HeatTransformers turns up the dial on heat pumps with new funding

In the Netherlands, central heating boilers will be banned by 2026 and its government has incentivized the installation of heat pumps. Meanwhile, the U.K. government estimates that heating buildings accounts for 25% of the U.K.’s greenhouse gas emissions. It passed the Energy Security Bill, and is aiming to install 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028. All of this opens up opportunities for companies advising on, fitting and maintaining heat pumps, which is what Netherlands-based HeatTransformers, does. It just a raised €15 million Series A to go heavy on the (proverbial) gas.

“Heat pumps have an unbeatable CO₂ reduction ratio per invested dollars for households,” says Stijn Otten, co-founder and director of HeatTransformers, “This ratio is much higher than with solar for instance. This was already the case back in 2018 when we started, but even more today.”

While heat pumps might not be new technology, the tech isn’t evenly distributed. More than 60% of homes in Norway are heated using heat pumps, for example, while the U.S. sees fewer than 6% so equipped. HeatTransformers seeks to address the traditional challenges of heat pump adoption by connecting heat pump producers and installation specialists with consumers. The HeatTransformers platform takes consumers through the process from the beginning, when they might only be thinking about the benefits of a heat pump, through installation and beyond, with maintenance, online monitoring and the optimization of heat pumps.

This is a model that has attracted global energy companies, heat pump producers and installers as committed partners, including Engie, Bosch, BDR Thermea Group and dozens of local and national installers. Its €15 million Series A funding round was led by Energy Impact Partners (“EIP”), a global investment firm supporting the transition to a sustainable future, with participation from existing investors Fair Capital Partners and InnovationQuarter.

Interestingly, HeatTransformers told TechCrunch that it could have done without the investment but felt that it needed to scale faster in order to address the general state of the global energy market: war in Ukraine, energy poverty and carbon emissions’ climate impact.

“In this process we were looking for truly professional investors who could help us scaling up across multiple markets,” says Otten. “But at the same time, we also wanted investors who share the same impact fundamentals we have. This is what we found in Energy Impact Partners — a leading investment firm in this space with experience scaling companies like us across multiple markets.”

With heat pump sales having risen by almost 38% across Europe last year, which replaced roughly 4 billion cubic meters of natural gas and avoided 8 million tons of CO₂ emissions, HeatTransformers has recognized that right now is the time to be expanding, to meet the growing need for heat pumps not just in the Netherlands, but across Europe.

“This investment will cement our market-leading position in the Netherlands, it will enable us to grow into other markets like Germany and the U.K.,” says Otten. “Fundamentally, it will help us grow and increase our impact.”

For Otten himself, the excitement lies in growing his company and, further into the future, having a lasting impact on global residential heating, as well as climate change.

“I am specifically looking forward to building the teams, further developing the tech-platform and building our partnerships with suppliers, energy companies and installation companies across Europe,” says Otten. “In 10 years’ time, heat pumps will be the common way of heating your home across the entire globe. HeatTransformers will have played a pivotal role in speeding up this transition and [will still be] playing a role in the installation of heat pumps and optimizing the energy systems of households across multiple countries.”

HeatTransformers turns up the dial on heat pumps with new funding by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

Alga Biosciences wants to help climate change, one bovine burp at a time

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.

“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

When life gives you carbon, make Carbonaide

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

Foiled again: Candela raises another $20M to set course for the future of ferries

Swedish company Candela this summer will launch its 30-passenger commercial hydrofoil shuttle, the P-12, the vessel it believes will change the course of motorized water transport. Following its C-7 and C-8 leisure cruisers, Candela has already been making waves with its drive to transition to fossil-free waterways.

“We are now heavy into the process of finalizing the development and putting this ferry into production, which we think is going to be kind of a game changer in public transportation,” said Gustav Hasselskog, Candela’s founder and CEO.

The company raised SEK 210 million (around $20 million) in a round co-led by EQT Ventures and investor duo Joel Eklund (Fosielund Holding AB) and Svante Nilo Bengtsson (Marknadspotential AB), with participation from Ocean Zero LLC and others. This follows its $24 million round from last year.

The P-12 is an electric-powered hydrofoil that effectively flies over the surface of the water on computer-guided underwater wings. It has a range of up to 60 nautical miles at a cruising speed of 27 knots. Being electrically powered makes the P-12 cleaner and greener than traditional diesel-fueled craft, which also makes it cheaper to operate. Candela estimates that the P-12 uses 80% less energy than a traditional vessel.

