’s ecodesign rules. The right to repair rules are designed to build on that. The EU wants the full sweep of policies to promote longer tech product lifespans to boost sustainability and work toward its headline goal of being carbon neutral by 2050. (Aka the European Green Deal.)
Goods for which EU reparability requirements currently exist include household washing machines and washer-dryers, dishwashers, refrigerating appliances, electronic displays, vacuum cleaners, and servers and data storage. But mobile phones, cordless phones and tablets are slated to soon be added to the list — once respective ecodesign reparability requirements are adopted by the bloc’s lawmakers. So the consumer electronics industry is certainly in the frame.
A right to repair for consumer kit including mobiles and tablets was floated by the Commission back in 2020 — when the EU’s executive said electronics and ICT would be a priority for the expansion of the Ecodesign Directive to help tackle the growing scourge of e-waste.
Today’s package of measures propose a supportive framework to wrap around specific reparability requirements and encourage the development of the necessary services.
“Over the last decades, replacement has often been prioritised over repair whenever products become defective and insufficient incentives have been given to consumers to repair their goods when the legal guarantee expires. The proposal will make it easier and more cost-effective for consumers to repair as opposed to replace goods,” the Commission wrote in a press release. “Additionally, more demand will translate into a boost to the repair sector while incentivising producers and sellers to develop more sustainable business models.”
The proposed measures include a new consumer right to repair both for products that are under guarantee and those no longer covered by a legal guarantee.
“Today’s proposal will ensure that more products are repaired within the legal guarantee, and that consumers have easier and cheaper options to repair products that are technically repairable (such as vacuum cleaners, or soon, tablets and smartphones) when the legal guarantee has expired or when the good is not functional anymore as a result of wear and tear,” the Commission suggested.
For covered tech products still under warranty, sellers will be required to offer repair except when it is more expensive than replacement. While, beyond the legal guarantee, the Commission said EU consumers will get a new set of rights and tools to “make ‘repair’ an easy and accessible option”.
Here’s a summary of the main measures in the Commission proposal:
Additionally today, the Commission announced measures targeting ‘greenwashing’ — via a Green Claims Directive — proposing common criteria for environmental claims by product manufacturers in a bid to combat the flood of misleading marketing that’s sprung up to feed off consumer concerns about climate change.
The bloc is already on the way to making USB-C a common charger standard after lawmakers backed a proposal to further shrink mobile e-waste last year.
Speaking during a press conference to announce the dual proposals — both of which will need the backing of the European Parliament and Council before they can be adopted as EU law — the bloc’s justice and environmental commissioners, Didier Reynders and Virginijus Sinkevičius, said the measures are intended to work together to drive sustainability.
“This proposal is the latest in a series of measures to make the ‘right to repair’ a reality,” said Reynders. “First, we needed to ensure that there were more and more repairable products on the market. This is what we did with the proposal for a Regulation on eco-design, or eco-design of sustainable products… Secondly, it was also important to enable consumers to make sustainable choices based on reliable information.
“This is what we wanted to improve with the proposal “Empowering consumers for the green transition”, also adopted in March 2022. And finally, with the proposal for a Green Claims Directive… Our proposal is the last piece of the puzzle to ensure access to repair in the after-sales phase. To make repair easier, more accessible, and more attractive.”
The repair proposal aims to empower EU consumers to ask for a free repair of a faulty product when it’s under warranty (so up to two years after purchase) — which must be provided by the manufacturer if it’s less or the same cost as a full replacement.
In the case of goods that break down out of warranty, Reynders said the goal is to make it cheaper and easier for consumers to obtain a repair. A Commission Q&A on the plan suggests there will be an obligation on manufacturers to repair a product for 5-10 years after purchase (depending on the type of product) — unless a repair is technically impossible.
“The rule will be clear: The producer will no longer be able to refuse to repair your washing machine, unless repairing it is technically impossible. In other words, the producers will be obliged to look into the repair options,” he suggested. “This obligation will apply to goods that are repairable by design in the EU. Such as a washing machine, dishwasher or TV and soon also smartphones or tablets.
“This obligation will apply to the goods that are directly covered by any repairability requirements under EU law, such as the rules on Ecodesign. And we will continue to add more product groups to this list in the future, as we want Ecodesign products to become the norm. You can therefore notice the strong interconnection between today’s proposal and the Ecodesign proposal.”
“Producers will also have to inform consumers about this obligation and availability of their repair services so that consumers know about their rights,” Reynders added. “The producers will therefore be obliged to repair a product, even if the consumers caused the damage themselves. For this reason, producers can charge a price for repair.”
Per Reynders, the only scenario where a manufacturer will be exempt from the obligation to repair is when repair is impossible — such as when the goods are damaged in a way that makes repair technically unfeasible.
He said the proposal aims to open the door to the development of the repair sector — since consumers will not be obliged to go only to the manufacturer for a repair.
“They will also be able to turn to independent repairers and find other repair services that better meet their needs or offer more attractive options,” he added. “We are therefore removing the obstacles that still deter too many consumers from having repairs done. The obligations and solutions we are presenting with this text will help to reverse this trend.”
A Q&A at the end of the briefing raised questions about the cost of repair — with a member of the press pointing out that cost frequently puts consumers off from trying to repair an item vs buying a new one. On this, Reynders said last year’s Eco Design proposal will be key — suggesting that, over time, it will drive down the cost of repairs by requiring manufacturers to bake repairability and sustainability into product design.
“It means that it’s possible to really cut significantly the cost of repair,” he said. “If a product is designed to be repairable, if there’s access to different parts, components, if you can open up a device. Because often — in the sound sector for example, audio equipment, it is not possible to actually open up a device — you can’t actually get inside it yourself. So the Eco Design approach should simplify things there.”
