🔎 ClimateHack Vol 21: Carbon Credits x Climate

Hey There,

Lots happening in the tech world this week (Twitter Shenanigans, Meta layoffs, FTX disaster).

But we won't be covering any of that here. Instead - here's the top Climate news of the week, in under a 5-minute read.

What’s in today's edition? 💡 COP27 highlights (and lowlights)🏆 The 3 most value-add VCs in FoodTech, as voted by founders.🔎 Identifying good and bad carbon credits, a chat with goodcarbon

Digest x Climate

💡 COP27 Highlights:

• Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg calls the COP27 event “greenwashing”, and is skipping the event to bring awareness to the lack of meaningful change that leaders failed to implement at previous COP conferences.

• John Kerry announced a new carbon credit program. The Energy Transition Accelerator, created in partnership with the Bezos Earth Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation, would allow companies to buy carbon credits to fund renewable energy projects in developing countries.

• Pakistan’s Prime Minister made an emotional plea for richer nations to do more to help countries that are suffering from the impacts of the climate crisis.

• This neat little graphic tracked all the private jets flying into COP27 🙃

Carbon x Climate

🛰 Amsterdam-based Overstory raised $5.2M in funding in a round led by Led by Convective Capital to help expand their vegetation intelligence platform, mitigating wildfire risk and preventing power outages.

💨 British startup CarbonRe secured £4.2 million seed funding, in a round led by Planet A Ventures, to scale up its technology, designed to decarbonise energy-intensive industries with AI.

🔎 London-based net zero intelligence startup Faradai raised $2.4 million pre-Series A funding, in a round led by Sangha Capital and Edenbase, for its platform that allows companies to monitor their investment returns as they implement processes that produce less carbon.

🌳 Dutch climate fintech startup Carble secured €300,000, in a funding round led by Antler, to bring to market its proprietary software platform, through which it collects satellite data on carbon storage in agroforestry farms to reward deforestation-free farming at scale.

🪨 44.01, based in Oman, has been nominated for the prestigious Earth Shot Prize. It uses peridotite mineralisation to remove CO2 from the atmosphere it and permanently store it within rock.

🧑‍🔬 An international team of researchers has found a substance, called aluminium formate and made from readily-available aluminium hydroxide and formic acid, that can capture carbon emissions cheaply and efficiently.

Food x Climate

👏 TIME unveiled its list of Best Inventions of 2022, and it features Atomo Coffee’s molecular cold brew, Beyond Meat steak, Meati’s crispy cutlet and chicken cutlet, MyForest Foods’ mycelium-based bacon, and Tastee Tape’s edible burrito tape, among others.

📈 GlobalData says that the alternative protein market will continue to build on its current growth over the next few years as meat, seafood and dairy alts close the price, taste and texture gap with animal-based proteins.

🍫 Israeli cell-based startup Celleste Bio is working towards bringing its cultivated chocolate to market, made by reproducing high-quality cacao cells without the use of genetic modification or manipulation.

🛒 French online agribusiness marketplace Agriconomie raised €60 million Series B funding to expand geographic reach of its platform, which sells a range of agricultural supplies directly to farmers and assists them in the transition to regenerative and sustainable agriculture practices.

👩‍🍳 Orderlion, based in Austria, closed $4.2 million Series A funding for its SaaS platform that provides food and beverage wholesalers and suppliers with the tools they need to digitise their business and reduce food loss in their supply chains.

🍄 Leaders in the fungi-based protein sector have formed their own trade group, The Fungi Protein Association.

💸 Here’s the 3 most value-add VCs in FoodTech, as voted by 150+ founders. And here's the rankings based by geography, founder friendliness and more.

Materials x Climate

🌿 Biotic secured €2 million seed funding to “commodify biodegradable plastic materials”. Its bioplastic flakes or pellets are made from macroalgae, and fit a wide range of plastic applications.

🍍 London-based alt materials startup Ananas Anam announced a partnership with automotive technology leader FORVIA to develop vehicle interior materials made from waste pineapple leaf fibres.

💦 Cove, based in California, says it is finally close to shipping its fully biodegradable plastic alternative to the water bottle, made using fermented cooking oil, that eventually dissolves in water or soil without leaving behind toxic waste or residue.

Energy x Climate

⚡️ Norway’s Enode, a Y-Combinator alum, raised $15 million Series A funding for its application programming interface that allows energy companies to integrate EVs, thermostats, solar inverters, and other energy hardware directly into their apps.

🤝 The US, Japan and other countries are set to offer a climate finance deal worth at least $15 billion to help Indonesia switch to greener energy, under the “just energy transition partnership”.

📊 Enershare, based in Lisbon, has been awarded €8 million by the European Commission to support the EU’s ambition for energy data sharing with its "first-of-its-kind" reference implementation for building data spaces to drive cross-border European energy data projects.

🔋 British sustainable battery startup LiNa Energy secured £3 million seed funding to accelerate its technological development and growth. Its flagship product is its sodium battery, which it says offers lower costs and greater safety than traditional lithium-ion batteries.

🏭 Lisbon-based 1s1 Energy raised $2.15 million seed funding for its proposed all-renewable hydrogen plant, designed to use water electrolysis instead of fossil-derived natural gas.

💻 Renewable energy software platform Orkestra, based in Australia, raised $1.1 million seed funding to help large energy companies plan, sell, and optimise the roll out of new energy projects.