“It’s a very good thing for the environment. In total, the shipping industry is around 3% of total carbon emissions,” says Hasselskog. However, as well as the benefits of being electric-powered, the P-12 is designed to be low maintenance and with lower service costs.

“We use a low maintenance type of dry drain. We have developed this pod motor, which doesn’t have any gears, any oil or anything; it’s just motors underneath the water,” explains Hasselskog.

If the decision to make a passenger vessel with a maximum capacity of 30 people seems a little unusual, it’s because it is designed for coastal, archipelago or lake-based transport, and how people actually use water transport in these geographies.

“It looks the same in Oslo, in Stockholm, in New York and everywhere: most of these boats are typically 300 passengers. But when you study optimal boat size, especially in Stockholm, Istanbul and in San Francisco, it’s concluded that it’s not the optimal boat size. Seat utilization is typically super low. In Stockholm, it’s 5% over the year,” says Hasselskog. “When you have only 30 passengers, you don’t need more than one staff member on board; otherwise, you need three staff members. If you put that all together, you get a very good cost equation, and that’s why we went with this format. Operators save typically around 40% compared to traditional, large, diesel setups.”

Smaller craft can also be deployed more flexibly, for example, by operating on an on-demand basis rather than on a fixed timetable, and can travel to more remote locations. The company says this format has huge cost-efficiency benefits for operators. 

Candela is looking to build on this flexible approach to transport and is currently developing its own software to enable real-time fleet routing.

“The first one we’re going to put in water is for the city of Stockholm,” says Hasselskog. “It’s going to run from a suburb outside of town into the center. If you travel that route today by bus and subway, or by the current boat, it takes 50 minutes. We can do that in 25 minutes, the reason being we don’t create any wake so we have permission to go faster. If we can save commuters’ journey time, that makes a huge difference.”

For Candela and Hasselskog, the future looks like large fleets of small craft that can travel more quickly to more remote locations with greater flexibility. It might be starting in Stockholm, but it estimates that the market is €15 billion in size, and the format has global appeal.

”The next step for us here is to… take a place like Stockholm, where there are, say, 35 big ferries today. We will replace them with 120 of ours,” says Hasselskog. And from there: “It’s a global business that we envision and so far, we are in dialogue with hundreds of customers. They are spread from Hong Kong to Sydney. There are a lot in the Gulf region, in Europe, and we have dialogues in Mexico, Belize, San Francisco, New York.”

The company is taking a big bet that bigger isn’t always better, in the hope that smaller can mean faster, greener and more serviceable.

Foiled again: Candela raises another $20M to set course for the future of ferries by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

The Climate Choice wants to make supply chain emissions more visible and more green

The World Economic Forum says that so-called “Scope 3 emissions,” — or CO₂ in supply chains — can make up as much as 90% of a company’s carbon footprint, and worldwide more than half of all emissions can be traced back to only a handful of supply chains. Tracking and reducing these emissions are easier said than done; and if you can’t track it, you can’t improve it. Berlin-based startup The Climate Choice closed a $2 million round to help companies cut a chunk of their carbon out of that part of their emissions, too.

“In 2014 I experienced the problem firsthand when I attempted to reduce the climate impact of my first company, Resmio, by sourcing products from climate-friendly suppliers. The task proved impossible for someone who was not a climate expert,” explains The Climate Choice CEO and co-founder, Yasha Tarani. “Following the sale of Resmio, I took a sabbatical and witnessed the catastrophic effects of climate change firsthand. In Delhi I arrived to 122-degree temperatures with people sleeping on the streets, in Thailand my hut was lost to floods and in New Zealand I saw the glow of bushfires on the horizon. I decided then to dedicate my life’s work to reversing the degradation of our planet.”

Tarani combined forces with co-founder Lara Obst, who had built what she refers to as the EU’s leading climate innovation program. Together, they decided to focus on decarbonizing corporate supply chains, along with a third partner — data scientist Dr. Rey Farhan, who had most recently been working on data-heavy products for the financial industry.

The $2 million equity financing round was led by Gutter Capital.

“We believe the world is at a turning point. Starting in 2024, approximately 49,000 companies will be required to disclose Scope 3 emissions data in compliance with the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. We believe that The Climate Choice is positioned to be the partner of choice to help these companies rise to the moment,” explains Tarani. “We have already seen the success of our platform with our customers in simplifying data collection and collaboration with suppliers, and we are excited to empower companies around the world to make climate-relevant procurement decisions.”

