⚽️ Vol 182: Fifa's plastic own goal

Hi there,

Refill. Reuse. Recycle. Unless you're going to the World Cup.

Just days before the matches begin, FIFA has kicked reusable water bottles out of World Cup stadiums, reversing earlier guidance that had allowed them.

The official reason is safety. The unofficial result? Thousands, nay millions, of fans reaching for single-use plastic instead. For an organisation that talks a big game on sustainability, it's a decision that's hard to swallow. Turns out the road to a circular economy can still contain quite a few (plastic) bottle-necks.

In this week’s edition: 

💰 Endurance Energy scored $54M for offshore geothermal
🥶 MIT’s ‘Critical Cooling’ projects
☕️ Lavazza’s plastic-free espresso

AgriFood x Climate

🪳 Paris-based Innovafeed raised €51 million from historical shareholders including Creadev, QIA, Temasek, FFC, ABC Impact and ADM, plus banking partners, to scale its sustainable insect-based ingredients for animal nutrition, pet food and agriculture.

🌱 US startup Ayana Bio and Israel’s Brevel received a $1.25 million BIRD Foundation grant to combine plant cell culture with illuminated fermentation for sustainable bioactive ingredients, with funds used to scale the technology and accelerate commercialisation for food and wellness applications.

🚜 Cordon Technologies, based in the UK, secured £1 million in a funding round led by the British Design Fund to accelerate development and commercial rollout of its Loop precision spraying system, designed to help farmers cut pesticide and fertiliser use through real-time treatment adjustment.

☕️ Nestlé has developed six climate-resilient, high-yielding robusta coffee varieties with Côte d’Ivoire’s CNRA to nearly double yields, improve cup quality and support farmer livelihoods through its Nescafé Plan cooperatives.

🫏 Nestlé also filed a patent application for precision-fermented donkey beta-lactoglobulin, a lactose-free and potentially hypoallergenic whey protein designed for use in infant formula, dairy alternatives, sports nutrition and other functional foods.

🇳🇱 The Netherlands’ Biotechnology Fermentation Factory has opened as an open-access precision fermentation scale-up facility in Ede, to help startups, scale-ups and food producers develop proteins, enzymes and fats without building their own infrastructure.

Biodiversity x Climate

🌳 Finance Earth’s Big Nature Impact Fund secured £64.6 million to restore English landscapes through woodland creation, peatland restoration and habitat projects that generate revenues from verified carbon credits and biodiversity units.

🌦️ Helsinki-based Skyfora raised €6.5 million from investors including Eviny Ventures, Ugly Duckling Ventures, LUMO Labs, the European Innovation Council Fund and Business Finland, to turn telecom infrastructure into a real-time atmospheric sensing network for weather and AI forecasting

🥶 MIT researchers have completed four “Critical Cooling” projects exploring lower-energy, lower-emission ways to tackle extreme heat, including wearable personal cooling, subsurface heat-absorbing wells, rubber-based caloric cooling and greenhouse-gas-free refrigerants, with teams now seeking further development and funding for prototypes.

Energy x Climate

🌊 Endurance Energy raised a $54 million Series A led by Founders Fund, with participation from 72 Ventures, Construct Capital, Felicis Ventures, First Round Capital, Riot Ventures and Voyager Ventures, to develop offshore geothermal power plants that could deliver large-scale, 24/7 renewable energy for AI data centres, EVs and heavy industry.

🇩🇪 German startup GALVANY Energy closed a €10 million seed round co-led by SET Ventures and AENU. It will use the funds to expand its end-to-end heat pump installation and energy management platform, particularly in the multi-family housing market.

🇧🇪 Ghent-based Companion.energy secured €7.8 million seed funding in a round led by Realyze Ventures and Pi Labs, with participation from Asterion Ventures and existing investors, to scale its AI-powered real-time energy management platform for large enterprises and expand across Europe.