On greenwashing, the EU’s proposal aims to introduce “minimum requirements” for businesses that make voluntary environmental claims — in the areas of substantiation, communication, and verification.
“Companies will have to ensure the reliability of their voluntary environmental claims, and communicate their claims in a transparent way. Their claims will need to be checked by an independent verifier against the requirements of the Directive. The verifier will then issue a certificate of compliance recognised across the EU,” the Commission said in a Q&A on the Directive.
“By putting in place this common set of rules within the EU internal market, the proposal will give a competitive advantage to companies who make a genuine effort to develop environment-friendly products, services and organisational practices, and lessen their impact on the environment,” it also suggested, adding that it expects the directive to reduce the risk of legal fragmentation of the single market and save costs for businesses that have their claims certified by an accredited verifier — as well as boosting the credibility of European industries abroad.
“If you make a claim as a company, you will need to be able to prove that claim,” said Sinkevičius, speaking during today’s press conference. “So you will have to show that it’s based on science. And that it is reliable. You will have to be specific and you will need to submit your claim for checks by accredited verifiers to ensure it complies with the new directive — and of course you will need to communicate this information in a manner that’s clear and transparent.
“Taken together, these actions should prevent misleading claims from reaching consumers. They will also make life easier for consumers protection authorities once the claim appears on the market.”
Additional measures in the Commission proposal aim to rein in the proliferation of eco labels that have sprung up touting eye-catching green claims to reel in environmentally conscious consumers. “There are around 230 environmental labels on the EU market and no wonder that consumers are confused,” added Sinkevičius. “This proliferation also hinders sustainable business operating across borders and fragments our single market.
“Under new rules we will only allow new public schemes that work at the EU level. We have to mobilise the resources. We have to work together on reliable EU labels — such as the EU Eco label — and if companies want to bring in new private scheme it will need to be better than the ones that are already in place. So there should be a place for labels that show exceptional performance on environmental sustainability but only in well justified cases.”
The proposal comes armed with “teeth”, per the commissioner — who said Member State agencies will be empowered to set “dissuasive” penalties for dyed-in-the-wool greenwashers.
During the Q&A, he was asked whether carbon offsets would be banned under the Green Claims Directive given many such schemes have been found to be worthless, at best. (And given offsetting does not actually reduce carbon emissions — whereas massive reductions in CO2 are absolutely required if humanity is to avoid climate disaster.)
Sinkevičius said the proposal would not ban carbon offsetting claims altogether. But he said “full” information would have to be provided to consumers to stand up the claims being made and also provided to an independent verifier to check such projects are delivering as claimed.
Europe tools up for the repairable future by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch
Ever since they were discovered over 100 years ago, superconductors have seemed a bit magical.
You might have seen one on YouTube, levitating above a pool of liquid nitrogen, shrouded in vapor as the super-chilled seventh element boils off. Or maybe you’ve been inside a much larger one that was cooled by liquid helium, generating tremendous magnetic and radio waves that allowed doctors to peer inside your body as part of an MRI.
Even with their delicate temperature requirements, superconductors have become key players in science, medicine and technology. So you can imagine the excitement when earlier this month, a team of scientists led by Ranga Dias, a professor at the University of Rochester in New York, claimed in a paper that they’d created a room-temperature superconductor, one that exhibits the same magical properties at 69.8 degrees Fahrenheit, to be exact.
If the claims are true, and if scientists are able to refine the product further, it could become a truly transformative technology. Fusion reactors, which rely on superconducting magnets to confine the blazing hot plasma, would grow smaller and cheaper. The electrical grid would stand to be transformed, as lossless superconductors would make transcontinental power lines a reality. Maglev trains might stop being the butt of jokes and become a real alternative to air travel.
In order to capitalize on their research, Dias and Ashkan Salamat, co-author on the paper, founded a company called Unearthly Materials.
I recently stumbled upon a YouTube recording of a virtual talk Dias gave to a Sri Lankan scientific society and university in which he claimed to have raised a $1 million seed round and a $20 million Series A for Unearthly Materials.
In his presentation, Dias claimed to have prominent investors, too. The $1 million seed round featured Union Square Ventures’ Albert Wenger, Spotify’s Daniel Ek, Dolby chairman Peter Gotcher and Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus. The Series A included Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Open AI’s Sam Altman; Ek and Hinrikus followed up.
Though its website is spare, and LinkedIn lists just six employees, Unearthly Materials is not exactly a secret. But at the same time, the company isn’t tracked on PitchBook and doesn’t appear on Crunchbase. It’s unusual for a widely publicized startup to raise $20 million without writing a blog post or issuing a press release.
Unearthly Materials claimed to have big-name investors, but they weren’t all on board by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
Last week, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which protects consumers from deceptive business practices, issued an advisory titled “Keep your AI claims in check.”
When it comes to marketing, “false or unsubstantiated claims about a product’s efficacy are our bread and butter,” wrote Michael Atleson, an attorney with the FTC’s Division of Advertising Practices.
Artificial intelligence is a on everyone’s lips at the moment, “and at the FTC, one thing we know about hot marketing terms is that some advertisers won’t be able to stop themselves from overusing and abusing them.”
Given the renewed interest, “for companies where AI was previously No. 4 on the list of proof points, machine learning capabilities should merge into the main hook of the announcement,” advises PR strategist Camilla Tenn.
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“If AI-related coverage can get a new, unknown brand into its target publications today, it could help get the brand’s pitch deck in front of potential investors or partners tomorrow,” she writes in TC+.
