🇨🇭 ClimateHack Vol 35: Swiss Climate Tech

Hey There,

What do VC's like World Fund, Planet A, FoodLabs and Zero Carbon Capital, all have in common?

They're all speaking at this years HackSummit on May 11/12th.

We just announced the first batch of 50 speakers for what will probably be the most fun Climate Tech event of the year.

Use code CHNEWSLETTER for a 10% discount on your ticket here, valid until this Sunday at midnight EST.

In today's edition:

🇨🇭 A list of 80+ founders building in Swiss climate tech.🍸 Rising temperatures threaten the existence of your next tequila. 🗺 Carbon Maps secures €4.3 million to decarbonize the food chain.

Digest x Climate

📊 Mid-Stage Funding Gap: Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures put out a great piece highlighting the need for funding towards climate startups in the mid-stages. Typically this is when companies are still pre/early revenue, but need significant capital to start scaling up ahead of larger commercial sales.

📉 What’s down? Rising temperatures threaten the existence of the margarita, since tequila and mezcal come from agave plants that are pollinated by a type of bat which is suffering from the effects of the climate crisis.

🔋 MIT chemists have found a method to produce white phosphorus, an essential ingredient in thousands of products, including lithium-ion batteries, in a way which uses electricity to speed up a key chemical reaction and could reduce the carbon emissions of the process by more than half.

💡 Good Read: Voyager’s outline of the state of supply chains today, and how climate change and its responses are changing the supply chain landscape, makes for an interesting read.

Food x Climate

🪰 Future Fields, based in Canada, announced $11.2 million seed extension funding to scale its EntoEngine, which uses fruit flies instead of steel bioreactor tanks for recombinant protein production.

🔎 CarbonCloud, based in Sweden, raised €7.5 million Series A funding for its climate-tech SaaS solution for the food industry, designed to help users optimise their climate footprint

🗺 French startup Carbon Maps secured €4.3 million just a few weeks after its inception. It is building a software-as-a-service platform for the food industry so that restaurants and food producers can track the climate impact of each of their products, as a basis for eco ratings.

🦠 Wild Microbes, based in the US, raised $3.3 million pre-seed funding to generate “next generation microbial hosts” for precision fermentation technology via its proprietary gene-editing process.

🥛 Finnish startup Collo wants to help reduce raw milk costs and the dairy industry’s carbon footprint with its “liquid fingerprint technology”, which it claims can detect any type of liquid in pipes in real-time, allowing companies to optimise production and reduce product losses.

💡 Good Read: Steve Molino at Clear Current Capital talks about why it’s time to change the conversation around sustainable foods.

💡 Good Read: Check out Greg Michel of Cell Capital’s post about why this week's funding rounds for CarbonCloud and Carbon Maps are an industry win.

Energy x Climate

🏭 UK-based green hydrogen pioneer GeoPura secured £36 million, in a round led by GM Ventures and Barclays Sustainable Impact Capital, to scale its hydrogen power generation technology into EV charging and supplementary grid power.

📊 Green Fusion, based in Berlin, raised €2.7 million seed funding in a round led by Wi Venture. It will use the funds to further develop its cloud-based energy management solution that helps users to control and optimise heating and energy systems in a variety of building types, in real-time.

🌊 Marine energy company SAE Renewables announced a major milestone this week, as its “tidal stream array off the coast of the Pentland Firth became the first tidal stream array in the world to generate 50GWh of electricity”.

🇪🇺 The European Union’s plans to rapidly scale up to 45% renewable energy by 2030 to end its dependence on Russian fossil fuels have reached a stalemate over discussions around the burning of trees.

Materials x Climate

🧥 La Tannerie Végétale, based in France, raised €500,000 seed funding to scale its animal-free, plastic-free, water-free and 100% biodegradable and recyclable alternatives to leather and faux leather.

👜 Spanish company Persiskin has launched a vegan leather made from leftover persimmons, leveraging its position in “the cradle of persimmon production in Europe” to provide a sustainable alternative to animal-based leather while reducing food waste.

🔎 Tetra Pak has begun first-of-its-kind research into the structures and properties of materials to develop a sustainable, fiber-based food packaging, in collaboration with ForMAX “MAX IV”, one of the world’s most advanced synchrotron radiation laboratories.

🌊 A project coordinated by AIMPLAS, the Plastics Technological Centre, and the Spanish Institute of Oceanography is underway to convert marine plastic waste into new recyclable and sustainable materials for use in products for aquaculture.

🧪 Researchers from the Institute for Cooperative Upcycling of Plastic have developed a new type of catalyst to break down polyolefin plastics, used in everything from shrink wrap to dental floss, into new, useful products.

Funds x Climate

🇱🇹 Contrarian Ventures, based in Lithuania, secured €25 million from the European Investment Fund to back climate-focused European startups at seed stage.

🇺🇸 The US Department of Energy is granting a total of $68 million to 53 small businesses working to develop tools for climate research and advanced materials and technologies for clean energy conversion.

🇦🇺 The government of Victoria, Australia is offering $1.3 million via its AgTech Grants Program to twenty emerging agtech startups, through a partnership between Agriculture Victoria and startup agency LaunchVic.

Resources x Climate

🇨🇭 Here's a list of 80+ Swiss Climate Tech founders building everything from energy optimisation in real estate to carbon capturing concrete, alternative meats to decarbonised chemicals

A few observations:

• Energy Optimisation (especially in real estate) is the most densely populated sector in Swiss Climate Tech.

• Hard Tech solutions do exists in Food, Materials, Construction and Chemicals.

• Many of the startups are spin-offs coming from ETH Zürich and EPFL.

• Active investors here inc. Venture Kick, Übermorgen Ventures and Wingman Ventures.

Events x Climate

🙌 50+ Climate Speakers: We just announced the first batch of confirmed speakers joining us this May at the HackSummit. The line up features the founders of IQM, Ecovate, Triple Bar, Klim, one . five, cradle and VC's at Zero Carbon Capital, FoodLabs, World Fund, Nucleus Capital and many more to be announced.

🇩🇪 Free Meetup (Berlin) - Registration just opened for our Berlin ClimateHack Meetup on the 16th March, with a focus on Biodiversity. Come network with the who's who of Berlin's Climate scene. Limited tickets.

Memes x Climate

An accurate representation on the current state of the seed stage climate VC..

Thanks for reading, have a great weekend ahead and hope I made all our Swiss readers happy this edition 🇨🇭

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Editorial by Arman, Curation by Nicola.