🌎 ClimateHack Vol 23: Venture Builders x Climate

Hey There,

Last week I asked you where we should host the first ever ClimateHack meetup - here's the top 3 picks:

🇬🇧 London (32.50%)🇩🇪 Berlin (27.50%)🇨🇭 Zurich (17.5%)

Looks like we'll be getting our tea and biscuits ready, because London is calling.

The exact dates, timing, place will come together in the coming days, but l'm thinking early January, 100 or so founders/funders, drinks and talks.

If you want to help out with this first event, or have suggestions for speakers / thematics, just hit reply.

Digest x Climate

📈 What’s up? Research from A/O PropTech suggests that funding for "green" construction tech companies will reach a record $2.2 billion this year. Some notable funds in this space include A/O PropTech, 2150 VC and Powerhouse Ventures.

🌊 Norwegian firm Ocean Oasis says that its wave-powered prototype device, which it described as being an “offshore floating desalination plant,” will enable “the production of fresh water from ocean waters by harnessing the energy of the waves to carry out a desalination process.”

🇨🇭 The Swiss Federal Council announced a new law on mandatory climate reporting for public companies and banks, that will come into effect in 2025.

🇬🇧 The UK’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is apportioning £1.5 million in funding for its new AI for Decarbonisation Programme, part of its £1 billion Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, aimed at reducing the country’s carbon output.

🌎 Enduring Planet co-founder and CEO Dimitry Gershenson’s put together an incomplete list of ways to finance your climate startup or small business.

Carbon x Climate

🔎 Enriched Ag, based in the US, closed a $9 million seed round for its grazing and carbon insights platform, designed to help ranchers and landowners better manage grazing practices and make decisions around carbon capture.

💻 Stockholm-headquartered Claims Carbon secured €1.1 million in a seed round led by Helsinki-based investment firm Vaens. Its software helps insurance firms assess the carbon footprint of their value chains to inform decisions on net zero targets.

Food x Climate

🧫 Bright Biotech (portfolio co.), based in the UK, closed an oversubscribed seed round with $3.2 million. Its technology harnesses valuable proteins from plant chloroplasts to help cultivated meat companies affordably scale to industrial production.

🌾 German startup Infarm is currently trialling growing wheat in its vertical farming operations, and says it could produce 117 tons of wheat per hectare per year, 26 times the yield of conventional open-field growing.

🍯 Melibio (portfolio co.) is set to launch its bee-free honey, made with plant-based ingredients and its proprietary novel tech, in Europe next year, via organic food producer Narayan Foods.

🥪 Prime Roots’ sliceable plant-based Koji-Meats are now available at select deli counters and sandwich shops in the San Francisco Bay Area. ahead of a larger US retail and restaurant expansion in 2023.

💡 Good Read: 153-year-old food giant Campbell Soup reviews three hundred billion data points each year to inspire its NPD. Here’s how it’s using AI to inspire a new generation of NPD.

Materials x Climate

♻️ Fairmat, based in France, raised €34 million Series A funding to recycle carbon fibre composites from end-of-life industrial projects into a new, useful material that is twice as light as aluminium.

🐑 Animal rights group PETA launched a Vegan Wool Challenge Award, offering $1 million to the first individual, group, or company which creates a vegan wool material that is “visually, texturally, and functionally akin to or better than sheep’s wool.”

Energy x Climate

🏭 Virtual power plant startup Swell Energy, based in California, raised $120 million in a round led by the SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Greenbacker Development Opportunities Fund I to provide grid capabilities in states like California and Hawaii and reduce reliance on fossil fuel plants.

🤖 Sydney-based Abyss Solutions raised $15 million in a funding round led by AirTree to use robotics to assess critical infrastructure in the global oil and gas industry, having doubled its revenue in the past two years.

⛏ French startup I-ROX secured €12 million for its R&D programme, aimed at delivering electricity for mining from pulsed power energy sources, that is capable of matching a nuclear reactor's output "in a millionth of a second."

🌡 Hysopt, based in Antwerp, closed €5.3 million to support expansion of its heating, ventilation and air conditioning digital twin software, which maps out commercial buildings’ HVAC energy flows, and which can be adjusted using various parameters.

⚡️ Dutch startup Sympower secured €3 million Series B funding to expand its proprietary platform, designed to balance the supply and demand of electricity across energy networks, contributing to a more stable renewable energy system, across Europe.

🔋 Danone SA is set to launch a global energy program to improve its energy efficiency by 35% by 2025, increase its use of renewable energy, and have 100% of its electricity come from renewable sources by 2030.

Transport x Climate

🏍 Dat Bike raised $8 million, in a round led by Singapore-based Jungle Ventures, to put more electric bikes on Vietnam’s roads, having grown its revenue 10x in the past 12 months.

🔋 Chinese electric vehicle startup Nio is accelerating its expansion into Europe with the launch of its first power-swapping station in Varberg, Sweden, where it offers swappable batteries.

