Climate change is one of the largest problems that faces humanity today. We are already beginning to see the issues it causes in the form of increasingly extreme weather events. So, the work of climate tech innovators is so important.
There are many startups, scientists, and institutions working to change the planet for the better and save lives. These range from new startups to the biggest names in the world of technology.
In this post, we will take a look at some of the exciting work that’s being done in this area!
So, let’s get started.
Le Fourgon
This French climate startup is working to lessen plastic waste by making resusable glass jars more accessible for everyday products. Le Fourgon means “The Van” in French.
They just announced a €10 million Series A funding round from main investors Id4 & Teampact. The La Poste Ventures fund (initiated by La Poste and managed by XAnge) and several business angels also contributed.
Over the course of the last 2 and a half years, Le Fourgon has developed a wide range of reusable, local, and returnable everyday products in glass. They deliver door-to-door in over 2000 French cities.
Since their inception, they have helped to avoid the use of more than 10 million single-use bottles and containers. This would have been more than 300 tons of plastic waste.
They offer this in a way that is incredibly convenient to users. With a click on their app or website, 40,000 customers in France can divide their daily waste by three times, by using their washable and resuable containers.
They will use the funds they have raised this year to exapnd to even more cities.
OCOchem
OCOchem is a Washington-based climate startup. They turn carbon dioxide into chemicals that can be used to manufacture a wide range of products. This includes clean hydrogen, fertilizer, and animal feed.
They recently raised $5 million to help scale their technology.
According to OCOchem CEO and co-founder Todd Brix, this technology has two main benefits:
First, it uses CO2 that’s captured as an industrial waste from facilities such as biogas and bioenthanol producers or it’s pulled from the atmosphere using a direct air capture device. Second, it generates formic acid and other formate chemicals that can replace fossil fuels as a feedstock for fuels and other products.
Currently, they are participating in several fascinating demonstration climate tech projects. These will prepare the company to scale, hopefully eventually on an industrial level.
For example, OCOchem is close to finishing a project with the US Army to develop a process that converts CO2 into potassium formate. This can be used to deice runways without corroding them.
The company is also working on a project with Tacoma Power. This project involves OCOchem developing a system for generating formic acid and hydrogen fuel.
These will both provide power and replace diesel generators at the Port of Tacoma. Ultimatelty, the goal is to demonstrate the system within the next 18 months.
OCO chem also received $2.5 million from the US Department of Energy for another project. This one is in partnership with the Pacific Northwest National Library. Together, they are building a large formic acid plant in Richland.
This plant will be paired with a device based on tech from the PNNL that will crack formic acid and convert it to hydrogen fuel. Their goal is that this device should be operational by the end of 2024.
Natrx
Climate tech company Natrx won two grants. These are the National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant.
This will help them continue developing their remote-sensing technology. It can quantify the value of carbon stock in coastal wetlands.
This one-million-dollar award will help advance Natrx’s Resilience for Waterfront Infrastructure (REWIRE) platform. According to Leonard Nelson, CEO of Natrx:
“The REWIRE platform will be a critical tool in appraising the carbon value that exists in coastal areas. We are deeply appreciative of the continued recognition and investment from NSF that will help unlock value that can lead to sustainable, blue carbon economies where they’re needed most.”
In 2021, Natrx was also awarded NSF funding for Phase I of their project. Phase I focused largely on the development of AI as well as geospatial software tools. These tools specialize in assessing specific conditions at high resolution.
As part of Phase II, the Center for Geospatial Analytics at North Carolina State University will help power the geospatial processing capabilities of REWIRE.
Ultimately, with these tools, Natrx hopes they can combat shoreline erosion which will help protect biodiversity and local economies.
Shoreline erosion is a huge threat to coastlines around the world as the oceans rise due to climate change.
Breakthrough Energy
Breakthrough Energy, is a climate-focused initiative launched by Bill Gates to address the climate change threat. Its inaugural annual report was released this week.
