🏭 ClimateHack Vol. 42: Nuclear's mixed week.

Hey There,

Hope you all had a great Easter break and coming back recharged for the new quarter ahead. There's lots to cover today, so let's jump right in.

And a friendly reminder, we're less than a month away till doors open at our annual climate summit in Lausanne (here's who already confirmed attending).

In today's edition:

🏭 Germany breaks up with nuclear.💨 $11M in funding for the "brita-filter" for air.🇸🇪 List of 100+ climate tech CEO's in Sweden.

Digest x Climate

📈 What’s up? The US has 92 nuclear reactors scattered around the country, many of which are approaching the end of their expected lifetimes. Analysis from a team from MIT shows that, if they are all to be shut down, the increase in air pollution would have “serious health effects”.

🇩🇪 Breakup: Germany’s three remaining nuclear reactors will be shut down by Saturday — ending nuclear power generation in Europe’s largest economy. The country is largely split over the decision after having a decades long back-and-forth on wether nuclear should be part of Germany's strategy in a path to net zero and energy independence.

📉 What’s down? The US Environmental Protection Agency is reportedly planning to announce significant limits on vehicle exhaust emissions to boost adoption of electric vehicles, a proposal which would mark the US’ most aggressive climate regulations to date.

🔋 Data from Benchmark Minerals shows that the cost of “white gold” lithium is down 30% year-on-year, great news for climate tech companies working with lithium-ion batteries.

Carbon x Climate

🌾 Biotech startup Andes raised an additional $15 million Series A funding, bringing its total Series A raise to $30 million. It aims to capture carbon dioxide and convert it into minerals in soil, to offer sustainable solutions for agriculture and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

💨 Noya PBC, based in San Francisco, raised $11 million Series A funding for its DAC technology. Described as a "Brita-filter" for the air, it uses activated carbon to filter out carbon molecules from the air.

🌳 Zurich-based Xilva secured $1.8 million pre-seed funding for its proprietary methodology to assess forest projects, designed to reduce potential risks related to investing in carbon credits and nature restoration initiatives.

💰 A group of major US businesses, including H&M Group and JPMorgan Chase, has collectively committed to $100 million in advanced purchase of carbon removal through Stripe-owned Frontier.

🥼 A scientist from University of Texas at Arlington is developing a process that uses a continuous electrolytic pH pump and seawater to eliminate carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Food x Climate

🧀 Californian biotech Climax Foods secured investment from French dairy giant Bel Group. The two companies are partnering to develop AI-powered plant-based versions of Bel’s popular cheese brands, including Babybel, Laughing Cow, and Boursin.

🏭 New York-based Liberation Labs raised $30 million to advance the development of its first commercial-scale precision fermentation production facility in Indiana, which it says will have a fermentation capacity of 600,000 litres.

🤝 California-based NovoNutrients secured $3 million from Woodside Energy, one of Australia’s largest oil and gas companies. It will use the funds to build a pilot plant for its protein made from carbon dioxide.

🧫 ADM is partnering with cell-based startup Believer Meats to accelerate development and commercialisation of cultivated meat products, using ADM’s ingredients and nutrition expertise within Believer Meats’ technology.

🧬 Swiss startup Adaptyv Bio has built what it describes as a “full-stack protein engineering foundry”, to test new proteins, designed by AI, quickly and at scale, allowing them to fine-tune designs and improve performance. (Adaptyv Bio CEO Julian is also joining as a speaker at this years HackSummit).

📈 A study published in Nature Food reveals that greenhouse gases from food waste contribute to nearly half of all global food system emissions, a far greater volume than estimates made by previous studies.

💡 Check out this interesting infographic that highlights why it’s time to share the risk of transition towards regenerative agriculture.

Energy x Climate

⚡️ British startup Cheesecake Energy received £9.4 million from the UK government’s Longer Duration Energy Storage competition. It will use the funding to install its energy storage solution, which will collect energy from a solar farm to power a central heat pump that supplies a district heat pump network, as a microgrid in Colchester to help with local grid limitations.

🔋 Allotrope Energy, based in the UK, secured $6.7 million. It develops fast-charging batteries, made using carbon extracted from pulp from trees, for use across the mobility, aerospace, and robotics industries.

📊 Singapore-based energy management startup TablePointer raised $3 million seed funding for its energy efficiency SaaS platform, which it offers on subscription to small- and medium-sized businesses.

📱 Apple announced that it will move to 100% recycled cobalt in all of its batteries by 2025, as part of its strategy to reach carbon neutrality by 2030.

🔎 A team of researchers from Monash university in Australia has discovered an enzyme, dubbed ‘Huc,’ that is able to convert hydrogen gas into an electrical current.

☀️ Good Watch: Vox shared a video which explains how solar energy got so cheap, definitely worth a watch. And a great (thorough) read from Vox on wind/solar dating back to 2015.

Materials x Climate

🏡 London-based Infogrid raised $90 million Series B funding to expand its platform that uses AI to collect and analyse data on things like air quality, occupancy and energy consumption of buildings.

Transport x Climate

⛏ Lithium extracting and refining startup EnergyX raised $50 million, in a round led by General Motors, to scale its tech. GM will receive exclusive access to some of the lithium that EnergyX sources from mining companies in North and South America, for use in its electric vehicles.

🚗 Ford is set to spend $1.34 billion to transform its 70-year-old, 487-acre Oakville facility in Canada into an assembly plant for its next generation of electric vehicles.

🇰🇷 Hyundai Motor Group is planning to invest 24 trillion won (approximately $18 billion) in South Korea’s electric vehicle industry between now and 2030.

💡 Interesting: Nature shared its six steps to making lithium extraction cleaner, faster, and cheaper.

Funds x Climate

📚 US-based Nonprofit Arts Help is launching a $6 million fund to build the world’s first digital climate library, which will provide public access to the archives of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

🇪🇺 Remove launched this week, the latest evolution of Europe’s “first and only” accelerator program designed to support early-stage carbon dioxide removal startups, and it is accepting applications for its newest cohort.

Resources x Climate

🇸🇪 Meet the 100+ CEO's working in Sweden's climate tech scene in our latest climate mapping deep dive.

For a country of just 10.4M people, we were surprised to see the Swedish climate tech scene is overflowing with great companies, especially in deep tech.

A few observations: 

• Sweden has a strong climate tech presence supported by an active entrepreneurial ecosystem and largely funded by local investors.

• Energy Optimization and Energy Production are particularly well represented followed by Food and Ag, then Transport.

• The average age of CEO’s is older than those in our lists of Switzerland, France, UK and Germany.

• Swedish companies have done well in attracting global VC attention from some of top funds across Europe and US.

Find the full list here, broken down by category - and if there’s someone you think we’ve missed, please add them to the comments here so we can get this updated.

Events x Climate

👀 Who's attending: Here's a sneak peak at who's already confirmed attending our HackSummit in May - from some of the leading climate focussed startups globally, to the most active investors in our sector - and everyone in-between. With less than a month until doors open, it's time to grab one of the few remaining tickets here.

🇫🇷 Free Meetup: Our next ClimateHack meetup takes place in Paris on the 27th of April for an evening co-hosted with our friends at Marble and Serena to talk all things Deep Tech Funding. It's free, and very likely to sell out.

Memes x Climate

Credit goes to Edward van der Hout for meme'ing what we're all quietly thinking.

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend ahead.

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Editorial by Arman, Curation by Nicola.