Login
Steering humanity out of the climate crisis demands action in a very literal way. Boots on the ground, people rolling up sleeves and getting hands dirty retrofitting existing infrastructure, such as poorly insulated houses, type stuff. The goal is to re-make our built environment to be energy efficient and drive down carbon emissions ASAP. So we really need lots and lots more skilled tradespeople — fast. Aka, the kind of multifaceted, hands-on skills that technologists haven’t figured out how to automate yet.
Fixing this problem absolutely, therefore, demands human beings. Lots and lots of people to come in, eager and willing to learn new stuff, and take up green retrofitting jobs. So it’s a job discovery problem. And a training/upskilling/reskilling problem. Which means digital technology can of course help. And this is where a U.K. edtech startup founded last year, called greenworkx, is angling to step in — with a new spot of supportive construction: A digital pathway designed to boost the flow of skilled workers into green jobs.
The London-based team, which has just closed a £600k pre-seed funding round, describes what’s it’s building as “the go-to talent portal for green jobs”. The app soft launched towards the start of the year, after the co-founders formally incorporated the startup in mid June last year. The early stage funding round was led by Mangrove Capital Partners, with participation from Ada Ventures, and a number of angel investors in the climate and edtech sectors, including the CEOs of Multiverse (Euan Blair), MyTutor (Bertie Hubbard) and Octopus Electric Vehicles (Fiona Howarth).
Commenting in a statement, Nikolas Krawinkel, partner at Mangrove, heralded the opportunity of the looming “green industrial revolution”, writing: “We’re on the cusp of a green industrial revolution, which will require a huge rethink of our education and training systems. The greenworkx team have a deep understanding of digital-first learning methodologies and we’re excited to work with them to take on this profoundly important challenge.”
“The urgent ramp-up needed in the green workforce is a unique opportunity to build a fairer, more equitable future by bringing millions into a rapidly-growing sector of huge social and environmental importance,” added Matt Penneycard, founding partner at Ada Ventures, in another supporting statement. “We’re incredibly excited about the double impact that greenworkx can have in empowering people to access well-paid, future-ready jobs, whilst simultaneously directly driving the net-zero revolution to address the climate crisis.”
The startup’s vision is to build a platform and digital tools to drive awareness and accelerate the uptake of green jobs, using techniques like bite-sized learning and algorithmic matching of jobseekers to connect them with relevant opportunities to help build and power up the green economy.
Co-founders Mat Ilic and Richard Ng bring backgrounds in public policy work and education and edtech to bear on this skills funnel challenge.
Ilic, the policy guy, says he was inspired to tackle the people side and the green jobs challenge as he was reading John Doerr’s book, Speed and Scale — which is literally subtitled an “action plan for solving our climate crisis now”. “It was the first time that net zero felt like a manageable problem,” he tells TechCrunch, saying the book helped him realize “how significant people are” — especially “the people we need to bring about the transition, not just people to make lifestyle changes” — and so the “loose idea was was born then and there”.
Ng, who started his career as a maths teacher before moving into edtech and, latterly, training software engineers at U.K. tech apprenticeship startup Multiverse, says he’d felt pretty settled in that career — until he got speaking to Ilic and also got the green jobs itch.
“He was explaining to me this problem that in order to reach Net Zero we need to deploy all this green infrastructure… and I remember being really shocked by this because I thought wow, this is obviously a huge problem, which is really high stakes, really time urgent, and yet when I think about skills and future work so often it’s purely about ‘oh we need to code’,” he says in a video call with TechCrunch, offering a tacit critique of the full-throttle focus on ‘learn to code’ of the past (many) years. (Code, after all, may well end up being automated by powerful technologies like generative AI — even as we’re still in desperate need of double glazers, plumbers, electricians etc etc.)
There are also of course plenty of people for whom learning to code is never going to be the right fit. And Ng says he realized there’s an unfolding opportunity for all sorts of workers to thrive in green jobs as demand for these more hands-on, people-facing skills keeps growing — as well as being excited by the chance to build out the kind of support for vocational training and learning that the U.K.’s traditional educational system has not been geared toward.