The company has built a platform that helps companies understand the emissions of their suppliers, acquire audit-ready data and take actions to decarbonize the supply chain. The product is currently in use by several early customers, including O2 Telefonica and HiPP. The company says it is actively monitoring thousands of suppliers.

“Our mission is to empower every company to be a climate champion. We believe that now more than ever that mission is in reach. Today about half of European companies have a climate transition plan in place, but less than 5% of those companies show the readiness required to achieve those plans. We believe that TCC will fundamentally change this,” says Tarani. “Ten years from now our platform will automate supplier engagement for the world’s largest companies, and all companies will have access to real-time supplier data to empower informed decision making.”

The company is adamant that it isn’t a carbon accounting platform, but something different altogether.

“Traditional carbon accounting practices rely on averages and assumptions to calculate supplier emissions. This approach is helpful to infer a rough carbon footprint and understand hotspots, but because every supplier within a category looks the same, it is useless for actually making choices to decarbonize,” Tarani explains. “TCC starts where the carbon accounting typically ends. Our platform automates supplier outreach and generates real primary data profiles on supplier emissions and practices. Supplier profiles are shared openly within our network, so that work is not duplicated across firms. Armed with comprehensive supplier data, companies can compare suppliers, and make informed procurement decisions to decarbonize their supply chain.”

The Climate Choice wants to make supply chain emissions more visible and more green by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

Rethink rethinks mobility and logistics with new €50M fund

Rethink Ventures just announced a €50 million specialist fund focused on mobility, automotive and logistics. With keywords “clean, safe, and digital,” the Munich-based firm is focusing especially on Europe-based startups at the early stage, stretching into Series A financing. LPs include ZF Ventures, Hellmann Worldwide Logistics, KION Group, Berylls and HAVI, as well as the European Investment Fund and a handful of family offices.

“The transportation sector faces significant challenges as the global demand for mobility and logistics continues to grow. With more than 25% of greenhouse gas emissions coming from this sector and additional negative externalities such as congestion and the significant usage of physical space, there is a lot of pressure to rapidly change the way we move people and goods,” says Jens-Philipp Klein, general partner at Rethink. “Our mission is to back early-stage startups that address these challenges and help them scale their technologies and products using our capital, deep expertise and access to a strong network of corporates. Together with all stakeholders in the industry, we aim to foster solutions that eventually will provide clean, digital and safe mobility for everyone.”

The fund says that its top priority is to provide unparalleled support to its portfolio companies while adding long-term value to their corporate partners, creating a mutually beneficial ecosystem that creates a positive impact for all.

The fund’s thesis-driven investment focus is on next-generation vehicle technologies (software defined, autonomously operated, new powertrains), mobility (providing comfortable, safe and affordable mobility for everyone), logistics (digital, automated and sustainable operations) and energy (infrastructure to power a clean, emission-free future of transportation).

The new fund has made three investments to date: Deftpower, an automotive charging platform that enables companies to launch, manage and scale electric charging offerings to their customers; Shipzero, a data-driven platform to measure and reduce CO₂ emissions in global freight transportation; and Rydes, a SaaS solution for corporations to foster sustainable employee mobility by giving their employees access to various transport offerings.

Rethink rethinks mobility and logistics with new €50M fund by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

Aether wants to shift you from blood diamonds to gems pulled from thin air

Diamonds: carbon, transparent, expensive, symbolic of love and commitment — and many of them come dripping with human rights abuses. They also come with a heavy environmental burden, even the lab-grown ones. So what if diamonds could be done differently, with proper traceability and sustainability? That’s exactly where Aether, a diamond-growing company based in New York, is trying to change the narrative around diamonds.

“The only thing transparent in this industry are the stones,” says Ryan Shearman, CEO of Aether Diamonds in an interview with TechCrunch. “There is no supply chain on planet Earth that’s fully traceable with respect to mined diamonds. And the same goes for a lab-grown diamond; it’s better when you’re talking about a lab-grown diamond, but it’s still nowhere near fully traceable.”

Although people are more aware of the human impact of diamond mining, and terms such as “blood diamond” or “conflict diamond” are well recognized, the environmental impact of diamond mining is enormous and perhaps a little less well-known.