Tenn recommends imitating major players like Google and Samsung, which have dedicated teams that release a steady stream of material about “ongoing projects” tied to prevailing tech trends.
“Even if those projects don’t see the light of day, the PR team has strategically positioned the brand as ‘innovative,’” says Tenn. “With this precedent, startups should not feel abashed to use any means necessary to get their name out there.”
Good advice for marketing mercenaries, but keep those pitches straight — reporters know when we’re being sold to, and the FTC isn’t messing around.
Thanks for reading — and for making this TechCrunch’s fastest-growing newsletter last month!
Have a great weekend,
Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist
Image Credits: Juanmonino (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Many devs rely on donations and crowdfunding to monetize open source projects, but with the proper planning, teams can leverage their work for commercial clients who’ll put them in a higher tax bracket.
Offering users customer support or consulting services are common revenue streams, according to product development consultant Victoria Melnikova, who also says devs should form partnerships and use platforms like Reddit and Hacker News to reach potential paying customers.
“To find your path, talk to your clients and understand their goals and pains.”
Image Credits: Liang Wendong/VCG / Getty Images
Tapping the ocean for energy led to disasters like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which released nearly 5 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
Today, wind power and wave action are just two technologies leading investors to take a closer look at ocean conservation technology, reports Tim De Chant.
To learn more about the opportunities they’re chasing and discover how climate change is shaping their investment thesis, he surveyed:
Image Credits: Gable (opens in a new window)
Remote workspace platform Gable raised a $12 million Series A to scale up its operations, which currently serves more than 5,000 workers in 26 countries.
“Making the business of shared workspaces easier for startups certainly has its challenges, but it’s also a large and growing market,” writes Haje Jan Kamps. “Gable weaves its story together with ease.”
Here’s their 21-slide Series A deck:
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch
Dear Sophie,
I started working for my current employer on STEM-OPT, but I’ve lost out in the H-1B lottery four times. Thankfully, my employer transferred me to an international office, and I am now coming back to the U.S. on an L-1 visa.
I’ve heard many complaints from my classmates about not being able to switch employers on an L-1 visa. I don’t see myself staying at my employer for six more years, which is the estimated time until I can get a green card based on my employer’s internal policy.
What are my options for changing my immigration status so I can work at a startup in the U.S. within a year or two?
— Tenacious Transferee
Image Credits: SomeMeans (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
No one needs a mega-influencer like Serena Williams or a Kardashian to build buzz for their startup — an evangelist with just a few thousand followers can push qualified customers into your product funnel.
But before hiring a TikTok or YouTube personality, brand marketers should brush up on the laws that govern how influencers operate, and the risks associated with failing to comply.
“Novel legal issues and risks have emerged for both influencers and brands,” says Nicholas Sandy, a litigator at Pryor Cashman.
“Key, recurring issues relate to copyright licensing and infringement, disclosures and statements in endorsements, compliance with securities laws, and defamation.”
Interested in speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt this September in San Francisco?
Submit a title and a description for the topic you’d like to talk about before April 21.
Selected applicants will have a chance to lead a roundtable discussion or participate in a breakout session followed by an audience Q&A.
TechCrunch+ roundup: Ocean tech investor survey, AI and PR, L-1 visa options by Walter Thompson originally published on TechCrunch
For all the focus on carbon pollution produced by shipping and aviation, some of the most challenging to abate will probably be residential buildings. In the U.S., housing units stand an average of 130 years before they’re torn down, according to a recent study.
Homes and apartment buildings built 100 years ago, or even 30 years ago, are woefully underprepared for the energy transition. More often than not, their major mechanical systems rely on fossil fuels, their electrical systems are undersized, and their walls and windows are leaky and poorly insulated.
All that can make for housing that’s less comfortable and less efficient than it needs to be.
Nearly a decade ago, Donnel Baird realized that in many cases, paying for retrofits like this can be cost-prohibitive, requiring a lump sum payment upfront. Even though the benefits might accrue over the years, it was a hurdle many owners couldn’t or didn’t want to cross.
So he founded BlocPower, which has been chipping away at the problem for nearly a decade, developing a roster of projects to prove its retrofit-as-a-service business model that’s focused on low-income communities. This week, it announced that it had raised nearly $25 million in equity and $130 million in debt financing.
The Series B round was led by VoLo Earth Ventures and joined by Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, Credit Suisse, Builders Vision, New York State Ventures, Unreasonable Collective, Kimbal and Christiana Musk, Gaingels, Van Jones, Kapor Capital, My Climate Journey, Tale Venture Partners and NBA star Russell Westbrook. Debt financing was led by Goldman Sachs.
BlocPower hits its stride, landing $25M Series B to expand its residential energy retrofit platform by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
Climate change is a problem important and pressing enough that investors have begun to grasp the opportunities that arise when trying to solve it. Now, they’ve started to cast their nets wider for other, adjacent opportunities.
Tech that serves to conserve the oceans while using it to replace older, more harmful means of generating energy and food seems to be one such opportunity. In fact, when we asked 10 investors in the sector to share their thoughts on the space, we quickly learned that ocean conservation tech startups are seeing more and more interest from generalist investors now that climate change is hot and people are seeking more ways to mitigate its effects.
“Climate change used to be more focused on terrestrial operations. It is now ‘warming’ up to ocean conservation,” Daniela Fernandez, managing partner of Seabird Ventures, told TechCrunch.
The world’s oceans and its climate have always been tightly coupled. Winds generate ocean currents, which in turn influence weather patterns both over the open water and deep into the continents.
“Our planet is 70% ocean, so the urgency of facing and solving climate change can only be properly addressed if we include the ocean in the equation,” said Rita Sousa, partner at Faber Ventures.
