🇬🇧 ClimateHack Vol 39: UK's Climate Tech Startups

Hey There,

It's been a big week in Climate news, funding and insights. So let's jump right in.

In today's edition:

🇬🇧 Our list of the 80+ UK climate tech startups you need to know. 🦠 Windfall Bio out of stealth with a $9M raise for methane-eating microbes.🌡 Denmarks Lun brings in €10.3 million in funding for the OS of heat pumps.

Digest x Climate

💡 A new report from the Biden Administration says that biotechnology should be used to improve the nutrition, sustainability and resilience of US food systems, and outlines the need for more food-grade biomanufacturing facilities, including ones for precision fermentation and gene sequencing.

📈 What’s up? Scientists at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine claim that climate change is fuelling longer and more intense pollen seasons.

📉 What's down? The BBC will not broadcast an episode of Sir David Attenborough’s new ‘Wild Isles’ series on British wildlife because of fears its themes of the destruction of nature would incite a backlash from Tory politicians and the right wing press.

🤯 Wild Read: This account of an $16M investment into Carbonomy, the Estonian climate startup that never existed.

Carbon x Climate

🦠 US-based Windfall Bio has come out of stealth with a $9M raise to use its methane-eating microbes for climate good. It's deploying its enzymes to dairy farmers, where they will eat methane and capture nitrogen from the air to create fertiliser that can be used on the farms.

🔎 Munich-based IntegrityNext raised €100 million for its platform that audits business supply chains for compliance with environmental and sustainability governance rules.

📏 Amsterdam-based Coolset raised €1.5 million seed funding for its newly-launched automated decarbonisation platform for SMEs, which helps businesses to measure and eliminate their carbon impact in just a few weeks.

🌳 French startup Carbonable secured €1.2 million in a seed funding round led by Ethereal Ventures. Its platform is the “smartest and easiest” way to invest in carbon removal projects.

🚜 Good Read: Forbes laid out how microorganisms are helping farmers capture carbon and unlock new revenue streams.

Food x Climate

🥔 Israeli startup PoLoPo (portfolio co.) secured $1.75 million pre-seed funding, in a round led by FoodLabs, for its potato-based molecular farming technology, which it is using to replicate ovalbumin, the protein found in egg white.

🍎 Israeli startup TripleW secured $16.5 million Series B funding to produce lactic acid and bioplastic from food waste, providing a low cost, versatile alternative to fossil-based materials.

🍖 Cocoon Bioscience, based in Madrid, raised €15 million to scale its high-value proteins business, including developing recombinant proteins for cultivated meat growth media.

💰 The US government’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture announced $9.4 million in grants for 12 projects focused on solving challenges in urban, indoor, and emerging agricultural systems.

🗑 Netherlands-based OneThird secured €2.75 million in a late-seed funding round led by Dutch impact investor Pymwymic. The startup’s AI-powered scanning technology helps food producers, distributors, retailers and consumers to predict the shelf life of fresh produce, reducing food waste.

🌿 Provectus Algae scored new funding, bringing its total raised to date to $19 million, to expand its “carbon negative” biomanufacturing ingredients platform, whose feedstocks are carbon dioxide and light.

🥫 European consumer group BEUC is asking the European Union to ban the use of carbon-neutral claims for all products, including food and drink, as it says that the claims mislead consumers and are scientifically inaccurate.

Energy x Climate

🌡 Lun, based in Denmark, secured €10.3 million seed funding to swap out boilers in homes for electric heat pumps. Its platform is an “operating system” for heat pump installers, designed to provide them with “full stack” support.

⚡️ London-based Piclo raised £8.3 million Series B funding to expand into the US and Asia Pacific. Its flexibility marketplace was developed to decarbonise the energy grid, enabling system operators to procure, dispatch and settle local flexibility services and drive efficiency.

🏭 German startup ampere.cloud secured €5 million Series A funding to support its European expansion plans. Its platform uses IoT to support efficient management of renewable energy plants.