“Diamonds are particularly bad in terms of the ratio of earth that needs to be moved, compared to the actual product that makes it to market. For one carat worth of diamond, you have to move about as much earth that it takes to fill up the average American living room,” says Shearman. Of course, it isn’t just the scarification of the landscape, but the vast quantities of energy required to excavate and relocate that earth, the particulates released into the atmosphere in the process, the toxic waste it generates and the residues collected in tailing ponds or that run off into waterways. Then there are accidents associated with the mines themselves, or their aftermath.

If we have to have diamonds, there must be a better way — and that’s where Aether steps in. Aether’s direct air capture process builds on a CO₂ to methane conversion reaction discovered by French chemist Paul Sabatier, but one that required enormous refinement to ensure that it was energy efficient.

Aether’s diamond-growing process takes carbon dioxide from the air, which it then synthesizes into the hydrocarbon material required to grow diamonds. This hydrocarbon feedstock, or Atmospheric Methane, as the company calls it, is injected into a chemical vapor deposition reactor, where the diamond grows, one atom layer at a time. The fully grown diamonds don’t emerge from the chamber ready to be set into engagement rings or pairs of earrings. They are still rough, requiring to be cut, polished and finished. But, they have been extracted from the air, are fully traceable, and are carbon neutral.

“We can tell you where every carbon atom in your diamond came from, and we can trace the path of that carbon atom all the way through to final sale,” says Shearman.

But carbon neutral? Isn’t that a bit of a stretch for a process that requires so much energy, even when you are extracting carbon from the atmosphere to produce the diamond itself?

“From a sequestration standpoint, we would have to make a lot of diamonds to drive a huge impact. Where we have our biggest impact with diamonds is avoidance, we get to avoid all of the really terrible things that are happening with these other dirtier lab-grown diamonds and mined diamonds,” says Shearman, acknowledging that even lab-grown diamonds are an energy-hungry resource and can be terrible for the environment if that energy comes from, say, coal-fired power stations. Aether, though, claims that its production is entirely solar-energy run.

“We rely on solar, we invest in new solar development,” Shearman said. “Our manufacturing process nets out so that it’s carbon neutral, up to the point of producing the actual gemstone, not including the carbon that goes into gemstones. Any carbon that goes into the stone then takes us kind of over that threshold into carbon negative territory.” And Aether’s focus on carbon neutrality has further benefits than just its own diamond production business, too: “We are helping promote the expansion of renewables here in the States, especially in areas of the country that are currently underserved.”

Shearman says that the mythology around diamonds, around a glittering stone forged in the heat of the belly of the earth, is a romantic narrative that’s hard to overcome with a stone grown in a lab. But he senses that there’s a new story-telling opportunity here. First, it builds on the environmental and human costs that a lab-grown diamond obviates, and second, it encourages potential customers to think about a lab-grown diamond as a bit like vintage wine.

“The journey that the carbon has taken is really important for us and leans in on provenance. There’s never been a Paris diamond; there’s never been a New York City diamond, or diamond from May, or diamond from September.” Now, there can be.

For Shearman, the technology Aether is platforming is about a lot more than diamonds, though.

“We’re a carbon technology company. And we specialize in making ultra-high purity methane in a really efficient way, which will enable us in the future to get into other markets, where solid carbon products are vital,” says Shearman. Think of products such as tires and graphite for batteries, which can be produced in far more environmentally friendly conditions.

“If we can actually take that carbon from the air here in the United States and have a domestic supply, we think that can play a really interesting role in the future of that supply chain as it continues to mature.”

Now, if you were purely in it all for the environmental reasons, perhaps you could propose to a loved one with a sliver of a river-rock you found on your third date, but at least this helps move the narrative onward a bit, showing there are other alternatives than what we’ve been doing for a few hundred years.

Aether wants to shift you from blood diamonds to gems pulled from thin air by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

Banyan wants to unlock financing for a (more) sustainable future

When it comes to sustainable infrastructure development, technology is making terrific leaps and bounds. The money to make it happen, however? That leaves a thing or two to be desired. For one thing, the processes remain largely manual, with financing in this sector remaining reliant on emails, spreadsheets and documents in a variety of formats. Streamlined, and indeed sustainable, it ain’t. With its $25 million Series B funding — which takes its total funding to over $42 million — Banyan Infrastructure is seeking to align sustainable project finance with the technology it is meant to support and develop.