“We need people to work with data, that’s very necessary, and there’s a bunch of people working on that now. But I was like this is also super, super important and really, really underserved,” he says. “Coding, unfortunately, is phenomenally inaccessible for a bunch of people… [Whereas] these jobs… are really, really meaningful, they’re pretty well paid and they’re actually very accessible as well. And so, for me, it was also about making sure that as we think about this really important challenge Net Zero we’re also using that as an opportunity to make sure we have this bright future of work which is hopefully much more inclusive and accessible to the communities which I care a lot about.”
The scale of the retrofit challenge means the skills supply problem is vast indeed. Ilic cites a statistic suggesting at least 30 million roles will be needed globally by the end of the decade — and half a million in the U.K. alone, just for domestic energy retrofitting. (And the startup’s stated mission is to get 10 million people into green jobs over 10 years.)
While the challenge is global the U.K. certainly has some of the worst insulated homes in Europe, making that element a particularly acute local problem. Solutions can also be interdependent, too — since, for example, poorly insulated homes aren’t a good fit for low carbon heat pumps — which means tackling drafty buildings is really a prerequisite for speeding up the decarbonization of U.K. housing stock.
“We’re talking about half a million different professions and trades needed in already an existing skills shortage in construction — and that’s before we start talking about the other aspect of this, which is the existing workers who need to be reskilled in what’s basically the biggest reallocation of capital and the means of production since the Industrial Revolution,” says Ilic, adding: “And no one seems to be talking about it with the level of urgency and emergency and scale that is needed — and more fundamentally, we’re here because we believe it’s eminently solvable. And that’s what’s so practical about the way that we’re looking at this challenge.”
Some other startups are talking about it, of course. Denmark-based Lun, for example, recently bagged seed funding to build software tools to encourage more tradespeople to focus on installing heat pumps, instead of taking on less climate friendly jobs. While US-based BlocPower has already been beavering away for almost a decade with a residential retrofit-as-service platform focused on low-income communities. But it’s fair to say the scale of the change needed across our societies is so absolute — so root and branch — that it’ll need a tsunami of startups tackling as many bits and pieces as possible if we’re to drive the necessary system flip at the blistering pace now required to avoid even worse heating and weather extremes (not to mention the risk of runaway climate change).
Greenworkx’s app is soft launched at this stage — with a handful (around 40) of green skills seekers signed up to a (free) introductory retrofit course they’re offering.
Early users are more of a mix than the team’s expected target youth demographic (i.e. 16-24-year-old school and college leavers who did not follow the academic higher education route to university) — with Ng noting other profiles of interest include immigrants in their mid thirties to forties seeking a career switch into more stable work. Another early user he mentions was a former nurse — a women in her late fifties who could no longer continue working in a patient-facing role (owing to developing allergies) but who was looking for another job that allows her to keep serving her community and retrofitting social housing fit the bill for her. (“It’s a way to basically continue serving her community.”)
To locate their first users they’ve been partnering with organizations and charities that are focused on employability. But as they seek to scale up they plan to expand the pool of jobseekers via digital marketing on social media and tapping up the sorts of influencers who might resonant with key targets. They’re also planning a possible green jobs travelling roadshow to take their message of climate opportunity around the country in an electric bus.
The early product is still quite a manual experience, per the co-founders, as the team has been focused on understanding learner profiles and needs so they can better tailor the platform experience. But the goal is, ultimately, to automate the process of matching jobseekers to green skills opportunities to be able to scale the platform and its outputs.
“We’ve had our first proactive inbound from a small company this week looking for energy assessors and retrofit assessors,” notes Ilic. “So it’s been really interesting to see that. And in terms of where we focus attention on the job side, so really a lot of investment is going into decarbonizing social housing at the moment — housing associations, local authorities and smaller energy efficiency or construction companies are all looking for these sort of energy efficiency professionals or trades. So some of that is them reaching out to us some of it is us working with them. So we’re pretty confident that for this kind of batch of people that we’re taking through — both the understanding retrofit courses as well as some partnerships that are more focused on domestic energy assessment or retrofit advice — we should be able to get our first job outcomes and then explore how it goes from there.”
For larger energy companies and construction firms the first focus is likely to be on upskilling an existing workforce, rather than trying to hire scores of new workers. So the startup is thinking how it might best support those goals. They’re also still figuring out how much training content they might offer themselves — vs working with partners and/or employers to provide it. But the overarching goal is to find ways to support as many people as possible to think about a career switch, skills upgrade or first leap into green jobs.