The open ocean also contains tremendous amounts of energy. Previously, accessing it meant drilling into the ocean floor to tap hard-to-reach deposits of oil and gas. But today, it increasingly means tapping the enormous energy represented by the ocean’s winds and waves. Just offshore wind alone has the potential to meet global electricity demand by 2040, according to the IEA, which is well in excess of all offshore oil and gas production today.
Stephan Feilhauer, managing director of clean energy at S2G Ventures stressed the viability of technologies like offshore wind as commercial alternatives to fossil fuels: “Offshore wind has established supply chains across the globe. It is possible today to manufacture, install and operate gigawatts of offshore wind energy using technology and equipment that is well established and has years of operational data to help us understand its performance. Offshore wind is the only ocean-based renewable technology that meets these criteria today.”
The oceans are constantly exchanging gases with the atmosphere, too; most importantly withdrawing and storing about 30% of all carbon dioxide pollution. The ocean’s capacity as a carbon sink has created problems for myriad marine life, which have depended on historically stable acidity levels that are now creeping higher. However, this very capacity also creates opportunities to put key nutrient cycles to work and capture humanity’s excess emissions.
“A healthy ocean will continue to provide crucial opportunities for carbon sequestration,” said Peter Bryant, program director (oceans) at Builders Initiative. “There are a number of opportunities for increasing the ocean’s ability to store carbon. We have biological approaches that include ecosystem restoration, seaweed cultivation and iron fertilization; chemical solutions where you use minerals to lock dissolved carbon dioxide into bicarbonates; and electromagnetic approaches that store carbon by running electric currents through seawater.”
Founders and investors have a growing appreciation for the ocean’s potential as a resource for renewable energy and its capacity to buffer and even solve some of the climate problem. “We’re confident in the ocean’s resilience here. It’s simply one of the best resources we have in the fight against climate, and that means opportunity,” said Reece Pacheco, partner at Propeller. “We won’t achieve our climate goals without the ocean. Full stop.”
Christian Lim, managing director at SWEN Capital Partners, agreed: “It took too much time, but finally the ocean is being recognized as a critical piece of our fight against climate change.”
We spoke with:
Climate change is the elephant in the room. Has the issue’s rising profile sucked the air out of the room or is it bringing attention to ocean conservation that otherwise wouldn’t be there? How have things changed in the past five years?
Climate change has been a topic for decades. It used to be a “nice to have” about a decade ago: “If you have the extra funds to perform climate risk assessment, then we will dedicate it to climate change.”
Now, it’s more of a “must have.” If we don’t address climate change, we’ll see more extreme weather events. Over the past five years, we’ve seen more focus on ocean conservation, but there is still a $149 billion annual ocean funding gap. Climate change used to be more focused on terrestrial operations. It is now “warming” up to ocean conservation.
We are just now beginning to see a distinct shift in tone. The thinking used to be that “the ocean is a victim of climate change,” but now the thought is more “the ocean can become a climate hero” and plays a huge role in reducing our carbon footprint. Yet, this shift is still very much in its infancy. In particular, the philanthropic community is just starting to recognize that there is an urgent need to support efforts to develop ocean-based climate solutions.
Until now, most climate funders focused on terrestrial or atmospheric issues, and ocean funders focused on important, but only tangentially climate-related ocean issues such as ending unsustainable fishing practices and establishing marine protected areas. The ocean is already the biggest carbon sink on the planet, and we need to better understand both what absorption of all that carbon is doing to ocean ecosystems, and how much more it can potentially contribute without disrupting its other critical ecosystem functions.
It’s also been encouraging to see governments taking action to truly prioritize and create financial incentives for investing in climate/ocean innovations, such as the bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in the U.S. in 2022. There is also an upswell of talent realizing that working a “typical” job is no longer an option if we won’t have a livable planet in the next seven years. We are seeing society reset its priorities and climate is one of the highest ones at the moment.
Climate change has been called “recession-proof” because governments and investors have come to recognize the scope, scale and urgency of the issue. Do you think that’s true of ocean conservation tech as well?
Yes. Climate change and ocean restoration are inherently linked. The ocean is humanity’s biggest protection against climate change, as it produces more than half the air we breathe and absorbs 93% of excess heat from global warming.
Ocean tech and climate change companies and investors all have the same goal. The urgency of the climate crisis has kept passionate funders and entrepreneurs engaged in the development of solutions regardless of the state of the economy.
Climate change has affected the oceans greatly, causing everything from rising water temperatures to more acidification. How are you approaching the question of climate change in your investments?
Seabird Ventures is internally tracking impact and reporting on social and/or environmental factors in our investments. We have externally reported on the following key ocean impact areas:
To fix the climate, these 10 investors are betting the house on the ocean by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
Every year, about 35% of the food supply in the U.S. is wasted. About half of that’s because of picky eaters or outsize restaurant portions, but the rest happens further upstream, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with about 6% to 13% occurring at grocery stores.
For grocery stores, which operate on very thin margins, that loss is significant. The environmental toll is big, too: Grocery store and other retail food losses in the U.S. alone represent 10 million to 20 million metric tons of carbon pollution annually. That’s about as much as some entire countries, like Kenya or Guatemala.
A large part of food waste’s carbon problem happens at the landfill. There, microbes break the food down anaerobically, meaning without oxygen. That process releases methane, a greenhouse gas that’s 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide over 20 years. Landfills can capture the methane and burn it, using it to produce power, for example.