Transport x Climate

⚡️ Electric Era raised $4 million to install its affordable PowerNode Platform fast-charging EV stations at and near convenience stores, to help satisfy demand for high-speed charging infrastructure.

🚗 Amazon’s fleet of Rivian electric vehicles has so far delivered five million packages to customers in the US, since rolling out in July. Its goal is to have 100,000 on the road by 2030.

🇬🇧 A group of automotive and electric vehicle firms in the UK, including Ford, Britishvolt and Octopus Electric Vehicles, are calling on the government to ensure the Zero Emission Vehicle mandate comes into effect from 2024, since it requires legislation.

Funds x Climate

🇸🇪 Sweden’s EQT Ventures closed its latest fund with €1 billion, to support primarily early-stage startups in Europe. EQT is know to be a generalist - but this fund will have a focus on “where society has problems” including sectors such as climate tech, food tech, the creator economy, energy, fintech, software, data & IT infrastructure, deep tech and more.

🇸🇬 Singapore-based investment company Wavemaker Impact completed the first close of a planned $25 million fund that, instead of startups, will support technologies battling climate change, matching them with experienced entrepreneurs.

Conversations x Climate: Carbon Credits x Climate 🔎

This week I was connected to Jerome Cochet, Co-Founder & MD at goodcarbon, tokenizing nature based climate solutions to close funding gaps & create forward price signals.

As someone that's been struggling to understand what carbon credits really are, and what they do - this interview was really great primer for me to start digging deeper.

Q: What are carbon credits - and what is the difference between good or bad carbon credits?

Carbon credits are measurable, verifiable emissions reductions from certified climate projects. These projects either remove or avoid greenhouse gas emissions. Projects can range from energy projects (e.g. wind power projects), to Nature-based Solution projects (e.g. reforestation) and technology-based removal projects (e.g. direct air capture).

Independent carbon credit standards like Verra and Gold Standard define a set of criteria that projects must adhere to, to ensure verification. However, these criteria only set the baseline. Huge quality differences exist between projects that have been verified by these standards.

We at goodcarbon define ‘good’ projects as those that score high on all three of our assessment dimensions: impact, risk, and integrity. On the impact dimensions, ‘good’ projects must have a measurable impact beyond carbon on biodiversity and local communities. Regarding risk, ‘good’ projects must, for example, have a high permanence and low risk of overestimation meaning credit issuance does not surpass the emission reductions achieved.

When it comes to integrity, ‘good’ projects have a high additionality which means that the project would not have occurred without the sale of carbon projects and stringent safeguards in place, for example, for carbon leakage. On our platform we only have projects available that have passed our detailed project assessment including more than 160 criteria.

Q: Why did you launch Good Carbon and what do you do?

We have founded goodcarbon to shift the focus of global capital to restore nature.

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges we are facing globally. However, it is not a stand-alone crisis and cannot be solved on its own. The climate crisis is closely interlinked with the biodiversity crisis and loss of nature. Together they have a profound impact on global equality and our collective wellbeing as more than 50% of our global GDP is dependent on nature.

Nature-based Solutions (Nbs) can not only contribute up to 40% to our global decarbonization (Source) needs by 2030, but also protect and restore biodiversity and have a social impact on the local communities, predominantly in the global south.

More than 4000 companies globally with a market cap of more than 40 trillion have made climate commitments with the Science-based Target Initiative (Source). Additionally, the number of companies with nature positive commitments has increased significantly over the past year.

goodcarbon provides companies easy and convenient access to nature through our Nature-as-a-Service platform. With our platform companies can build up a global diversified portfolio of Nature-based Solutions projects that will give them access to carbon credits over the next 10 to 30 years.

Q: How can I track where my investment is going to and the impact of my invested dollar?

Any NbS projects available for investment on our platform have been pre-assessed by our team to ensure the projects is set up to achieve the highest impact as possible. We use high-frequency remote-sensing to track the progress of projects and the estimated emission avoidance or removal.

Every 1 to 3 years projects undergo a more detailed assessment to reliably measure the emission removal or avoidance achieved in this period. We also track the project’s impact on biodiversity and local communities and are working with partners to measure the biodiversity impact in the future. Companies can also track the progress of projects themselves through satellite imagery and additionally receive regular update reports from the project owner.

Q: In terms of returns - How does this compare with other investment classes (startup equities, public stocks, funds, etc.)?

With our platform we are currently mainly targeting corporates. Corporates are looking to hedge against increasing carbon credit prices and are therefore mainly interested in investing into NbS projects to receive carbon credits as a return which they can use to compensate of their own emissions.

Our platform also offers the opportunity to resell credits on a secondary market with which a financial return can be generated. The financial return will depend on the performance of the project and the price development of carbon credits.

Experts estimate that prices could increase significantly from current levels of $5-10 USD for energy credits and $10-$20 USD for NbS credits to well above $50 USD over the next 10 years. Therefore, Nature-based Solutions projects also offer an attractive opportunity for investors if performance risks are managed through a global diversification of projects.

Q: What's next and how / who should reach out?

We have recently launched our platform and are currently in a closed Beta phase with a selected number of companies and projects. We have built up a pipeline of 10 million carbon credits that we will bring to market over the next few weeks. We are open to speak with any company that is looking to achieve an impact beyond carbon and interested in existing or future carbon credits from high-quality Nature-based Solutions projects.

Tweets x Climate: 

In retrospect, maybe funding another 15-min delivery wasn't the best idea?

Thanks for reading and wherever your are in the world, have a great weekend ahead.

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Curated by Nicola & Arman