“We’re a b2b proposition. And the ultimate goal is to create value by giving people the talent they couldn’t otherwise reach — so filling roles,” says Ilic. “But I think we’re exploring a range of different steps in between, including actually having that curriculum and training proposition to support reskilling existing workers, because if we’re building a high quality digital curriculum for connecting people to these jobs from a standing start, actually it’s also relevant for people that are learning about low carbon heating technologies in their current jobs. So both reskilling and recruitment are going to be part of our value proposition.”
“We are starting supply side. We want to build a tool that will matter so much to learners that they will obsess about,” he adds. “They would be prepared to pay for it even though we’d never want to charge them for it because we want to create a frictionless route for them to be able to access these roles. Because that’s partly in our collective interest — as I said, we’re looking at servicing the labour demand — but, yeah, we feel that the business side will become kind of apparent as things unfold; as you see the kind of exponential growth, say the consumer demand for solar among other things, so that’s what we’re planning.”
This report was updated to correct a citation by Ilic: The projection is for 30M retrofit jobs being needed globally before the end of the decade, not in the U.K. — there the projection is for half a million roles being required by 2030
UK’s greenworkx takes aim at the domestic retrofit skills challenge by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch
Lun, a climate tech startup out of Denmark, is on a mission to help homes decarbonize fast — starting with heating systems and swapping out boilers for electric heat pumps.
What are heat pumps? The technology is a low carbon form of heating which is based on the principle of refrigeration that offers an alternative to environmentally unfriendly options like oil and gas-fired boilers. At a basic level, heat pumps work by using electricity to transfer heat from one place to another, so they’re able to both heat a house in winter and cool it in summer (or at least up to a balance point at which a supplemental system may be required).
There are several different types of heat pump (air-source, water-source, ground-source etc); and installations need to start with an assessment of the property which needs to consider a variety of factors before being able to go ahead — such as which type of pump is appropriate to the given property, land and climate; where to site units and components and whether to reuse elements of an existing heating system; how well (or poorly) insulated the property is; and even whether the heat pump brands a particular tradesperson prefers to work with are appropriate for the job in question.
The need for all this detailed up-front assessment complicates the sales process for heat pump installations — and that, in turn, slows down the decarbonization of households. Since in-demand plumbers and electricians may simply decide it’s easier to focus on other types of work (including, climate-horror-of-horrors, installing more fossil fuel burning boilers that pump CO2 directly into the atmosphere).
Helping redirect the energy (ha!) of installers towards decarbonization via fitting more heat pumps is what Lun hopes to do by building a platform for tradespeople — which it dubs an installation “operating system” — to provide them with “full stack” support so they can get on with ripping out boilers and replacing them with heat pumps. And, as they earn money doing that work, help decarbonize the planet faster.
Its software, which is currently in an alpha release with an undisclosed number of testers in Denmark, aims to take some of the strain out of installation assessments, design and planning, as well as handle other business elements like taking payments. It’s providing tradespeople with a suite of tools for gathering relevant data from householders and automating suitability assessments — doing the latter by drawing on public and/or open data (such as satellite imagery), as well as feeding in data from OEMs (such as price, specifications), as well as property type/location etc, to try to find the best match between a job and a professional installer.
“We start very small,” says co-founder and CEO Martin Collignon. “We start with where they lose the most time — which is in sales. Many of them go visit homes way too early, before they actually know whether the customer is interested or not. Or whether the house is relevant or not. And that’s what we focus on and then we build on the the entire stack all the way to payment… to make sure that they’re supporting every part of the journey. And they could focus on what they’re good at, what they trained at, and what they earn money on — which is installing the heat pump.”
“We want to make them more efficient,” he continues. “So right now around 40% of the time spent on heat pump sales and installation is spent on not installing the heat pump… So we just want them to be able to do more heat pump installations, over the year, because they have less of the other stuff to do — the sales, the design, the procurement, the financing, the paperwork, the compliance work, finding other [tradespeople]… all these things.
