👀 ClimateHack Vol. 70: 50+ Sub Saharan African ClimateTech startups

Hey There,

Today, 15 of the 20 countries most vulnerable to climate change are found in Africa, despite the continent contributing less than 4% of the world's total emissions.

To tackle the issues at home, and beyond, there’s a rising number of high impact startups working on leveraging the talent, natural assets, and geology to reverse - and manage - the impacts of climate change.

This week we spotlight the 50+ Sub Saharan African ClimateTech startups to watch - from updating the countries electric grids to carbon capture.

In Today’s Edition;

🌎 The Landbanking Group raised €10.3M Seed funding for their natural capital platform, Landler.
🌾 French startup Amatera secured €1.6M pre-seed funding to accelerate development of climate-resilient perennial crops.
🛢 In a bid to increase profits, Shell is planning to cut hundreds of jobs from the company’s low-carbon division.

Digest x Climate

👀 Helpful: This graphic put together by Hamerkop Climate Impacts, which covers 48 carbon certification standards, mapped to the seven dominant classifications.

📈 What’s up? Oil and gas giant BP’s venture capital arm announced plans to invest more than 90% of its spending over the next four years in green tech startups, working in sectors such as EVs, bioenergy, hydrogen and renewables.

📉 What’s down? It’s not been a great week for EVs;

- Canadian automaker ElectraMeccanica has cancelled its merger with UK-based electric and hydrogen truck firm Tevva due to ‘incurable breaches’.
- GM and Honda have ended plans to build millions of affordable and smaller electric vehicles, owing to high interest rates and battery costs plus ‘softening’ EV demand.
- Ford is delaying around $12 billion in planned EV investments, including construction of a second battery plant with joint venture partner SK, due to slowing demand.

🛢 Shell’s new CEO is planning to cut hundreds of jobs from the company’s low-carbon division, in a bid to boost profits.

Biodiversity x Climate

🌎 Germany’s The Landbanking Group secured €10.5 million seed funding for their natural capital platform. The companys platform, "Landler.io," helps landowners quantify the impact of sustainable land practices, from CO2 sequestration to biodiversity growth.

👀 Good Read: This new report from Nature4Climate, Serena and MRV Collective highlights how the nature tech market is growing and its role in tackling the biodiversity crisis and supporting nature-based solutions.

AgriFood x Climate

🦗 German agritech startup FarmInsect raised €8 million Series A funding. Its end-to-end solution allows farmers to build their own modular insect farms, supplied with weekly shipments of Black Soldier Fly seed larvae, which are then fattened on site using waste materials, such as fruit and vegetable peels, to produce a high-quality, protein-rich animal feed.

🌾 French startup Amatera secured €1.6 million pre-seed funding to accelerate development of climate-resilient perennial crops, including a new coffee variety with the “resilience and yields of Robusta and the taste of Arabica”.

🇰🇷 South Korea has become the second country to embrace a national plan for plant-based foods, with its Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs unveiling this week a comprehensive plan to boost the country’s plant-based food industry and encourage the adoption of alternatives to animal proteins.

🪐 San Francisco-based Nonfiction unveiled its Space Culinary Lab, part of NASA’s Deep Space Food Challenge, in which it creates tasty treats astronauts can grow themselves and even grill while on a long flight to Mars.

💸 Better Bite Ventures announced investments into three APAC food tech startups - Singapore’s Fattastic, whose oil structuring tech transforms plant oils into solid states to resemble animal fats, Australia’s Pivot Eat, which is is working on a novel process to enhance the structure and accelerate the scalability of plant-based whole-cut meat, and South Korea’s Everything But, which is Asia’s first cultivated pet food startup - as part of its early-stage First Bite initiative.

Energy x Climate

⚡️ US-based clean energy company Husk Power Systems, which has been working in rural electrification since 2008 and announced plans to launch 500 solar mini-grids in Nigeria over the next five years, secured $103 million Series D funding to achieve its goals.

🔋 European battery recycling startup Circu Li-ion raised €8.5 million seed funding to automate and scale the disassembly of batteries and the diagnostic of cells for a more economical and ecological battery recycling process.

🔋 Inlyte Energy, a grid battery developer based in California, raised $8 million in a seed funding round led by At One Ventures. It is reviving sodium-metal-halide batteries, a 50-year-old technology with immense potential because the batteries are energy dense and cheap to make.

📊 Netherlands-based Skoon Energy secured €5 million Series A funding, in a round led by Blue Bear Capital, to support its AI-powered software platform for clean mobile energy, already used by several rental companies across Europe.

🌡 Harvest Thermal, based in California, secured $4 million seed funding to make heat pumps cheaper to run. It has developed a small add-on, about the size of two shoeboxes, that allows the heat pump to run when electricity is cheapest and cleanest.

🔎 Rhizome, based in the US, raised $2.5 million and launched its AI climate resilience planning platform, which uses national lab research, building information and machine learning tools to boost power grid resilience.

☀️ Australian startup Orkestra Energy raised AUD$2 million for its renewable energy deployment platform, designed to make it easier for energy providers and solar installers to assess the feasibility of commercial-scale renewable energy projects.

☀️ Scotland’s Ecosse Solar Parks received a £1.9 million funding boost from Lombard Asset Finance to build a new 20-acre solar park in the Northeast of Scotland, significantly boosting the region’s clean energy production.

🛢 The Net Zero Technology Centre, based in Scotland, received £200,000 from the Scottish government to accelerate research into a UK-Germany hydrogen export opportunity and solidify the case for infrastructure investment.

🤝 Sandia National Laboratories is joining forces with CSolPower LLC to co-develop an affordable method of storing energy from renewable sources, with the goal of transitioning to zero-carbon solar and wind energy for generating electricity.

Transport x Climate

🛵 Indian electric two-wheeler manufacturer Ola Electric Mobility raised $384.43 million in a round led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek. The company currently leads the EV scooter market with more than 30% market share.

🚗 Volteras, based in New York and London, came out of stealth to announce its oversubscribed $2.9 million seed round. It specialises in electric vehicle software, and its API connects the electric vehicle ecosystem to enable businesses to access data from hundreds of energy devices from its world-renowned partners.

Materials x Climate

👜 Gozen, founded in Turkey and now based in San Francisco, raised $3.3 million in a seed funding round led by Happiness Capital. Its biomaterial, Lunaform, is vegan and plastic-free, produced by microorganisms during a fermentation process, and designed for use in the fashion and automotive industries.

🧪 Finnish biotech Montinutra secured €2 million pre-Series A funding to transform forest industry side streams such as sawdust and bark into sustainable, high-value, and natural biochemicals, which replace fossil fuel options in the chemical and cosmetics industries.

🖨 Researchers at New York’s Clarkson University received a grant of $42,000 from The New York State Pollution Prevention Institute to develop sustainable 3D-printed packaging which can detect the freshness of the food it contains.

Funds x Climate

🔎 A new sustainable innovation accelerator opened in Manchester, UK. Zebox has already welcomed its first cohort of startups working in areas including AI, quantum computing and decarbonisation.

💡 Helpful: How can startups tidy up a messy cap table? Yair Reem of Extantia spotlights the value of SPVs for founders during their fundraises, and the key things to keep in mind when picking a provider.

Posts x Climate

🇨🇭 In Switzerland, 80% of sustainable investments might lose the label 'sustainable'.

Here’s a great breakdown of why this might be a good thing, by Tillmann Lang, CEO & Co-Founder at Inyova

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Editorial by Arman, Curation by Nicola