Burning the methane transforms it into carbon dioxide and some other pollutants. While the pollution burden isn’t ideal, from a climate perspective, it’s probably better than the alternative. Only about a fifth of all U.S. landfills capture the gas; the rest just let it seep into the atmosphere.
Part of the problem with landfill gas is that it can be hard to capture. If you’ve ever seen a landfill, you probably understand why. They’re not exactly precision machines.
Intercepting food waste before it hits the landfill changes the equation, though. That’s where Divert hopes to step in.
The company, which was founded in 2007, works with grocery store chains like Ahold Delhaize, Albertsons, Kroger, Safeway and Target to tackle the problem. It starts by analyzing a store’s waste stream and suggesting ways to minimize waste in the first place.
Divert bags $100M growth equity, $1B financing to tackle grocery store food waste by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
Air Company, a startup that turns carbon dioxide into perfume, vodka, hand sanitizer and aviation fuel, is now on the U.S. Defense Department’s payroll, so to speak.
The JetBlue and Toyota-backed company struck an up-to $65 million deal to help the Air Force capture CO2 and turn it into “sustainable” aviation fuel on base.
Air Company said the carbon will initially come from industrial fermentation facilities — which is how the startup makes fuel at its “pilot plant” in Brooklyn, New York. But the company also has its hands in direct air capture, which is “part of the technology that Air Company would be building out on site,” a spokesperson for the firm said.
The goal is not for Air Company to supply fuel but to provide the Air Force with tech to make the fuel itself. The company described producing fuel on bases as “harm reduction,” saying it prevents “fuel transportation as a target for explosives.”
“The contract is tiered out over the next several years,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. Air Company aims to work with the Air Force to produce “tens of hundreds of gallons,” and later “tens of thousands of gallons,” of jet fuel. As one astute TechCrunch reader commented below, “tens of hundreds” is also known as “thousands.”
The Department of Defense is a notorious carbon polluter, though it is cagey about how much fuel it burns. Researchers at England’s Lancaster University estimate the DoD emits “more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries.” The same researchers argue that “action on climate change demands shuttering vast sections of the military machine.”
Sustainable aviation fuel can come from lots of things; possible feedstocks include household waste, a variety of crops, and used cooking oil. The source of the fuel, as well as how it’s produced and transported, determines whether it’s actually as sustainable as the name suggests.
Asked about its environmental impact, Air Company told TechCrunch that it exclusively uses renewable electricity to produce its fuel today, which it called “completely carbon neutral when burned.”
This story was updated on March 1, 2023 with additional details on Air Company’s deal.
Startup inks $65M deal to help Air Force make ‘sustainable’ jet fuel on bases by Harri Weber originally published on TechCrunch
The current battery boom might feel familiar to those who lived through the clean tech bubble that burst a decade ago, with an awful lot of money being invested in what are still nascent markets.
But certainly they’re bigger this time around: The number of electric vehicles on the road has more than doubled in the last seven years, for example, and demand doesn’t seem to be slowing. Market share for EVs has been growing even as the overall automotive market has softened in recent years.
It’s been enough to convince automakers and battery companies to commit nearly $300 billion to building a raft of gigafactories around the world, including more than $38 billion here in the U.S. alone. That confidence has cascaded through the market, driving waves of investment that have resulted in over $42 billion in venture and private equity capital committed to battery research, development, commercialization and manufacturing.
For battery startups like Michigan-based Our Next Energy, betting it all on the automotive market, which is notoriously fickle, can be a risky proposition. Demand for cars and trucks often craters when the economy tumbles. EV sales have been historically tied to an even more volatile indicator: gas prices. As COVID showed, just a few ripples in the automotive supply chain can send shockwaves through the market. The automotive market has a lot of volume, sure, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that margins are typically thin.
As investments go, the automotive sector doesn’t seem like a great place to make massive, long-term bets like the kind required for gigafactories.
And yet the money keeps flowing, and companies like ONE and its investors are increasingly confident that this round of climate tech investments will turn out very differently from the last. What’s behind that bravado?
Why so many gigafactories? It’s not just EVs driving demand by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
For an ecosystem that covers a majority of the planet, the oceans have basically been ignored by startups and investors alike.
Sure, plenty of money is spent on ocean-based industries, but most of today’s marine investments are into either extractive industries like fishing or oil and gas, or activities like shipping, which aren’t extractive but don’t exactly benefit marine ecosystems.
However, in recent years, there has been a sea change in perspectives. Founders and investors have started to look for opportunities to conserve, and even enhance, the ocean’s resources rather than exploit them.
“There is tremendous potential for the ocean to provide more food, more efficiently, with less environmental impact and even regeneratively,” said Reece Pacheco, a partner at Propeller.
Because the oceans take up so much of the planet and the space is relatively uncharted, there are plenty of opportunities for investors to find niches ripe with financial and environmental upsides.
“Our systems are at a point where it is more productive to work with nature than against it,” said Sanjeev Krishnan, chief investment officer at S2G Ventures. “While energy and agriculture are further along the J-curve, the oceans sector is more nascent but presents an investable opportunity that impacts almost every sector of the global economy.”
In that way, ocean conservation tech mirrors climate tech, which has been growing so fast that some have called it “recession-proof.” Of course, some question whether any sector is truly recession-proof and that applies to ocean conservation tech as well.
That doesn’t mean that investors aren’t bullish, though. “I’m not sure I would characterize the ocean economy as recession-proof, but the investment opportunities are real from a venture capital perspective,” said Tim Agnew, general partner at Bold Ocean Ventures.
Even some of the most intractable and high-profile problems facing the world’s oceans, like plastic pollution, are inspiring investors to dive in.