🇩🇰 Denmark’s Topsoe secured a DKK 25 million grant (around $3.8 million) with Aarhus University and PlanEnergi for PowerFactor, a project to simplify and standardise grid access for Power-to-X plants by validating best practices for safe, reliable integration of electrolysis, electrified reforming and methanol production technologies.

🇫🇮 VTT spinout Granarium Technologies raised over €1 million in a pre-seed funding round led by BSV Ventures and Beamline, with participation from FiBAN, EstBAN and LatBAN, to industrialise its renewable nanocellulose-based supercapacitors for grid stabilisation and industrial power reliability.

🍺 Octopus Energy for Business is offering UK pubs five hours of free electricity on evenings England and Scotland play in the World Cup, through its ‘Watt a Save’ initiative designed to help hospitality businesses cut matchday energy costs.

🚗 General Motors is expanding into energy storage for data centres and the grid through a sodium-ion battery partnership with Peak Energy, LFP cell supply to LG Energy Solution, and second-life EV battery work with Redwood Materials, aiming to turn its battery manufacturing scale into a new revenue stream beyond electric vehicles.

🔥 US fusion startup Avalanche Energy says its five-inch “Jyn” desktop-scale reactor prototype has heated plasma to around 11 million°C.

Funds x Climate

🇬🇧 UK-based Creator Fund closed a €48.6 million fund backed by investors including KfW Capital, EIFO, Equation Capital, Basecamp, JIMCO and Allocator One to support Europe’s scientific founders at the earliest stages of company creation, with the capital being deployed into deep-tech startups spanning AI, biotech, robotics, advanced materials and computing infrastructure before they reach the pitch-deck stage.

🌍 Holocene reached the final close of Holocene Ventures Fund I, Southern Africa’s first dedicated high-growth climate tech fund, to back early-stage African startups across areas including energy, mobility, agriculture and waste with both capital and hands-on operational support.

💰 UK climate tech venture builder Carbon13 has launched its tenth SEIS fund to invest in startups created through its Cambridge programme across energy, AI, materials, food security and supply chain resilience.

Materials x Climate

🏖️ Finland’s Resand has expanded its Norion Bank loan facility to €25 million to scale its near-100%-efficient foundry sand regeneration and recycling technology.

🇪🇸 GR3N raised €15.5 million Series B funding in a round led by 360 Capital, with participation from VP Textile, to commercialise its microwave-assisted PET and polyester recycling technology and build the world’s first industrial-scale plant of its kind in Spain, capable of processing 40,000 tonnes of plastic waste annually.

☕️ Italian coffee giant Lavazza launched Tablì in the US, a single-serve espresso system using compressed 100% coffee tabs with no plastic, aluminium, wrappers or coatings.

Mobility x Climate

🚍 EvoTrex secured $30 million to accelerate development of its off-grid electric RV, which combines battery storage, solar power and smart energy management to enable extended travel without reliance on charging infrastructure or campsite hookups.

🚙 Budapest-based Volteum raised €2.5 million in a funding round led by Movens Capital, with participation from WakeUp Capital, Aidiom, Day One Capital, Techstars and Nesprit, to expand its EV and mixed-fleet management platform across the UK, Benelux and DACH regions.

🚘 Enera raised $2 million in a round led by Lakehouse Ventures, with participation from Divergent Capital, Masia and angel investors, to expand its AI-powered EV charging support platform, accelerate UK charge point operator pilots, and support wider European expansion.

🔋 UK clean energy technology company UrbanChain has extended its renewable energy agreement with EV charge point operator Believ for three years, using its private energy market to power Believ’s national charging rollout with traceable, locally matched renewable electricity.

From the Community

🔥 On June 22, FoodHack and ClimateHack ambassadors are teaming up to host a free meetup in Istanbul

🎤 Hugo Rauch, host of New Wave podcast shared a new episode recorded at the of HackSummit with our speaker Assia Kasdi.

Diving In x Climate

We’d love to hear from you, how did you like today's email?

Love it😁 Meh 😐 Hate it🙁

Editorial and curation by Nicola