“We want to make it automated, with the technology in there, so they don’t have to spend time doing that… And the result of that is that doing heat pump work will be at least as profitable as the other task — and hopefully more profitable — so they can focus on heat pumps because it’s just a great job for them. So it’s not as much of a pain in the butt as it is today.”
“It’s an industry that is less digitalized than most… and our goal — and what we really focus on — is [building] a product that they see as a no brainer,” Collignon adds. “That’s really the challenge because they’re busy enough. So we really need to build something that they love. And that’s what we focus on right now.”
Heat pumps are also just the start for Lun — as he says the big vision is for the platform to support tradespeople who’re able to apply a full sweep of renewable and decarbonizing technologies. Whether that’s installing electric charging points for vehicles, fitting PV panels to generate solar energy, or electrifying stoves. (In some rural regions of Europe solid fuel and/or wood burners for home heating are still absolutely a thing!)
Other startups are also looking to grease the pipe of household renewables — from the likes of Germany’s Zolar, Spain’s Samara, US-based OpenSolar or Are Solar, to name a few (there are also others focused on HVACs, such as US-based Conduit Tech) — but such is the scale of humanity’s home decarbonization task it’s going to take several villages’ worth of startups attacking the problem from as many angles as possible as fast as humanly possible. Or, as Collignon says, the more the merrier.
“We focus on heat pump now but our goal, our mission is to decarbonise homes faster in general,” he tells TechCrunch. “Heating is the major lever — that’s 80% of the energy consumption — but there’s a bunch of other things that we need to think about.
“So the goal really is that we can be the platform that all the tradespeople that want to aspire to be professionals in renewable technologies and decarbonisation technologies for buildings they can use that platform. And we focus very much — and will focus for a long time — on retrofits. So that’s taking the old buildings that we have and making them modern, more clean, more affordable [not dependent on] of fossil fuels that come from bad places around the world, basically.”
The Copenhagen-based startup was founded at the end of March last year, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine. The war triggered a major crisis around Europe’s energy needs, amping up the argument for transitioning away from gas — now on geopolitical grounds, as well as the climate crisis. The Ukraine war was the final catalyst for the co-founders to formally incorporate Lun, per Collignon.
He’s a climate activist turned tech founder who before all this worked in the tech industry — for giants including Google and Uber. But after several years of grinding away at the Big Tech coalface he says he got “very, very badly” burnt out and decided to refocus his priorities. Then, along with his co-founder Anders Valentin — who brings a background in insurtech to the venture; and was a friend of Collignon from their business school days — the pair set about figuring how they could make maximum impact in the climate fight. Fast. And they landed on streamlining the installation of heat pumps.
“The simple reason we looked at heat pumps was it was mentioned in all the climate reports — you could find from the IPCC to the IEA to the European Union, everything — everyone mentioned heat pumps. But when we started looking at it, a bit more than two years ago, it was still a very niche technology where demand was the main issue but we knew from all these reports that they would change, hopefully soon, to a supply problem,” he explains, fleshing out their rational for starting with what’s still a pretty unfamiliar technology in many European markets. (Figures for installations can vary considerably depending on the country but overall numbers are still low; market data from the European Heat Pump Association puts the total figure of regional installation at 16.98 million or around 14% of Europe’s heating market.)
“So we started looking at what will be the issue — not now but really in five, seven years from now — for the industry. And it became very clear that [tradespeople] would become — very fast — a bottleneck… Plumbers is already the profession that we lack the most in Europe, way ahead of software engineers, for example. So we were really thinking it seems unlikely that we’re going to get more [tradespeople] before 2030 if you look at all the reports, so the only way we could solve this is really make the task of installing renewable technology into something more interesting — more economically viable — for these [tradespeople]. Because, if you think about it, they can do a bunch of other things… So that’s how we started looking at the problem. That’s what we’ve been doing since.”
Lun is being buoyed up in its decarbonization mission by closing a new round of funding — €10.3M in seed funds, which it’s announcing today — topping up a €550k pre-seed it raised previously to build its MVP. The seed funding comes from new investors including Norrsken VC, Partech, Lowercarbon Capital, and MCJ Collective as well as existing investor Foundamental. (Xoogler Ventures and other angel investors also backed its pre-seed.)
The funds will go on continuing to build out the product — making sure it delights the target user so Lun can get more of the critical skilled installers on board. It is also eyeing European expansion and Collignon notes it has an early partner in Austria so that is likely to be one of the next markets.
Commenting on the seed funding in a statement, Chris Sacca, founder of Lowercarbon Capital, said: “Getting off gas for heat isn’t just critical for the climate, if you live in Europe it’s the patriotic thing to do, and Lun is the cheapest, fastest, and easiest way to get an electric heat pump installed.”
“Changing the way we consume energy in our homes should be a top priority for everyone for many different reasons: Climate, health and economic well-being,” added Agate Freimane, Norrsken VC, in another supporting statement. “We were impressed by Lun’s speed of execution and excited to be supporting them on their journey.”
Foundamental’s Patric Hellermann dubbed electrifying buildings “top of mind” in the climate fight — with the “No.1 bottleneck” being making more installer-time available — going on to pronounce that Martin and Anders “have cracked that code with their software” in another statement.
Lun is a for-profit venture, despite its high worth climate mission. So what’s the business model? That’s still a work in progress, per Collignon, who says it’s exploring different revenue streams — potentially a subscription fee or a transaction model. He suggests they could also look to tap revenue streams around financing or even the heat pump hardware itself. “Your heat pump is quite an expensive thing — that can cost between €15,000 to €25,000 in many places — so we think there’s different ways where you can take a small cut of that. Basically, if you make things more efficient,” he adds.
When does he predict a tipping point for consumer uptake of heat pumps? And a mass move away from fossil fuel burners that we all desperately need to see happen ASAP. “When it’s worthwhile for consumers,” he responds on that. “I’ve worked in climate tech for quite some time and… it’s always the technology that makes it affordable for consumers that wins, basically, not the one that’s the greenest. So we need to make sure that it’s economically advantageous to instal heat pumps — and to instal these technologies more than anything else.
“I believe that when that will happen is when it becomes worthwhile. Which it was last year — when the gas prices were insane. And then now we see some countries moving with certain bans [on installing gas boilers after particular cut-off dates] and certain de facto obligations to instal heat pumps as your next in technology. Then that’s of course a game changer. And I believe that’s going to happen in more places.”
Another decarbonization ‘lever’ Collignon says he’s personally fought for in Denmark is making sure the “externalities of using fossil fuels are priced correctly”, as he puts it. Or reform of energy markets and taxation systems to support consumers to make green choices — so there’s definitely work for regulators to be getting on with here too. “Make sure you have a carbon tax that reflects the impact on the climate, basically, and if that happened, then it would be very obvious very very, very fast that it’s a lot better to use a heat pump — economically, for climate, for geopolitics etc — than it is today,” he adds.
Lun is in a mad rush to help heat-pump installers decarbonize homes by Natasha Lomas 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
Dutch social enterprise Fairphone, which makes modular and — the claim is — more sustainable and ethical consumer electronics, has nabbed a chunk of funding to continue scaling a circular-economy-aligned smartphone business.
The €49 million (~$53 million) “growth capital” investment — from an international consortium of impact investors, led by new shareholders Invest-NL, the ABN AMRO Sustainable Impact Fund and existing investor Quadia via its Regenero Impact Fund — is more than the startup has raised since being founded, back in 2010. (Fairphone had previously raised $40.7 million, per Crunchbase — spread across nine funding rounds, drawing on a range of sources from crowdfunding to VC and debt.)
Other existing Fairphone investors DALHAP, DOEN Participaties and PDENH also participated in the new raise — while a number of other investors, including PYMWYMIC and over 1,000 crowdfunders, exited at this point. While Fairphone said it’s using some of the new funding to settle some existing debt.
But the headline claim for the investment is growth.
The European startup is well positioned to capitalize on opportunities flowing from the bloc’s push for a green transition by encouraging a shift to circular business models, with a top-line goal for the European Union to be carbon neutral by 2050.
EU regulators are also eyeing ‘right to repair’ as a priority for mobile devices and other consumer elections — a future requirement which Fariphone is already fulfilling, thanks to its modular, repairable-by-design devices, putting it well ahead of the (waste-generating) industry curve.
Fairphone said the new funding will be used to strengthen its brand positioning — and create further awareness around fairness and sustainability in the electronics industry.
Additionally, it said it wants to accelerate integration of fair and recycled materials into its full product portfolio — saying for example that it will be extending its mining “value chain” programs in Africa & South America, and fair wage programs in Asia.
It will also be funnelling funds into product development and improved customer service — including to keep pushing the envelop on device longevity.
Fairphone recently launched its own-brand wireless earbuds — which contain recycled plastic, Fairtrade gold in the supply chain and an extended battery life vs rival products.
Commenting on the investment in a statement, Eva Gouwens, Fairphone CEO, said: “Over the past years, Fairphone has been able to transform from a social movement to an impactful mission-driven company. I would like to thank all shareholders who have supported us over the years. With a growing base of mission-aligned investors, we will further raise awareness for fairer electronics and accelerate the growth of our company and impact.”
We’ve asked Fairphone for its latest sales metrics and will update this report with any response.
Update: Fairphone’s CFO, Noud Tillemans, told us the company sold around 120,000 devices last year — up from around 88,000 in 2021 and 23,000 in 2018.
“This is more equity than we raised ever before in total,” he confirmed. “The €49 million is pure equity. Some of it will be used to settle existing loans. I can only share the majority is used for growth. Some initial shareholders, investing 5-10 years ago, were keen to exit.”
“We are excited to support Fairphone’s growth ambitions, as a truly circular lighthouse case within the electronics industry,” added Elisabeth Storm de Grave, Principal at Fairphone’s new investor, Invest-NL, in another supporting statement. “With its unparalleled approach to creating ethical products with both people and planet in mind, Fairphone sets new standards for the entire industry. Together, we are disrupting a short-term way of thinking that the world can no longer afford, creating a sustainable and fair future for all stakeholders’”
While Hanna Zwietering, of the ABN AMRO Sustainable Impact Fund, pointed to what she couched as a “growing trend towards conscious consumer behavior” — lauding Fairphone as “a frontrunner in the sustainable electronics industry” she said has “proven it can develop high-quality modular and fair smartphones in most competitive markets”.
Fairphone nabs $53M in growth capital for ‘sustainable’ consumer electronics by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch
What is automation good for? Harvesting more broccoli than human laborers can, according to Upp, a Shropshire, U.K.-based agtech startup that’s using computer vision AI plus farm-sized proprietary machinery to expand crop yields.
Its pitch is not only that its specialist, AI-driven harvester will make it more efficient to pick a familiar crop but also that the process will reduce waste — by being able to extract more nutritious protein from a field of broccoli without needing an army of extra human workers to do it.
Upp says the smart machinery it’s developing will enable broccoli farmers to harvest more of the plant than they feasibly could using human field laborers because the AI-plus-tractor-tool combo will do it all: Fully automating the spotting, cutting, lifting and carrying, at a rate of up to 3km/h.
This AI-driven approach allows for farmers to “upcycle” the 80% of the broccoli plant (i.e extra stem and leaves) that’s normally left as waste on the field, per Upp, and sell that as a additional product that can be processed into a form it suggests is comparable to pea protein.
The startup’s concept system, which CEO and co-founder, David Whitewood, tells TechCrunch it’s been developing with help from technologists at the University of Lincoln, involves a tractor kitted out with a 3D camera and an on-board computer running a computer vision AI model that’s been trained to identify when broccoli heads are the right size for picking (with better-than-human accuracy, is the claim), along with a proprietary (patent pending) tractor-pulled cutting-and-harvesting tool.
“The job of harvesting broccoli is — firstly — you’ve got to recognize which heads are ready to be harvested. So we’ve been cooperating with the University of Lincoln’s agri products team who’ve been developing the machine learning and AI,” he explains. “We’ve been testing a whole bunch of cameras with them and dealing with the difficult problem of occlusion [where leaves may partly obscure the camera’s view of the broccoli head].
“They’ve using a depth-sensing camera with the 3D piece in it to determine the size of that head. Because we don’t cut every head — we only cut the ones at the right size as demanded by the supermarkets… That then says ‘cut’ and that sends a signal to our on-board computer and then we actuate our patented mechanism that grabs the plant — which would be the same as a human grasping the plant stem — and then a very sharp knife flies in and cuts it in a fraction of a second. And then the plant is lifted away.”
The extra edible plant matter harvested in this way isn’t intended for supermarket shelves — where the stringent cosmetics standards grocery retailers typically apply to their suppliers is a major contributor to food waste by refusing to stock less than perfect looking fruit and veg — rather the idea is for it to be processed into a protein- and nutrient-rich ingredient for selling to the food industry.
Upp envisages the dried broccoli protein being used in a range of products — from sports-style protein drinks to pre-prepared meals and baked goods.
The bits of the broccoli it’s targeting for upcycling are 30% protein by dried weight, per the startup’s website, and also packed with nutrients (vitamin A, B, C, E, K, calcium, iron, potassium, phosphorous, zinc) — as well as being high in fiber.
Upp does not appear to have had any trouble getting early interest from the food industry for the upcycled edible plant-protein — with Whitewood noting it already has a trio of industry partnerships inked (he can’t yet name names but says one is a global “functional drinks” giant; another is a big UK food brand; and the third is a specialist confectionary bakery).
“They’ve very interested in the health aspects of broccoli,” he goes on. “They’re interested in the fact that it’s clean and sustainable… So they’re excited, shall we say. I don’t think we’ve got a problem with a market for it — once we’ve got it off the field.”
On the processing piece, Upp is working with experts at the James Hutton Institute in Dundee to figure out how best “to recover the fractions from that plant that makes it suitable for the food industry primarily”, per Whitewood.
Zooming out, Upp is developing what it bills as a specialist “circular plant protein” business against a backdrop of growing demand for alternative, plant-based proteins as the food industry looks for ways to shrink its reliance on animal-derived proteins in order to reduce its carbon footprint — with global pressure on farmers and food companies to hit climate targets.
Hence the startup is projecting that its AI-harvested broccoli protein could grow into a multi billion-dollar market in the coming years.
On the marketing side it claims an added environmental upside — suggesting broccoli protein is cleaner than pea protein (being 4x less carbon intensive to produce), while also arguing it avoids the deforestation problem that’s tainted the reputation of soya crops. So the pitch is this is an even greener plant protein.
One potential PR wrinkle is there will inevitably be some (human) worker displacement as a result of automating the harvesting of broccoli.
Whitewood says the system replaces about seven field workers — but he notes that “warm bodies” are still needed in the pack house to package the broccoli products for retail. “Seven hard to get people,” he adds, sketching a picture of the gruelling work field laborers typically have to do and arguing these aren’t the kind of jobs anyone is going to miss. “Nobody wants to do this work. Even in China and India they’re struggling to get people to do this… It’s the 21st century and we’re still expecting people to do this. It’s just crazy.”
While the 2022-founded startup’s tech has been developed to the concept stage it’s gearing up for the next stage — to hone a robust technology that can be commercially deployed — with a series of “field-to-protein” pilots planned this year in the U.K., Spain and California.
It’s expecting to start commercial production (and generate its first revenues) in late 2024 — projecting revenues will exceed £50 million in its three pilot markets in 2027.
The business was established last year as a spinout from another U.K. agtech business called Earth Rover — where Whitewood had been CEO before moving over to Upp as a co-founder when they decided to separate into two distinct businesses.
Today the startup is announcing a £500,000 pre-seed investment from Elbow Beach Capital, a decarbonisation, sustainability and social impact investor, to fund the field trials — ahead of planned commercial deployment later next year.
Whitewood says the first commercial use of the tech will likely be in Spain or the UK, owing to seasonality, before Upp moves on to pitching California’s broccoli growers on automated crop yield optimization.
Why hasn’t anyone done thought about extracting more of the good stuff from broccoli plants before? Whitewood says people have been thinking about the potential to do this for over a decade but he suggest it’s just “really hard” — given the selective harvesting required, as well as the need to separate out the harvested crop, with part (the broccoli crown) going to supermarkets (to be sold fresh) and the rest requiring additional processing.
“It sounds simple — a lot of people have tried and a lot of people have failed,” he suggests. “It’s only since you’ve got a specialist harvester that can handle all the bulk that suddenly you can start to deal with the rest of it. You need automation — and it needs big automation. Little robots aren’t going to deal with crops of this scale, this bulk… You need farm-sized machinery.”
Upp wants to add more broccoli to the plant-protein mix using big automation by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch
FreshRSS 