💰 ClimateHack Vol. 56: Isometric out the gate with a $25M seed round

Hey There,

While none of us are giving much thought about our plans for next summer, there might be one exception to add to your list.

The dates for our 2024 edition of the HackSummit, Europe’s largest gathering of climate Founders, VC’s, LP’s and Operators, just launched.

Over 200+ people have already joined the waitlist, if you’d like to be the first to know of super early bird tickets, speaking opportunities, and more, apply here.

In today's edition:

💰 $25M in seed funding for Isometric and their carbon credits platform.
☀️ Sweden’s solar energy startup Midsummer receive a €32 million grant.
🏢 Eurazeo closed its Smart City fund II with €400 million ready to deploy.

Digest x Climate

📈 What’s up? A study by environmental consultancy Trucost shows that none of the world’s top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use - a staggering $7.3 trillion.

📉 What’s down? Amazon has seen a decline in carbon emissions for the first time, marking a reduction of 0.4% between 2021 and 2022, and also reported that its carbon intensity had fallen by 7% in the same period.

🌎 Early applications are now open for Marble’s Founder in Residence programme - If you’re a scientist, engineer, or deeptech operator who wants to apply your skills to tackle hard climate problems, learn more and apply here.

💸 Want to learn how to invest in climate like a VC? Yoann Berno, formerly GP of Climentum Capital, just launched a crash course for emerging investors to learn the essential skills of investing.

💡 Here’s 5 practical ways anyone concerned about climate can start making an impact today.

Carbon x Climate

📊 London-based carbon data provider Sylvera raised $57 million Series B funding in a round led by Balderton Capital. It provides data to corporate clients to determine the effectiveness of carbon offsets, with the goal of incentivising investment into meaningful carbon offset measures and sustainability.

👀 New startup Isometric is launching with $25 million in funding, following one of the largest seed rounds this year for a climate tech startup, to build a registry and science platform focused on “high-quality, long-duration” carbon removal credits.

🔎 Sensorfact, a climate tech IoT scaleup based in the Netherlands, raised €25 million in a round led by Blume Equity. Its platform provides manufacturers with the tools to monitor electricity, gas, water, and compressed air usage, and optimise their operations to make them more efficient.

⛴ German maritime startup subdron GmbH secured €1.3 million pre-seed funding to decarbonise the shipping industry with underwater inspections. Its underwater technology is designed to make the inspection of underwater infrastructure for biofouling and structural integrity autonomous.

🤝 India’s largest natural gas company, GAIL, is entering into a strategic partnership with carbon capture and utilisation company LanzaTech Global, Inc. to set up a pilot scale CO2 capture and conversion project which will explore biorecycling carbon waste into fuels and chemicals.

🌍 Octavia Carbon and Cella Mineral Storage are joining forces to build the first direct air capture plant in the southern hemisphere, located in Kenya, using an experimental technology to trap 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually and store it underground.

Food x Climate

💧 Israeli agritech N-Drip raised $44 million in a Series C funding round led by the Liechtenstein Group for its smart irrigation systems, designed to help farmers save water and boost yields at lower costs.

🍎 Gaia Tech, based in Switzerland, closed its pre-seed funding round. The ETH Zürich spinout turns food production waste into high-value ingredients for cosmetics, food, and feed manufacturers.

💰 The Arab-Africa Trade Bridges Program launched a $1.5 billion initiative to support food security in its member countries, centered around its four pillars: Trade, Investment, Insurance and Infrastructure.

🔎 A new paper in Nature Food Journey estimates that vegan diets have less than half the impact of high-meat-eater diets.

Energy x Climate

☀️ Lithuania’s PVcase raised $100 million from Highland Europe, Energize, and existing investor Elephant. It will use the funds to further expand its single end-to-end solution for solar engineers, which it says can cut the project design process from weeks to roughly 20 minutes.

