Climate Tech Updates (07/12/2021 – 14/12/2021)

Ecosystem

🗑️ From fashion to food to software, Sifted has curated a list of 13 startups tackling the global waste problem, according to VCs. This comes after experts at Cop26 last month said waste remained one of the most overlooked topics of discussion at the climate conference — despite the fact that food waste alone accounts for four times more greenhouse gases than all flights combined.

🇬🇧London has become Europe’s most advanced ecosystem for climate tech, with the UK capital’s startups raising $3.3bn since 2016 and investment growing 6.3 times over this time period, faster than the global average. The UK capital is also home to Europe’s biggest cluster of climate tech companies, with 416 firms created since the Paris Agreement. The combined value of London’s climate tech startups has almost tripled in the last year alone, thanks in part to big exits from Arrival and Depop.

👩‍💼 Climate tech has a massive funding gap. According to Blackrock’s CEO Larry Fink, “Investments in low carbon projects in emerging markets will need to be more than a trillion dollars a year — more than six times the current rate of investments of about $150 billion a year.” When it comes to funding women-led start-ups, the gap is even starker. Total funding this year tripled to 120bn Euros in Europe. Yet only 2.4% of funding went to female-led startups in 2020, and even less in 2021 at 1.1%. Take a look at these ​​5 Women-led Climate Tech Start-ups Ready to Disrupt.

Launches

🏡 The built environment accounts for close to 40% of greenhouse gas emissions globally. And with cities becoming increasingly populated and growing rapidly, there is an urgent need to make construction more sustainable by seeking alternative low-emission materials. EIT Climate-KIC is partnering with Laudes Foundation’s Built by Nature to achieve just that, working with the cities of Milan and Madrid as test beds for innovation.

🥗 Norway-based impact accelerator Katapult has launched a new program in Mauritius focusing on Regenerative Food and Agri-Tech for regional and international startups targeting the African markets.

Katapult has screened more than 13,000 startups from over 100 countries and invested in 138 startups that are working to implement the UN Sustainable Development Goals. They offer investment opportunities in early-stage, impact-tech startups and deliver innovative accelerator programs. Thomas Berman, Country Director at Katapult Mauritius, commented:

“Mauritius is a country that can become a global example for meaningful sustainable transformation. One part of this transformation will be to strengthen Mauritius as a connector and test site for regional and international start-ups who develop solutions that can spur regenerative change in our food systems.”

Milestones

🌐 Berlin’s “carbon management made simple” solution for businesses, Planetly, has been acquired by B2B privacy, security, and data governance specialist, OneTrust. With the acquisition, OneTrust rapidly expands its ESG offer, while at the same time, Planetly goes truly planetly overnight.

🏭 Seaborg, a small next-generation nuclear startup based in Copenhagen, has discovered an improved molten salt storage solution using sodium hydroxide. Hydroxides can contain more heat per salt unit, making them more efficient and reducing the amount of salt needed. It is also about 90% cheaper than the cost of the salts currently used.

🔋 Brill Power is addressing the increasing demand for more sustainable energy solutionswith their innovation, the BrillMS B62 Premium BMS, which increases battery life by up to 60 percent and enhances storage capacity by up to 129 percent. This technology is built on over a decade of PhD research into battery degradation, battery modelling and power electronics by Brill Power’s engineering team while at the University of Oxford. Brill Power also received support from EIT Climate-KIC.

Interesting stuff

Record high EU carbon price makes the cost of polluting more than €90 making green energy technology more attractive. With the carbon prices rising, check out the improvement of the investment case for emerging technologies such as carbon capture and storage and green hydrogen.