🧑‍🏭 ClimateHack Vol 108: How Things Are Made

Hi There,

You ever just sit around and think about how things are made.

Like the phone you’re reading this on, the package that phone came in, the truck that delivered it to the store, the fuel that powered that truck.

As a kid I was obsessed with the tv show How It’s Made which looks at the surprisingly complex processes behind manufacturing everyday objects.

The more I’ve learned, the more I’ve come to understand today’s way of manufacturing has been optimised for increased yield and costs cutting - very rarely for any environmental reasons.

But that’s all changing, with companies under pressure to decarbonise, a whole suite of novel solutions are emerging and rethinking the way we build, design, source, produce or fuel everyday things.

To cover exactly that, we deep dived into the Green Manufacturing revolution and pulled together a list of 200+ companies working on solutions in this space - from CO₂ infused cement to chemicals without the nasties.

In Today’s Edition;

🌸 Sweden's Flower secure €25M for it's AI-powered software designed to stabilise the energy system.
🧪 UK’s Promethean Particles raised £8M to manufacture metal-organic frameworks for carbon capture.
💫 US-based Aalo Atomics closed $27M in funding to make nuclear reactor deployment more predictable and economical.

Digest x Climate

🏭 Discover: our list of 200+ Green Manufacturing startups and the insights from our conversation with 3 industry CEO’s on the challenges and opportunties to decarbonise chemicals, textiles and all things bio.

❄️ Cool: UK supermarket Morrisons is trialling raising the temperatures of its freezers to -15℃, adding 3℃ to the industry standard set almost 100 years ago and potentially making significant energy savings.

🐒 Banksy: Unveiled eight new artworks in London in the past week, all depicting animals. Here’s why Oliver Dauert thinks the artist is on a mission to rewild the city through art.

☔️ Wow: Check out this video of Yohan Hadji’s stratospheric glider as it captures weather data in a storm.

🎟 Hurry: Early Bird Tickets to the HackSummit in New York are now on sale - lock in the best rates to come join us, and 500+ others, on 12-13th December for 2 days of the most productive networking and deal-making you’ll have all year.

AgriFood x Climate

🧫 Israeli cultivated meat startup Ever After Foods received a $10 million investment from Pluri Inc. to further scale its technology, which includes a B2B version that demonstrates the natural production of muscle and fat tissues for various animal cells.

🧪 Collo, based in Finland, raised €5 million in a funding round co-led by Greentech Venture Capital and FORWARD.one. Its unique analyser can quickly characterise any type of liquid, and is designed to help food and beverage companies to reduce liquid losses and associated CO2 emissions.

🏭 Australian startup Cauldron has been awarded AU$4.3 million from the federal government’s new AU$392 million Industry Growth Program to advance its continuous fermentation manufacturing platform, which will allow its partners to produce high-value ingredients at scale.

🍄 UK-based Adamo Foods secured $2.5 million in a seed funding round co-led by UK Innovation Science and Seed Fund and Joyful Ventures. It will use the funds to further scale production of its clean-label mycelium steak.

🔎 Hedera-22, based in Belgium, raised €2 million to further develop its intelligent platform for the discovery of new biomolecules with bio-pesticide activity, designed to support sustainable agriculture.

♻️ Walmart has partnered with Arkansas-based organic recycling company Denali to bring its food waste-fighting repackaging technology to over 1,400 stores in 16 US cities.

🐄 The European Commission has given the green light to a €700 million Dutch government initiative aimed at compensating farmers who voluntarily shut down livestock farming operations in certain regions of the Netherlands.

Biodiversity x Climate

🌳 German not-for-profit search engine Ecosia is joining forces with weather forecaster AccuWeather to help identify heat islands and areas with low or no tree cover in order to support urban tree planting projects.

🌾 The Indian government unveiled 109 crop varieties that are said to be high-yielding and climate-resilient, designed to support the country’s farmers to cut expenditures, add crop value and diversity, have a positive impact on the environment, and withstand the impacts of climate change.

Chemicals x Climate

🧪 UK-based Promethean Particles raised £8 million to manufacture metal-organic frameworks, whose porous, lattice-like structure make them a viable carbon capture sorbent at an industrial scale.

Energy x Climate

💫 Aalo Atomics, based in the US, closed its Series A funding round with $27 million to “make nuclear reactor deployment highly predictable and economical”. It is building a factory-fabricated 10 MWe micro-reactor that it says will be able to help decarbonise anything from a small datacenter to a large city.

🌸 Swedish energy grid startup Flower secured €25 million in a Series A funding round led by Northzone. Its AI-powered software is designed to stabilise the energy system by enhancing predictability and flexibility for both energy producers and consumers.

❄️ US-based Transaera is raising a $6 million round to support field trials of its unique air conditioner for homes and apartments that uses a special material to remove humidity before cooling the air, saving energy in the process.

💡 Researchers at Oxford University have developed a novel light-absorbing material, which is thin and flexible enough to be applied to the surface of almost any building or everyday object, that can generate more solar power without relying on silicon-based solar panels.

ESG x Climate

🚚 UK-based, female-founded startup Clearly secured $4.3 million seed funding to help fleet operators be more financially and energy efficient with its climate intelligence platform, which is designed to improve data visibility.

Materials x Climate

🪟 Miru Smart Technologies, based in Vancouver, raised $20 million Series A funding to commercialise its electrochromic window technology for the automobile, architectural, marine, and aviation industries.

🥤 Researchers at James Cook University have developed an innovative method, the Atmospheric Pressure Microwave Plasma synthesis technique, to transform microplastics into graphene.

Mobility x Climate

🔋 UCL spinout Gaussion raised $12 million Series A funding for its fast-charging battery technology, which it claims could provide the average EV driver with a week’s charge (200 miles) in under 10 minutes, even after 1,000 charges.

🔌 Portuguese EV charge point operator Powerdot secured €165 million, bringing its total raised to date to over €465 million, to expand its ultra-fast power charging points to more than 3,100 locations by 2026. 

⚡️ Indian EV charging station startup Kazam raised $8 million, in a Series A3 funding round led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India,  to expand its operations both inside and outside of India by building fast chargers specifically for electric two and three-wheelers.

🚢 UK-based DRIFT Energy secured £5 million from Octopus Ventures and Blue Action Accelerator to develop “net positive ships” that harvest and transport green hydrogen while at sea.

🏕 Latvian startup BeTriton raised €80,000 via an equity crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube. It is developing an electric amphibious RV, which is a combination of electric bike, camper, and boat, with a range of 100+ km overland and 30+ km on water. 

⛽️ DeCarice, based in Australia, secured undisclosed pre-seed investment from Investible’s Climate Tech Fund for its hydrogen injection technology for diesel fuel machinery, which it says has the potential to reduce carbon emissions by up to 85%.

A new research hub, led by Heriot-Watt University and the University of Glasgow, will lead the use of digital twins in determining how transport systems can be decarbonised as quickly, safely and cheaply as possible.

Memes x Climate

♻️ Vojtech Vosecky dropped some serious truths about recycling in his linkedin post along with this class A meme:

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Editorial by Arman, Curation by Nicola