Old-school systems probably didn’t quite do it for old-school oil and gas investments, but they damn sure don’t cut it for newer, greener, more sustainable technologies. These are usually smaller deals — typical commercial and industrial deals are between $1 million and $5 million —  where financing comes from more distributed sources, which means that the time required to coordinate them and perform due diligence is sizable. 

For Banyan, these inefficiencies in communication and monitoring are pain points it wants to solve with its purpose-built project finance software. With it, banks, financiers and developers should be able to automate and track complex project finance transactions with a unified risk and data management system. It estimates that it can save up to 1,000 hours for every loan processed.

Farewell tedious and time-consuming manual systems, good morning digitized loans and workflows in addition to automating data ingestion, risk monitoring and contractual compliance for each loan. This, Banyan hopes, will enable its customers to rapidly grow their sustainable infrastructure portfolio and help to close the estimated $3.5 trillion per year investment gap in renewable infrastructure that is required in order to meet our net zero targets by 2050.

“Because standardization is lacking for sustainable technology, risk-averse investors are hesitant to move quickly in this relatively new industry,” Will Greene, Banyan Infrastructure’s co-founder and CEO said in an interview with TechCrunch. “Our software focuses on reducing transaction costs and increasing transparency to create previously unseen speed and scale of project finance.” 

Banyan believes that right now is the moment to push forward with its software, following the introduction of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in the USA. This injection of $369 billion of government money is aimed at supporting and developing clean energy technology, manufacturing and innovation. There’s not just more money coming into the sector, but there’s more attention being paid to it, too. Being able to track, monitor and complete deals with greater efficiency means that these funds can go further, faster. The theory is that it will make investment in sustainable infrastructure a more attractive proposition, too.

“The fresh commitment of $369 billion from the IRA is fantastic, but we believe we won’t be able to deploy it without technology to multiply human capacity,” Greene said. “We’re looking forward to building out new features to unlock the IRA and other opportunities that our customers need to act on.” 

The $25 million funding round was led by climate software investor Energize Ventures. It was joined by new investors SE Ventures and Elemental Excelerator, and existing investors VoLo Earth and Ulu Ventures. Furthermore, Banyan announced that Juan Muldoon, partner at Energize, has joined its board of directors.

Banyan has two focal points for its new funds: people and product. When it comes to people, Banyan is looking to double its headcount over the next year, with particular emphasis on its product, success and go-to-market teams. With an eye on international expansion, Banyan is keen to transition from product-led growth to sales-led growth.

“We’re also growing our product to build best practice new regulatory requirements,” says Greene, “including offering a robust product offering that can support our customers in unlocking the benefits of policies like the IRA, as well as support new and emerging technologies, like carbon capture, hydrogen, batteries and more.”

Greene and his co-founder Amanda Li came together to found Banyan Infrastructure recognizing the skills they each brought to better finance infrastructures that can have an impact on climate change.

“Our combined unique backgrounds were exactly what was needed when starting Banyan Infrastructure: with Amanda bringing on-the-ground project finance experience, and myself bringing technical know-how of building enterprise SaaS companies at varying scales,” says Greene. “This company is deeply important to us both as we believe the biggest lever you can pull in changing the trajectory of climate change is investing in renewable infrastructure, and project finance is the underpinning industry and mechanism behind the funnel of investment from financiers to projects.”

For Greene, Banyan is about moving project finance from Web 1.0 to Web 3.0 and speeding up the rate at which capital can be deployed in sustainable industries. It’s about at least meeting, and ideally exceeding, climate goals by using technology to remove funding bottlenecks.

“In 10 years, I would love to look back and know that the world has significantly more deployed renewable energy and other sustainable infrastructure projects because of what Banyan has enabled, Greene concluded.” 

Banyan wants to unlock financing for a (more) sustainable future by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

Source.ag raises $23M to raise the bar on raising crops with AI

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

VivaCity raises at $42M valuation to make US cities safer, starting with New York

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.”

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

Funga wants to accelerate carbon capture using belowground fungal biodiversity

Funga claims to be the first nature-based carbon removal to be powered by belowground biodiversity restoration. The company just raised a $4 million round.

The company was founded by ecologist and climate scientist Dr. Colin Averill, and it combines modern DNA sequencing and machine learning technology with breakthrough research on the forest microbiome. This approach allows Funga to put the right native, biodiverse communities of mycorrhizal fungi in the right place. The strategy is based on the idea that the reintroduction of wild soil microbial biodiversity can accelerate plant growth by an average of 64%, which in turn accelerates carbon capture.