🏠 Canada’s XNRGY Climate Systems closed a funding round co-led by MacKinnon, Bennett & Co. and Idealist Capital, which it will use to support the design and manufacture of its energy efficient commercial HVAC systems.

🌕 Rolls Royce has been working on a project to deploy a nuclear reactor on the moon that will “provide the power needed for humans to live and work” there, and is now backed by the UK Space Agency to the tune of £2.9 million.

🚆 Swiss startup SunWays has developed a strategy for solar energy infrastructure that “uses the space between railway tracks to deploy standard photovoltaic panels without impeding the movement of trains”.

Materials x Climate

👟 New Zealand-based shoe producer Allbirds unveiled its Project M0.0NSHOT, the world’s first net zero carbon shoe (the industry average is 14.0 kg CO₂e per pair). It is made with regenerative wool, a sugarcane-based foam midsole and bioplastic eyelets.

🌿 Florida-based Carbonwave secured $5 million to put the seaweed mats across the Gulf of Mexico, which currently pose a threat to coastal ecosystems, to good use. It will use the funds to scale production of its seaweed-based emulsifier for cosmetics, which it created as an alternative to petroleum-based ingredients.

🧪 Scientists from NYU Abu Dhabi’s Smart Materials Lab and Center for Smart Engineering Materials have developed an innovative method of harvesting water from naturally occurring sources like fog and dew, using a gradually subliming organic crystal.

🚗 Canadian fashion brand Grounded People debuted its unisex São Paulo shoe collection made from recycled car tyres.

Transport x Climate

⛴ Candela, based in Stockholm, raised $20 million to begin production of its 30-passenger electric ferry, designed as a hydrofoil watercraft (i.e. drag force is reduced to limit energy usage).

🔋 Dutch startup Chargetrip raised €10 million Series A funding, in a round led by HSBC Asset Management, to bring its API-based SaaS range prediction and EV routing platform to the commercial fleet market.

🚲 UK-based electric cargo bike startup Zedify secured £5 million in a funding round co-led by Barclays’ Sustainable Impact Capital fund. It plans to expand its eco-delivery bikes to additional locations, including Manchester and Birmingham.

🔌 US federal recommendations announced last week aim to make electric vehicle charging more accessible, and the new National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program is making it happen, guiding federal funds into new charging stations with minimum standards.

Resources x Climate

🇬🇧 We just released our list of 80 UK Climate Tech startups.

Fuelled by strong technical universities across the country, an active startup ecosystem (particularly in London and Cambridge), plenty of early stage capital, and the presence of venture builders like EF and Carbon 13 - the UK climate scene is booming.

Discover the full list here that spotlights the CEO's behind these companies, broken down into categories - from biotech to energy optimization. And as always, let us know if we missed someone here.

Events x Climate

💡 Missed our ClimateHack meetup in Berlin last week? Worry not, as two of our panelists, Jessica Burley of Planet A and Floriane von der Forst of FoodLabs, shared their key takeaways from the event which covered all things biodiversity.

⏰ Last Call: Apply to pitch at this years HackSummit for a chance to present on stage in front of Lowercarbon Capital, Fifth Wall, Zero Carbon Capital and receive a $100k investment from us. Past winners include: MeliBio ($6M+ raised since), Michroma ($5M+ raised since), Hyfe ($2M+ raised since). Applications close on Monday 27th March.

Data x Climate

🇫🇷 Bonjour: Here's our mapping of the 80 French Climate tech startups we uncovered, broken down by sector.

🧬 Useful: Raising in biotech this year? Nucleus Capital’s “Made with Biology Funding Napkin 2023” is a useful resource to know the current biotech funding benchmarks.

📊 Interesting: A new study shows that GHG emissions from food loss and waste account for half of the total annual GHG emissions from the food system.

🏭 Helpful: This is the FOAK roadmap slide you need for your fundraising, thanks to Extania Capital.

Thanks for reading, sharing, and recommending this newsletter - we love to see the climate community growing week on week.

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Editorial by Arman, Curation by Nicola.