🇸🇪 Solar energy company Midsummer, based in Sweden, received a €32 million grant from the EU Innovation Fund to build a new 200 MW megafactory for the production of CIGS thin film solar cells.

📊 Verse, Inc. closed a $5.75 million seed funding round, led by Coatue, to launch Aria, its software platform that leverages generative AI to help companies buy and manage clean power.

⚡️ Swiss startup Hive Power secured $600,000 seed funding for its solutions that contribute to the evolution of smart grids, designed to enhance the integration of renewable energy and electric vehicles into intelligent electrical networks.

💰 The Biden-Harris Administration has announced the launch of a $20 billion clean energy grant program, to support clean energy projects and a “clean energy economy that works for all”, as part of its ambitions to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

🏭 Fervo Energy, which just got started on a 400-megawatt project to power approximately 300,000 homes by 2028, has hit a milestone in using oil drilling to produce geothermal energy, having completed a 30-day test where temperatures in its well reached roughly 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

🤝 Arla is partnering with energy firms Engie and Infinis to build two new solar parks in the UK, on a site formerly used as landfill, which will provide around 20% of the energy required to operate its entire UK facility.

Transport x Climate

🚗 Indonesian electric vehicle maker Maka Motors secured $37.6 million seed funding in one of Southeast Asia’s biggest seed rounds. It will use the funds to mass produce its two-wheeled EVs, and continue R&D for its in-house EV development.

🚲 Berlin-based CYCLE raised €10.3 million Series A funding to support European expansion of its e-bike last mile logistics services, which is already available in over 40 German cities.

🛩 British renewable energy firm Ecotricity’s founder, Dale Vince, announced plans to launch what he claims will be the world’s first electric airline, using conventional planes retrofitted with hydrogen-electric powertrains.

🔬 Researchers at the University of Missouri have designed a real-world test road using recycled materials, such as scrap tires and plastic waste, to fix the asphalt along a portion of Interstate 155.

Construction x Climate

🧱 US startup Brimstone received ASTM certification for its Ordinary Portland Cement, making it the first and only ultra-low carbon, carbon-neutral or carbon-negative cement to meet this critical and universally accepted industry requirement and meaning it is poised to decarbonise the global construction industry.

Funds x Climate

🇦🇺 Australian VC Wollemi Capital raised $220 million Series A funding to invest in carbon reduction companies working within sustainable food and agriculture, energy transition, and climate services - the fund notably co-led agtech startup Loam Bio’s huge $105 million round back in February.

🏢 Eurazeo closed its Smart City fund II with €400 million, which it will invest in renewable energy, mobility, logistics, manufacturing and the built environment on a global scale. So far, it has supported 1Komma5°’s €430 million Series D round and EV fast-charging network Electra, among others.

🇮🇱 Israel-based FLORA Ventures secured $50 million at the first close of its new agrifood fund. It’s already completed its first investment, supporting Arrakis Bio, a stealth-mode Israeli startup developing technology for the production and utilisation of animal-free human collagen and gelatin.

🧰 Cambridge-based venture builder Carbon13 closed its seed funding round with $2.2 million. It will use the funds to support its cohorts of founders to “make strategic decisions based as much on carbon reduction as on commercial value''.

🐙 Octopus Group is launching a new accelerator programme to support sustainable deep tech startups across the UK and Europe. Its Springboard programme will develop businesses working within technology to combat climate change, resource scarcity and energy security.

💡 Good read: PitchBook put out an interesting comparison of the challenges to sustainable investing in Europe and North America.

🏭 Good read: Extantia and 1.5°Ventures wrote this guide to CAPEX financing for hardware climate tech companies.

Tweets x Climate

Credit to @nickvanosdol for this work of pure art:

More trees, more jobs, more income, more biodiversity, more carbon capture, more shade - why the heck is this not happening in every major city?

This is true.

Thanks for reading and welcome to all the new subscribers this week 👋 Please let me know what you think below - I read every bit of feedback.

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Editorial by Arman, Curation by Nicola.