“An entire galaxy exists below our feet, made up of millions of species of bacteria and fungi. These microscopic organisms have profound effects on forest growth and carbon capture, that until now have been overlooked as a way to accelerate natural climate solutions while also restoring essential microbial biodiversity to our soils,” says Averill in an interview with TechCrunch. “Our team at ETH Zürich’s Crowther Lab has spent years documenting how these fungi ultimately affect tree growth. We’ve learnt that restoration of belowground fungal communities can significantly accelerate plant growth and carbon capture. We’re thankful for the support of our investors that will allow our team to take this science out of the lab and into our forests, generating biodiversity and climate action at scale.”

The company’s $4 million seed funding round was led by Azolla Ventures. Additional participants in the round include Trailhead Capital, Better Ventures and Shared Future Fund as part of a Collaborative Fund vehicle. Funga reps tell us that the funding will be used to accelerate the development of Funga’s proprietary software and datasets; scale the footprint of its forest microbiome restoration projects; and ultimately offer a new class of high-quality, sustainable carbon removal at pace with rapidly escalating demand.

Funga recently established its first microbiome restoration projects in Lexington, Georgia in partnership with Conservation Resources. Over the next 18 months, Funga will establish an additional 2,500 acres of forest microbiome restoration projects within the loblolly pine footprint of the southern United States. The company’s goal is to sequester at least three billion tons of carbon dioxide through rewilding forests by 2050. Funga will measure how much additional carbon dioxide is captured as a result of forest microbiome restoration and will make this available to corporate buyers as part of their carbon removal portfolio.

“I first learned about the climate crisis as a freshman in college, during the Myspace era of 2004. Since then, the threat of climate change and biodiversity collapse continue to weigh on me. I see these as two of the biggest challenges facing my generation, and our planet. During this time I became fascinated by what we still don’t know about the climate crisis,” says Averill. “What limits our ability to understand how much warming will happen, and how quickly? If you study the global carbon cycle, you quickly learn that many of those uncertainties lie underground. How the microbial life that inhabits soil ultimately influences the global carbon cycle and climate forecasts was this huge question mark in the field.”

He spent the next 17 years studying how soil microbial biodiversity controls the capacity of forests to act as carbon sinks, buffering the planet against climate change. In that time, breakthroughs in DNA sequencing technology and computational power allowed Averill and his team to “see the forest for the fungi,” as he puts it, and the team was using this technology to identify what a healthy forest fungal microbiome looks like, identifying fungi linked to accelerated tree growth and carbon removal.

“Our round is led by Azolla Ventures, which focuses on investing in neglected climate opportunities. Rewilding soil fungi to accelerate tree growth and capture carbon from the air has never been done before at scale. It requires engaging with molecular biology, the forestry industry and the emerging carbon markets,” says Averill. “It’s difficult to find all of that expertise in one place, and so we were sort of a square peg for a lot of VCs. It’s been a privilege to work with Matthew Nordan and the team at Azolla. They are incredible at supporting our vision for a biodiversity-first approach to natural climate solutions.”

The company says its two major milestones are to generate fungal DNA profiles from 1,000+ forests, which the team hopes will enable it to see how the forest fungal microbiome affects forest health and carbon sequestration in unprecedented detail. The goal is to use the dataset to power the company’s data platform, which recommends the right combinations of wild fungi for the right location to achieve the greatest carbon sequestration outcomes.

The other milestone is to establish 1,000 hectares (~2,500 acres) of projects where we both plant trees and “plant” soil fungal communities.

The company wouldn’t share what the valuation was for the round, but tells us that it was an equity round, where roughly $1 million of SAFE and convertible notes were converted into equity. The company’s first $1 million was raised summer 2022 on notes, and the remaining $3 million came in as part of the equity financing event which closed at the end of December 2022.

“I am truly excited about working with the incredible team we’ve assembled. I’ve recruited some of the best scientists I know out of academia and industry, coming from places like the U.S. Forest Service, NASA and cutting-edge fungal product companies. At the same time, we’ve been able to recruit business talent with deep experience building biological and environmental technology companies: we have such a strong mixture of talent and expertise. I love seeing the way ideas come together and people collaborate on our team,” says Averill. “Our scale is fundamentally limited by how much land we can operate on, and how soon. Part of that is building great relationships with forest landowners and the foresters who actually get the work done on the ground. Without their support and buy-in, none of this can happen. Part of that is learning how to massively scale up wild microbial communities, something that has never been done before. We’re using this funding round to de-risk and overcome these challenges.”