According to the report, Breakthrough Energy wants to focus most on these three key climate tech areas of making energy more sustainable:
Hydrogen fuel, which is making strides in production, but lacks a sufficient market for users of the fuel;
Carbon removal and storage, which will be essential for reaching carbon goals, but is costly and slow to deploy. Gates sees promise in using an approach that combines nature- and tech-based solutions — such as those used by Graphyte, a company backed by Breakthrough Energy;
Electrical grids that move electricity need to get smarter with better technology, and the world needs to keep building more capacity.
Breakthrough Energy began in 2015 with a coalition of more than two dozen industry leaders. This included Bill Gates, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Alibaba CEO Jack Ma. They all pledged to contribute to a climate investment fund as well.
Since then, Breakthrough Energy has invested more than $2 billion in more than 100 different companies.
It has also expanded into a suite of programs to help early-stage climate companies and researchers get their footing and succeed. Many of these companies are included in their latest report.
Kausal: Climate Tech For Governments
Finnish climate software company Kausal raised €880k in seed funding. The funds came from an investor consortium. This included Innovestor and also the Spanish impact fund Zubi Capital.
Kausal provides local governments with a software-as-a-service (SaaS) project management platform that focuses on fast-tracking sustainability. The platform empowers users to plan, track, coordinate, and implement sustainability measures.
As cities around the world account for over 70% of global CO2 emissions, making it easier for city bureaucracies to implement sustainability measures could be quite helpful.
This is important as the standard way that governments track these goals now is ineffective. The common practice of tracking sustainability projects with spreadsheets and reporting progress publicly through annual reports is lacking.
The data collected is also often outdated, making it useless for impactful decisionmaking. This is because many organizations don’t even do yearly reports.
As a result, governments can’t use accurate data to make better decsions.
Co-founders Sonja-Maria Ignatius, Juha Yrjölä, Jouni Tuomisto, and Tero Tikkanen founded Kausal in 2020.
According to Sonja-Maria Ignatius, who is also the CEO of Kausal:
“The concept of open and close-to-real-time tracking and communication of public sustainability projects is still revolutionary, even though it shouldn’t be. We want to bring everyone involved to the same page for accountable, effective and data-based decision-making. Our new investors and partners have seen how city governments desperately need new tools to track their sustainability progress.”
Several cities are already using Kausal too. One of their clients, the city of Zurich, will publish its first report on its net zero climate target at the end of 2023.
Skytree
Skytree is an innovative Dutch climate tech startup dedicated to advancing innovative CO2 capture and reutilization solutions. They raised more than $13 million so far in 2023.
The company recently announced its selection to receive European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator funding. They have secured a €2.5 Million non-dilutive grant.
According to Rob van Straten, Skytree CEO:
“The EIC funding award recognizes the great potential of Skytree’s DAC technology. As we prepare to ship the first Skytree DAC units to customers in Europe and North America early next year, we are honored to have been recognized by the EIC and are grateful to team IRIS from RVO for their support during the process. We look forward to leveraging the additional capital to accelerate our product development and commercialization roadmap.”
Their proprietary DAC technology works by capturing CO2 from ambient air. The company’s first commercially available modular unit is called Skytree Cumulus.
Skytree Cumulus will enable controlled environment agriculture (CEA) businesses to generate CO2 on-site.
In addition, they say that this will help combat climate change by eliminating widescale reliance on fossil fuel-based CO2 for operations.
Final Thoughts on Climate Tech Innovators to Watch
While climate change does pose a large threat to humanity, as you can see, many brilliant minds are taking this problem seriously.
So, it remains to be seen what we can do through technological innovation to make our cities greener and our energy consumption more sustainable.
Especially in the EU, many countries are developing and implementing greener solutions on a systemic level. This is important.
Individuals can only do so much to live more sustainable lives if the institutions around them continue as before. As such, many changes are necessary.
It’s an exciting time in the world of green technology. And, these are only a few of the many climate tech innovators out there working to solve these issues!
So, what do you think? Comment below.
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