“People have been looking at solving these problems in the wrong way,” said Daniela Fernandez, managing partner at Seabird Ventures. “Profitability and scalability depend on the approach and business model that is being implemented to solve the plastic pollution crisis. We have to think beyond community beach cleanups — there are actually extremely investable approaches to solving the plastic problem.”
Investors like Fernandez are looking with fresh eyes at both new problems like plastic pollution and old ones like aquaculture and fisheries management. In the process, they’re betting that innovative approaches to solving those problems will not just create returns but create disruptions and innovations that spill over into adjacent sectors.
“Part of our thesis is that ocean conservation technologies can solve big problems for big ocean-going industries and adjacent industries,” said Kate Danaher, managing director at S2G Ventures.
But, she added, there’s still more room to grow. “We need to make the case to even more climate-focused and generalist investors.”
To get a better idea of how startups and investors are thinking about ocean conservation tech and the opportunities therein, we spoke with:
What is your investment thesis for ocean conservation tech in 2023? What sort of growth are you expecting in the sector?
Our investment thesis is focused on innovations that modernize the seafood supply chain, expand production in a sustainable way and address the impacts of climate change. We believe this investment opportunity is in its early stages and will be a major theme over the next decade as it becomes clearer how impactful the ocean can be in addressing the climate crisis and feeding a growing, more urbanized population.
Ocean-related businesses are at the beginning stages of adopting new technologies to increase efficiencies and productivity.
Is there a meaningful distinction between the tech used by startups focused on coastal regions and the tech built for the open ocean?
Answer is yes and no. Ocean shipping and ocean wind are obviously very different animals from kelp aquaculture and climate resiliency, but both are migrating toward more tech-enabled solutions, including digital technologies, artificial intelligence, data gathering and analysis.
A lot of the problems facing the oceans, like plastic pollution, don’t seem to have much potential for profit. Is that a fair assessment, or have we been looking at these problems in the wrong way?
We just looked at a company that has a booming business of gathering plastic bottles on beaches, separating the types of plastic and selling to companies that are anxious to be able to offer recycled bottles or other products.
There is considerable research going into the transition from plastic packaging to biodegradable packaging. There is plenty of potential for profitable businesses, although the process of cleaning up the oceans is going to require time and money.
What technology are you excited about that has the most potential to create new markets?
Seafood traceability solutions; ropeless traps; microalgae and seaweed are a hugely untapped resource with multiple market opportunities; ocean and weather data collection and analysis.
The ocean today only accounts for 15% of the world’s protein and 2% of its calories. What is the potential for the oceans to provide more, and what should that look like?
The oceans will provide more food that has a much lower carbon footprint than land-based animal protein. Shifting demand from beef to seafood could have a major impact on GHG reduction. Seafood aquaculture, both on- and offshore, is growing much faster than wild-caught seafood and will become a major source of high-quality protein.
What are some of the keystone problems that an ocean-based food system faces?
Social license concerns about aquaculture, species sustainability and the need to broaden consumer tastes to reduce pressure on overfishing.
From aquaculture to kelp farming, there is a range of options to get more food from the oceans. Which do you think is the most promising?
RAS and closed system aquaculture.
What is your investment thesis for ocean conservation tech in 2023? What sort of growth are you expecting in the sector?
Peter Bryant: We invest in technologies and business models that enhance the conservation, regeneration and resilience of ecosystems, optimize the production of and use of resources derived from the ocean, and provide consumers with a sustainable, traceable and secure food.
Kate Danaher: Part of our thesis is that ocean conservation technologies can solve big problems for big ocean-going and adjacent industries. Innovations that create deflationary solutions like saving fuel, lowering water usage or can build diverse revenue streams through multiple industries will be best positioned to weather this economic winter, raise capital and gain traction in the market.
As these types of innovations begin to show commercial results and have a positive environmental impact, we expect that investment in the sector will continue to increase, spurring more oceans-focused funds and increased interest from broader climate funds.
What role have impact investors played in ocean conservation? Investor networks?
Bryant: Within ocean conservation, there are technologies and entire subsectors that are still developing and need patient capital for R&D, reaching product-market fit, and in some cases, creating new markets. Patient capital lets commercially viable companies de-risk themselves and provide them with the runway they need to hit milestones to attract more traditional capital.
Impact investors have also catalyzed the growth of the ocean investment landscape by providing the first capital into ocean funds. Before 2018, there were only a handful of ocean-focused funds; however, in the last 18 months, more than 18 ocean-focused funds have been launched.
This is exciting not only because it will lead to hundreds of millions of new dollars invested in the oceans, but also because it demonstrates that venture and growth equity investors have seen the potential of oceans and are willing to set up funds with an oceans focus. Impact investors who are willing to invest early in these funds are playing a pivotal role in attracting the capital needed to grow the investment landscape in oceans.
Is ocean conservation the next climate tech? 7 investors explain why they’re all in by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
Based in the Netherlands, blossoming agtech startup Source.ag has announced a $23 million Series A funding round to help grow its business, less than a year after its previous, $10 million round. The company assists commercial greenhouse crop growers adjust their growing conditions, optimize their resources and maximize their yields by using state-of-the-art AI models to predict how their plants will grow under different conditions. Food production is both energy and water-intensive (“fun” fact: agricultural irrigation uses 70% of water worldwide) and with the global population expected to reach 10 billion by 2050, it strikes me that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to use a bit less water to grow our food.
The company is taking a bet on greenhouse agriculture being a sustainable, local and climate-resilient food production method that can provide a tailored environment for each specific crop. Source.ag’s technology, then, aims to enable growers to make better-informed decisions about their crops and greenhouses to facilitate more sustainable harvests.