The company insists that the climate crisis is just one symptom of a total Earth crisis, and says that global-scale land conversion, pollution and environmental degradation is beginning to tip the planet into a sixth mass extinction event.

“The complexity of life on our planet — its biodiversity — is a fundamental, planetary life support system. The more we look, the more we discover this extinction crisis is coming not just for the plants and animals, but also for the fungi, the mold, the microorganisms. This is truly alarming,” says Averill. “Most species on Earth are microbial. Microbial life was the first to inhabit this planet, and will likely be the last. Most of our antibiotics were first isolated from soil fungi. The biodiversity of soil life is astonishing — a handful of soil easily contains over 1,000 coexisting microbial species. This microbial biodiversity fundamentally controls how ecosystems recycle materials, how plants access growth-limiting nutrients, how long-captured carbon resides in soils, and yet we barely understand it. We are eroding the biodiversity of soil and ecosystem microbial life, and we don’t know what we’re losing in the process. We’re almost certainly closing doors on ways to manage the Earth more sustainably. These organisms are the products of billions of years of evolution, and as yet, have barely been studied or applied as a critical solution to help tackle climate change.”

Funga wants to accelerate carbon capture using belowground fungal biodiversity by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

Battery recycling startup Cylib recharges its coffers to go faster

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

Startups, here’s how you can make hardware without ruining the planet

Nobody starts a hardware company with the express goal of destroying as much of the planet as they possibly can. Walking around the startup hall at CES, however, I noticed that — with a few notable exceptions — there was painfully little attention given to material choice, repairability, ease of disassembly and considerations around the end of usable life.

It’s embarrassing, really — but as someone who used to run a hardware startup, I know it can be hard to prioritize when you have limited time and resources. However, if you can’t make planet-friendly choices as the founder of a startup, when the buck literally stops with you, when can you?

In an effort to figure out how you can create greener hardware, we spoke with Lauryn Menard, a professor at the California College of the Arts, where she teaches the future of biodesign. She’s also an adviser to Women in Design SF and the co-founder and creative director at PROWL Studio, an Oakland, California-based design and material futures consultancy focusing on sustainable solutions.

“As a startup, you have choices. The thing is, it’s such a capitalistic society we live in, and a lot of decisions are made based on time and money,” Menard explained. The startups want to think about sustainability, but they are moving at breakneck speed and trying to get a product to market as soon as possible. “The startups need to hit their target price point and all that good stuff.”

But there are some big things moving out there in the market. Consumer demands are shifting, and climate pledges, circularity strategies and environmental questions are all bubbling to the surface. It’s hard to say whether enough customers are making purchasing decisions based on a company’s green credentials to move the needle meaningfully, but product development cycles can take years, and who knows what the landscape looks like by the time your product makes it to market? To some companies, it might make sense to take the risk, but other founders are starting to think differently about how products are made.

“If a startup is being run by solely engineers, that can be problematic: Engineers tend to be worried [about] making sure they’re getting to the finish line. They put all of their energy into making something function and are probably leaning toward materials, ways of making and manufacturing processes that they’re already familiar with,” Menard explained. “What we’ve seen [be] really helpful is working with a design studio that specializes in more sustainable ways of thinking and healthier materials. Or partnering with someone like a materials library, so they’ve already started thinking about the functionality of the materials by the time they are making a prototype. Just in the same way that it takes a really long time to get an MVP product that works and looks the way you want, it sometimes takes a long time to put a new material into an existing manufacturing process.”

Thinking sustainability

One of the big challenges we have with creating more sustainable products is that we are often replacing plastics with something else. The problem is that plastics are deeply embedded in workflows already. Product designers love how predictable, easy to design and repeatable plastic is.

There also isn’t an obvious one-for-one replacement for plastic; depending on the use case and material properties you need, you may have to replace it with wool, paper, wood, plant pulp, carbon fiber, seaweed, hemp, mycelium, lab-grown leather or any number of other materials that are available.

Here’s what founders and product designers can do to think about sustainability and product development in a more conscious way.

Startups, here’s how you can make hardware without ruining the planet by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch