💨 ClimateHack Vol 106: Fermented CO2 brings in $43M

Hi There,

Do you feel guilty when you fly?

With summer in full swing and travels aplenty, flights during this time of the year can come with good reason.

Wether you’re travelling to the wedding of your best friend in Italy, taking that dream trip to Mongolia, or making a long overdue visit to your family back home - there are distances that trains can’t effectively cover.

But if you’re sitting in the plane cursing your choices and promising to repent (or offset) the moment you land - is the trip worth taking?

This is a genuine question I had this morning sparked by this post from World Fund partner Daria Saharova. Her takeaway on flights boils down to “it’s okay to fly (so long as it’s not excessive - or easily done by train)” which feels like a reasonable middle ground that we can all largely agree to.

Though it’s easier (necessary even) to have that perspective when your business is built on funding companies that might be able to eliminate the adverse effects from industries like transport in the future.

Personally, I do sometimes get that creeping sense of guilt while 30k+ feet in the air sipping my G&T and watching the in-flight media. But I’m also a technology optimist and believe that things like SAF will make an impact.

I’m curious where you sit. There really are no wrong answers here:

In Today’s Edition;

🍚 US startup MittiLabs raised $3M to tackle methane emissions and water wastage in rice farming.
💨 Copenhagen-based Again raised $43M for their technology to capture and ferment CO2 into green chemicals.
💫 SF-based Marathon Fusion came out of stealth with $5.9M seed funding to improve the economics of fusion power plants.

Digest x Climate

📈 What’s up? Data from the latest EY European CEO outlook survey shows that over half of European CEOs have elevated sustainability to a higher priority over the past year, though institutional investors are less aligned.

📉 What’s down? Swedish mycoprotein producer Mycorena has filed for bankruptcy, having faced “significant financial challenges”.

💡 Good Read: Sifted’s thoughts on whether the climate tech funding gap is a myth are worth a read. And the publication also shared a list of Europe’s ten most active climate tech investors.

🤷‍♂️ Five Just Stop Oil activists received jail sentences of 4 to 5 years for their plans to block M25 in a non-violent protest. Through their plans were never realised, the case brought against them primarily built around a Zoom call where the parties involved had expressed their intentions.

AgriFood x Climate

🥚 Finland’s Onego Bio secured €14 million from the European Innovation Council Accelerator program and additional Series A investors to scale production of its precision fermentation egg protein, Bioalbumen

🍚 US startup Mitti Labsraised $3 million to tackle methane emissions and water wastage in rice farming. It has launched five projects across 30,000 hectares in India to embed and measure sustainable agricultural practices and help farmers raise their annual incomes by up to 30% by earning money from carbon credits.

🌾 UK-based Permia Sensingsecured £150,000 from the British Design Fund for its precision farming techniques, which are supported by IoT, AI, sensors, and robotics to transform the way palm plantations are managed. 

🧫 British startup Meatlysecured regulatory approval from the UK Food Standards Agency to sell its cultivated pet food, becoming the first company in Europe permitted to sell cultivated meat.

🇺🇸 The Illinois Fermentation and Agriculture Biomanufacturing Tech Hubsecured $51 million in federal funding from the US Economic Development Administration, to help “position Central Illinois as a global leader in biomanufacturing”.

☕️ Nestlé has developed a new high-yielding arabica coffee variety, selected for its resilience to coffee leaf rust and offering the “characteristic taste of Brazilian coffee”.

🍄 Swedish mycoprotein producer Mycorena has filed for bankruptcy, having faced “significant financial challenges”.

Carbon x Climate

💨 Copenhagen-based Again raised $43 million, in a Series A funding round led by GV and HV Capital, to capture CO2 and ferment it with hydrogen to transform it into valuable green chemicals. 

👷‍♂️ German startup VARMsecured €5.7 million in a seed funding round led by Emerge and Pale Blue Dot. It focuses on bridging the skills gap for air-gap insulation, improving insulation efficacy and reducing installation time and costs.

🌳Earthshot Labsraised $5.5 million Series A funding for its nature-based carbon project financing platform, having helped more than 60 reforestation, conservation, agroforestry and improved forest management projects to date. 

Energy x Climate

🌡 Amsterdam-based Quatt raised €25 million in a funding round led by Blue Earth Capital. It develops, manufactures, and installs the Quatt Hybrid, a hybrid heat pump driven by smart software, and is on a mission to install three million of them by 2030.

⚡️ Heimdall Power, based in Oslo, secured €22.9 million Series B funding to optimise utilities with its “Magic Balls”. It installs Neuron sensors on live, high-voltage power lines to assess line transmission capacity in real-time.

☀️ UK-based Naked Energyraised £17 million at the first close of its Series B funding round. It specialises in solar technology and energy conservation, and has developed the world's highest energy density solar technology for flat roofs.

💫Marathon Fusion came out of stealth with $5.9 million in seed funding to improve the economics of fusion power plants. Its technology is designed to enable the rapid, continuous, and high-throughput recycling of fusion fuel, and it has letters of intent from both Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Helion Energy.

🏭 Sweden’s Arkionsecured $4 million, in a funding round led by Subvenio Invest, for its energy infrastructure inspection platform, designed in response to the challenges posed by increasing energy consumption and securing grid reliability and longevity. 

🔋 Swiss startup BTRYreceived €153,000 from Venture Kick for its one-minute charging solid-state battery, which uses thin-film cells stacked on top of each other and is made via high-precision, solvent-free semiconductor fabrication methods. 

🧲 A nuclear fusion experiment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, using magnets from Commonwealth Fusion System, has set a record for the strongest steady magnetic field confining a plasma.

Materials x Climate

🪨44.01, based in Oman, secured $37 million Series A funding for its mineralisation technology, designed to eliminate CO2 captured from the air or from hard-to-abate industrial processes safely, permanently and at scale. 

🔎 French startup Entalpicsecured €8.5 million in a seed funding round led by Breega, Cathay Innovation and Felicis. It uses GenAI and machine learning to support materials discovery in the chemicals industry. 

👕 Paris-based Synteticaraised €4.2 million, in a seed funding round led by EQT Ventures, to scale its depolymerisation technique for nylon recycling. The startup is already in contract discussions with a suite of household fashion names.

🔋Lyten, the world leader in lithium-sulphur battery technology, secured investment from Luxembourgs’ Future Fund 2 to support the development of locally sourced and manufactured batteries in Europe for the Electric Vehicle, mobility, space and defence industries.

🤖TETMETsecured funding from rpv for its Adaptive Spatial Lattice Manufacturing approach, which leverages AI-powered robotic assembly through precise laser spot welding and is designed for use across several deep tech industries.

Mobility x Climate

🔌 Brooklyn-based itselectricraised $6.5 million in a seed funding round led by Failup Ventures and Uber. It builds on-street EV chargers that use electricity from neighbouring buildings rather than the municipal grid.

🛩 US eVTOL company Archer Aviation is partnering with Southwest Airlines to build out a network of electric air taxis at California airports.

🚛Suzano and VIX Logística have begun testing the first high-capacity electric truck in Brazil capable of towing up to 120 tons, which has the potential to save up to 8,300 liters of diesel per month and reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 21 tons.

⚡️ TotalEnergies and SSE are creating a joint venture to establish “Source”, a new major player in EV charging infrastructure in the UK and Ireland, which will deploy up to 3000 high power charge points in both countries.

Water x Climate

💧 German startup Enzosecured €2.3 million seed funding for its AI-powered IoT solution, designed to monitor water pipes in buildings, speeding up repairs and preventing loss of drinking water.

🚰 Scientists from the University of South Australia and the Xi’an University of Architecture & Technology have proposed using smaller powdered activated carbon particles to remove organic pesticides from drinking water, helping to reduce water treatment costs and improve efficiency.

Funds x Climate

🇩🇪 Germany’s Nucleus Capital secured €6.5 million for its Federal Future Fund from KfW Capital to support climate-focused deep tech startups across the country.

Random

🐌Robot Snails: These might just be the cutest robots I’ve ever seen.

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Editorial by Arman, Curation by Nicola