🍕 Domino’s Pizza Inc, the largest pizza company in the world, is set to roll out a nationwide fleet of 800 custom-branded 2023 Chevy Bolt electric vehicles in the coming months, which will make it the largest electric pizza delivery fleet in the country.

🛴 Zapp Electric Vehicles, whose debut electric scooter is the "fastest accelerating" in the world, is going public through a SPAC arrangement with special purpose vehicle CIIG Capital Partners.

🏗 Cemex USA and RTI International received a $3.7 million grant from the US Department of Energy to advance carbon capture technology in cement manufacturing through an 18-month front-end engineering design study.

Trends x Climate

🔋 Lithium-ion batteries, also known as li-on batteries, are a type of rechargeable battery - they’re the type used in electric cars, as well as in most portable consumer electronics like our smartphones and digital cameras.

As you’d imagine, demand is pretty high. Some 60% of li-on batteries are for electric automotives and, overall, the lithium battery recycling market is expected to grow to $19BN by 2030.

While there is enough of the raw materials to meet demand for now, there aren’t enough mines to extract and process it. Which is why some companies are looking into recycling used electric batteries.

We deep dived into this space and put together a report of what's happening / the white spaces - along with a list of 20+ companies working on solutions below:

Conversations x Climate: Venture Builders x Climate 🛠

This week I reached out to Jonny Everett, Founding Partner at Paris-based Climate Venture builder, Marble.

Jonny and his team have been identifying hard but essential problems in climate and building technical teams to solve them.

I asked him a bit about why he started Marble, what he's excited by next, and where he stands on the European Climate tech scene.

Q:​ What were you doing before founding Marble?

Before Marble I was a Mentor and Programme Manager at Entrepreneur First, Paris, helping pre-team pre-idea future founders go from 0 to Seed. And before that, I was a founder myself, scaling a bootstrapped software and services business from 0 to $MM ARR.

Q: Why did you start Marble and what do you do?

If you do any sort of research on how to solve climate change, you’ll quickly come to the realisation that we need deeptech. 50% of the tech we need to get to net zero is in early development. So if like me, you’re not a scientist, how do you maximise your impact on contributing to solving this crisis? My answer was helping the people who can solve these problems successfully transition from scientist into startup founder.

We believe a startup is the single best vehicle for achieving massive scale at warp speed, and we need both scale and speed when it comes to climate. So the best way for me to help was to bring my skillset as a founder and company builder to the climate space. At Marble we find people who have the skills needed to solve climate change problems, and help them to successfully build a company around these solutions.

The path from academic training to climate entrepreneur is tricky and non obvious. There's a massive playbook for people who want to build software. But when it comes to the tech we need to solve climate, it's atoms and not bits. That means deeptech, hardware, bio and cleantech - and all these playbooks are still being built.

With my awesome co-founder, Ben, we wanted to build Marble so we could bring together the right expertise, network and funding to support the people trying to do crazy ambitious things in deeptech for climate - and bridge the gap between those who can and those who do.

Q: What is a venture builder and how does it differentiate from traditional VC?

A venture builder starts working on ideas before there's even a founder. Our process begins with our own internal scoping of opportunity areas within climate where we believe new breakthrough solutions are needed. We then source scientists and engineers who have relevant skills but as yet have no team and in many cases, no specific idea.

We work with them to find the best problem to work on, build the right team to make that idea happen and then write the first pre-seed check into the company we've co-created. After that, is where traditional VC's come in - we help them raise Seed with Tier 1 climate tech VC's. Our objective is to create net new breakthrough companies where without Marble, the company would've been unlikely, if not impossible to create.

Q: ​Are you bullish or bearish on Climate Tech in Europe? What could we be doing better here?

Bullish on the talent that Europe has. We have some of the best academic and research institutions in the world and with the right help, these individuals are key to unlocking the solutions we need to get to net zero and beyond.

Mostly Bullish on European policy. It's historically been a leader on climate, but has a lot of catching up to do following the massive steps taken by the US with the Inflation Reduction Act.

Bearish on Europes ambition of capital. Both at an LP and VC level, there simply isn't the same depth of capital that wants to support deeptech innovation. There are some amazing LPs and amazing VC's, but we need many more to catch up with the US.

Q: ​What's 1 thing you wish more founders / investors in climate were working on?

For founders: Methane abatement, especially biogenic methane… and also… scalable bioproduction platforms for commodity chemicals.

For investors: Optimised financing solutions that are tailored to bringing deeptech solutions to market, especially FOAK units.

Q: ​Who should reach out to you and how?

If you’re interested in joining Marble as a Founder to solve hard climate problems, visit our website marble.studio or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter to be the first to know about our next events and call for Founders.

🌭 Sausages x Climate: 

Can an outspoken sausage expert spot which is plant-based? Let's find out:

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

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Curated by Nicola & Arman