🌎 ClimateHack Vol 94: Geothermal Energy, But Deeper

PLUS: The 60 Climate Thought Leaders to Know

April 26, 2024

Hi There,

Monday was Earth Day, rather than exhausting you about the number of sea turtles we saved by switching to compostable straws, we’ll instead spotlight the 60 climate thought leaders that you should know.

The list includes founders at some of the fastest growing climate techs, investors who are highly regarded by their portfolio companies, and the community leaders and voices that are driving change on scale.

In Today’s Edition;
 
🛩 US-based Radical raised $4.5M seed funding to build solar-powered, high-altitude autonomous aircraft.
🌎 Slovakia’s GA Drilling raised $15M to deliver cost-effective geothermal energy faster and at deeper depths.
👗 Danish startup Rodinia Generation raised €3M to further develop its solution to combat overproduction in the fashion industry.

AgriFood x Climate

Image Credits: AIPERIA

📊 Germany’s AIPERIA secured €7.5 million to expand its AI-powered demand planning platform, which allows food retailers and manufacturers to only produce what can be sold, helping to address food waste.

🌭 German startup Cultimate Foods raised €2.3 million in a seed funding round led by High-Tech Gründerfonds. It will use the funds to scale its game-changing cultivated fat technology which helps to provide plant-based meats with authentically ‘meaty’ taste and texture.

🍔 Edonia, based in France, secured €2 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Asterion Ventures. It will use the funds to launch its first product: a texturised, microalgae-based ingredient for plant-based meat that it says offers a meat-like texture, grilled umami flavour profile, and contains 30% protein.

🌱 Luxembourg-based Moolec Science earned clearance from the US Department of Agriculture for its Piggy Sooy, which are soybeans containing pork proteins, produced via molecular farming technology.

🏭 Atomo, maker of the ‘world’s first beanless espresso’ made from upcycled date pits, has opened a 33,547sq ft roastery in Seattle capable of producing four million pounds of its ground ‘coffee’ a year.

Carbon x Climate

Image Credits: goodcarbon

🌳 Berlin-based goodcarbon raised €5.25 million in a funding round led by Ocean 14 Capital. Its investment platform enables companies to support nature conservation projects in exchange for carbon credits.

💨 US-based General Galactic came out of stealth, having so far raised a total of $1.9 million, to capture carbon dioxide from the air, produce hydrogen from water and combine the two to form methane, all using renewable power.

🪨 Cula Technologies and Callirius AG are partnering to advance the deployment of biochar projects, with a focus on improving transparency and traceability.

👀 Good Read: XPRIZE announced its Carbon Removal Top 100 list. Check it out here.

Construction x Climate

Image Credits: Camion

🏢 London-based Camion raised €2.7 million pre-seed funding for its SaaS tool which enables real estate owners, investors, lenders, and infrastructure developers to de-electrify their portfolios at scale and get ahead of grid capacity constraints.

🧱 Engineers at RMIT University collaborated with Australia’s largest recycling company, Visy, to develop energy-efficient bricks made with a minimum of 15% waste glass and 20% combusted solid waste, as substitutes for clay.


Speaker Spotlight: Future Energy Ventures

This week, Germany's Future Energy Ventures welcomed their newest strategic LP, CLP, one of the largest investor-owned power businesses in the Asia Pacific region.

With fresh funds raised and ready to deploy, we chatted with FEV’s Managing Partner, Veronique Hördemann, to learn more about their fund, and where they’re looking to invest.

Future Energy Ventures at a glance:

 💸 Check size: EUR 1-10M ‍
📈 Stage they invest: Series A and B
💰 Size of the fund: Target size EUR 250M
⚡️ Industry verticals: Energy, Cities, Technology
🗺️ Geographies they invest in: Europe, US, Israel
🚀 Portfolio companies include: ev energy, Virta Ltd, thermondo, Piclo, Sterblue, Prisma Photonics, SkenarioLabs, Lumenaza GmbH

Come and meet Veronique, and these 30+ fellow Climate Tech VCs, in-person at the HackSummit in June.

🚨 Tickets are limited and in high demand (over half of the founder tickets are already sold out) grab yours before they’re gone - and use code CHAPR20 for a cheeky 20% discount valid until Tuesday.

Energy x Climate

Image Credits: RayGen

☀️ Australia’s RayGen secured $51 million Series D funding to support its plans to expand offshore. It uses proprietary PV solar modules that generate nearly 2,000 times more power than traditional systems under a concentrated beam of sunlight, combined with its thermal water-based storage system.

🌡 Exowatt secured $20 million from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Andreessen Horowitz to ‘enable decarbonisation through electrification’. Its approach involves storing heat instead of electricity, allowing it to store energy at a fraction of the cost of electrochemical batteries.

🌎 Slovakian startup GA Drilling raised $15 million to deliver deep geothermal energy faster and at deeper depths while remaining cost-effective, having successfully demonstrated its deep drilling tool, ANCHORBIT®, last year.

🔋 Berlin-based Terra One secured $7.5 million, in a seed funding round led by PT1, to support its network of decentralised battery storage projects, the largest of which can power a city of 100,000 people for up to six hours.