Source.ag’s seed funding was used primarily for R&D and to develop Source Track, a software platform to assist growers in operating their facilities. It has worked with hundreds of users over thousands of acres of high-tech greenhouses, making it ripe for expansion. The Series A funding, led by Astanor Ventures and including investments from Acre Venture Partners and several of the Netherlands’ leading greenhouse operators, will enable the development of two new products: Source Cultivate and Source Control.
“We will release several new products in the next 24 months, including Source Cultivate, which will give growers unprecedented predictive powers and the ability to leverage AI in finding optimal growing strategies,” explains Rien Kamman, Source.ag’s co-founder and CEO. “In essence, we’re giving growers a crystal ball in which they can see how external factors and strategic decisions will impact the development of their crops, including the associated resource usage, costs and returns. Based on this we support growers finding the growth strategy that is right for them.”
“One of our customers in France already used Source Cultivate to simulate different pruning and climate strategies for its tomato crops, getting instant feedback from our AI how different strategies would impact plant health, yield and profit over the whole season,” Kamman adds. “This enabled the grower to find the perfect growing strategy — tailored to his geographic location, resource prices, facility type and seed genetics.”
The largest global fresh vegetable sectors, for example tomatoes and bell peppers, have been Source.ag’s main focus to date, but its aim is to assist all growers, everywhere, to manage the best harvest possible.
“Source.ag’s goal is to give growers and farmers similar superpowers for growing their crops. Source.ag will be able to provide real-time advice on how to best grow crops, no matter what you grow or how you grow it,” says Kamman. “It’s mind-boggling that there are 3 billion people that do not have access to sufficient fresh produce.”
To the company’s founder, Source.ag is about the democratization of agricultural knowledge through AI, allowing the cultivation of fresh fruits and vegetables in the most efficient and sustainable way possible.
“I believe Source.ag is uniquely positioned to ‘bridge the gap’ between the digital world of AI and the real world of plants, growers and farming,” Kamman says. “We have deep experience in building applied AI, and we’ve been able to attract top talent who collaborate closely with the best growers in the world.”
Kamman and his co-founder, Ernst van Bruggen, had been building AI systems for large corporations for many years, but having grown up in the Netherlands — one of the largest fresh fruit and vegetable producers in Europe — the duo felt they would be able to apply their knowledge and skills to help farmers feed the world. They quit their jobs and founded Source.ag in early 2020 to hybridize tech and food.
For Kamman, Source.ag isn’t just a software vendor; he sees it as a long-term partner in a growing operation where the farmers are the heroes. If farming and tech might sound like strange bedfellows, Kamman is keen to point out how both growers and developers practice a craft and through this, they find common ground.
“I’ve found that craftsmen recognize, and easily connect with, other craftsmen — even outside their domain. It’s the love for the profession that is the connector, especially when combined with a humble curiosity in each other’s profession,” Kamman concludes. “It’s amazing to see our developers spend time in the greenhouse with the grower, learning from them firsthand what Source can build to help growers become even more successful.”
Source.ag raises $23M to raise the bar on raising crops with AI by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch
After a decade of keeping its North American charging network closed to outsiders, Tesla appears poised to allow other electric vehicles to use its Superchargers.
The White House announced on Wednesday that the company would open 7,500 chargers — including 3,500 250 kW stalls along highways — to any EV with the combined charging system (CCS), the standard broadly used in the U.S. (The company has vowed to do something similar before, so maybe don’t hold your breath just yet, though this new Biden administration fact sheet has some hard numbers, which were notably absent last year.) The first bricks in the EV charger wall should rattle loose by the end of 2024.
If Tesla follows through — again, a big “if” given the company’s preference for splashy announcements and optimistic timelines — it could usher in a sea change in EV charging infrastructure in the U.S.
Today, Electrify America, the closest competitor, has about 3,500 fast chargers. If Tesla were to make the change overnight, it would double the number of fast-charging stalls.
Tesla’s main motivator, of course, is getting a piece of the $7.5 billion EV charging pie that’s part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. While opening a portion of the Supercharger network will help the automaker’s bottom line courtesy of the government, the move will also have some knock-on effects that are likely to upend EV charging in the U.S. Here are a few ways those could unfurl.
The cynical take is that Tesla is simply going to use federal money to put even more distance between itself and its competitors. It’s possible, even likely, that the company will use the new funding to add new stalls to its already enviable network.
Tesla opening its Superchargers to all EVs might be a masterstroke — or a terrible mistake by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
Around 39,000 people were killed in motor vehicle incidents in the USA in 2020 — and 6,200 of those deaths were pedestrians. Needless to say, those deaths aren’t just statistics: each has a ripple effect on families, loved ones and the wider communities. Viva is looking to tackle transportation impacts after raising $8.5 million in funding to expand its transport data collection into North America, with the long-term hope to reduce the number of injuries and make traffic safer overall.
Viva (or VivaCity as it is known in the U.K.) is already well-established in Australia and the U.K. and is now bringing its artificial intelligence sensors to New York City. It will work with the New York City Department of Transportation (NYC DoT) on a new safety data analysis project. Viva’s sensors gather anonymized data showing how different street users move (or don’t) through the city. They can monitor how many vehicles or people are traveling in which direction, where and when congestion occurs and even detect “near misses” between vehicles or vehicles and pedestrians.
This wealth of anonymized data is intended to assist NYC DoT in making strategic decisions that help people move from A to B more efficiently, more sustainably and more safely. The theory is that if you can predict where accidents are likely to occur, taking action to prevent them beats waiting for one — or more — to happen before trying to do something about it.