📊 Texture raised $7.5 million seed funding to become a common data collection and sharing platform for renewable power sources like wind, solar, and batteries. It will use the funds to further develop and test its platform with its first set of customers.

🔋 Dutch energy storage startup Aquabattery raised €6 million in a seed funding round led by EIT InnoEnergy. It will use the funds to bring its saltwater long-duration energy storage solution to the European market by 2026.

☀️ British convenience retailer Co-op has signed a new 15-year deal to power the equivalent of 55 food stores with solar power from a nine-megawatt solar farm in Cambridgeshire, as it “accelerates its path towards decarbonisation”.

Fintech x Climate

Image Credits: Treefera

🌳 Nature-based asset reporting company Treefera raised $12 million, in a Series A funding round led by AlbionVC, for its platform which delivers data solutions and insights to clients dealing with regulatory challenges involved in environmental and supply chain compliance.

Materials x Climate

Image Credits: Rodinia Generation

👗 Danish startup Rodinia Generation raised €3 million seed funding to further develop its software and technology to combat garment overproduction in the fashion industry, designed to help make manufacturing processes more sustainable and efficient.

🔎 London-based waste management tech company Sorted raised £1.65 million seed funding, in a round led by Pi Labs, to enhance material sorting with its AI-powered technology.

💎 Cypriot startup WeCare secured $350,000 to support R&D into the development of lab-grown diamonds, for use within a range of industries such as telecommunications, laser optics, as abrasives and more.

👟 Hellmann’s Canada joined forces with Italian sustainable fashion label ID.Eight to create a limited-edition collection of sneakers made from food waste.

🍌 One of the world’s largest fruit and veg companies, Dole Packaged Foods, is partnering with Rais Case and Ananas Anam to repurpose organic waste into functional fashion accessories.

Transport x Climate

Image Credits: Radical

🛩 US-based Radical raised $4.5 million seed funding to build solar-powered, high-altitude autonomous aircraft that can beam down connectivity and imagery from the stratosphere. It will use the funds to build out a full-size craft that would have a wingspan of around 100 feet, but weigh “as much as a person”.

❌ Australian EV charging company Tritium has been placed in receivership, less than three years after listing on the US Nasdaq and having been worth more than $2 billion as a listed company.

📉 Tesla’s profits fell by 55% year-on-year to $1.13 billion in the first quarter of this year, and it says that its EV sales are ‘under pressure’ from hybrids.

Funds x Climate

Image Credits: Ternel

🇫🇷 Paris-based VC Ternel is planning to invest its new €120 million fund in 30 European startups working across technologies and themes including climate change, biodiversity, circularity, health, education and the need for inclusion.

🌿 The What; When we think of photosynthesis and carbon sequestration, we often think of trees. But algae absorbs about as much carbon as all the plants and trees on land combined - meaning it’s a powerful ally in our fight against climate change.

Now a new breed of startups are exploring ways to produce algae and cyanobacteria industrially - so they can be used to sequester carbon at scale and be utilised in novel materials, products, and even agriculture. 

❓ The Why; “Cyanobacteria have the ability to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and convert it into biomass through photosynthesis. Industrial-scale photobioreactors are used for carbon capture and utilization (CCU) applications, where cyanobacteria are cultivated to sequester CO2 emissions from industrial sources such as power plants, cement factories, and steel mills. The captured CO2 is converted into biomass, which can be used for biofuel production, wastewater treatment, or other applications.” Nadine Geiser of World Fund tells us.

📊 The Stats; Growing 1T of algae can capture nearly 2T of CO2. Algae can grow up to 50x more quickly than land-based plants, and farming algae at scale would take up a fraction of the land footprint of terrestrial greenery.

👀 The Who; There are 15+ companies globally working on Microalgae for Carbon Capture, including:
- Denmark's Algiecel, who are making it easy for industrial companies to transform their CO2 emissions into microalgae biomass using a high-yield photobioreactor.
- Israeli based Omaiko, who are pioneering the next generation of microalgae farming systems towards cost-efficiency for impact.

💡 Learn more; Deep dive into the world of Microalgae for Carbon Capture and the 15+ companies working in this space, along with expert insights from World Fund, Hatch Blue and Omaiko in our latest climate deep dive.

Community x Climate

🇺🇸 ClimateHack ambassadors hosted two events this week for their local climate tech communities, including:

  • SF to kick of the SF Climate Week with a special event shedding light on how startups and corporates can build impactful partnerships.

  • Zurich for a night about closing the Loop: Innovating for a circular tomorrow with an expert panel of startups.

Join the upcoming ClimateHacks Meetups happening in :

🇿🇦 Cape Town: 30th April - Join this 5k run / 3k walk, packed with climate insights, drinks, and networking. Register Here.

🇮🇱 Tel Aviv: May 8th - Exploring opportunities for climate solutions in the insurance industry. Register Here.

Technology x Tweets

🏗 If we can cut a cruise ship in half, paste in a new section, and send it back into the ocean - imagine what we can do in building climate hardware.

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Editorial by Arman, Curation by Nicola

Bonus Tweet: This thread with video footage of cities as they were a century ago make you think what will the world look like a century ahead?