“There is a critical need for technology that adapts to the changing mobility landscape. Reactive decision-making is not fit for purpose and it is costing lives. To change, we need to have data to better understand how people are using the roads,” Viva’s CEO Mark Nicholson explains. “This helps authorities to redirect their billions of annual infrastructure investment into the right places.”
“The main driver for both myself and my co-founders is to tackle climate change. It’s the sad truth that globally, transport is the most stubborn when it comes to emissions — even with electric vehicles coming in,” says Nicholson. In a nutshell, poor transport infrastructure is a people-killer in more ways than one. “Making our streets safer means more people can go places on foot or by two-wheeled pedal-power. Good for people, good for the planet.”
“I’m excited to see the impact this will have on road safety, particularly for vulnerable road users like cyclists. The perception that the roads are dangerous is the No. 1 reason that people don’t cycle more, so anything we can do to change that will have a huge climate impact,” says Nicholson.
Nicholson and his co-founders met at university in 2011, when they raised half a million dollars to build an experimental car that was 50x more efficient than standard road vehicles. Bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, they founded Viva in 2015, looking to improve road safety and fight climate collapse.
Since its foundation, Viva has deployed more than 3,500 sensors in seven countries. These sensors can detect nine different modes of transport and have accumulated an impressive 20 billion road user counts. Its latest funding aims to help it grow further.
Viva’s latest funding is led by sustainable infrastructure VC investor EnBW New Ventures (ENV), sustainability-led alternative assets and SME investment manager Foresight Group and Gresham House Ventures, the growth equity arm of specialist alternative asset manager Gresham House. Using this fundraising, Viva says it is focused on continued growth, with two particular goals:
First is its internal expansion, of which the New York City collaboration is a part. “We’re already present in over 100 U.K. cities and have worked with authorities in Australia and around Europe to better understand their roads,” says Nicholson. “With our sensors installed in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, NYC DoT are now analyzing this data to prioritize projects for the areas most in need of safety and other improvements.”
The second goal is to expand the Viva product line. “Our vision is for road transport infrastructure to become data-driven, including real-time systems like traffic signals. The new product portfolio has targeted products that address the three major challenges the industry faces: road safety, sustainable transport and network optimization to beat congestion,” Nicholson concludes.
Nicholson is in no doubt of how valuable the data collected by Viva can be to creating livable cities. “If we look back 10-20 years, other industries have been revolutionized by data, including advertising, marketing and retail. These industries are now radically different because of data that has gone into their ecosystems.”
VivaCity’s sensors are privacy-forward and relatively unobtrusive. Image Credits: VivaCity
The collation of large-scale anonymized data will allow for the analysis of how a city’s roads function: how and when people move about, and where the bottlenecks and blackspots are. Ultimately, this can lead to safer streets and livable cities where citizens aren’t afraid to engage with active travel.
You might have noticed how there’s an emphasis on “anonymized data” here — the company tells TechCrunch that privacy-by-design is fundamental to the company, and it claims that maintaining the security and confidentiality of people’s data is critical to the company’s success.
“I believe strongly that the future of the Smart City has to be citizen-centric,” says Nicholson. “As such, we have designed our solutions from the ground up to guarantee the privacy of every citizen. The system was developed using data protection-by-design principles and is fully compliant with GDPR.”
VivaCity raises at $42M valuation to make US cities safer, starting with New York by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch
In 2024, a number of new EU regulations are expected to come into force, which will tighten the obligation of electric vehicle manufacturers and resellers to recycle batteries at the end of their natural lifespan. German battery recycling startup Cylib leapt at the opportunity, raising a total of €11.6 million ($12.6 million) to build a recycling factory.
“For too long, battery recycling hasn’t been efficient enough for companies to take advantage of,” said co-founder and COO at Cylib, Gideon Schwich. “We need to create awareness with different stakeholders to ensure that battery recycling is given the attention it deserves to enable a circular economy in battery usage.”
The company says that over the next six to 12 months, it will be working to recycle the first batteries provided by its pilot partners — demonstrating that the company’s process is scalable, alongside the challenge of building out the supply chains and customer base.
“The goal of this fundraising was to accelerate the industrialization of our sustainable recycling process, which has been developed over years of research. We now want to scale the process to reach industrial levels, with plans to establish a cutting-edge recycling facility so it can serve more customers across Europe,” says co-founder and CEO at Cylib, Lilian Schwich in an interview with TechCrunch.
The lead investor of this round is World Fund, while previous investors include Vsquared Ventures and Speedinvest. For this round, 10x Founders also joined. The current round is an €8 million extension, taking the total amount raised for the company’s seed round to €11.6 million.
“World Fund provides a strong climate capability, deep tech knowledge and operational expertise with an extensive network. That is why we are also very excited that Dr. Mark Windeknecht is joining as an observer to the board,” says Schwich. “World Fund only invests in startup technologies that can save at least 100 megatonnes of CO2e annually by 2040. World Fund is also joined by 10x Founders, which brings a wealth of knowledge on the path of a founder and will help to build the company even stronger.”
The company is aiming to create the most efficient and sustainable recycling process for lithium batteries — like the ones used in electric vehicles. The company has created a process that means it can take end-of-life batteries, recover the resources and output new raw materials. The idea is to close the loop and ensure the mobility sector can run on electrified, regenerative energy. The company says it has a 90% recycling efficiency.
“By doing so, we can also make it possible to trace back all resources and ensure supply chain transparency, drastically lowering the environmental footprint of batteries and driving the decarbonization of mobility and transport forward,” says Lilian Schwich, pointing out that this reduces the need to mine additional lithium. “This will enable true green and circular mobility.”
Battery recycling startup Cylib recharges its coffers to go faster by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch
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