GreenTech

Woodoo, a startup working on alternative materials for various industries, has raised $31 million. The company is manufacturing composite materials based on wood so that they can replace common materials like glass, leather and steel. Around two-thirds of the amount raised is an equity funding round led by Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital with One Creation,

Picture this: Fast-growing startup raises a high eight-figure round. Then, a year later, it decides to raise another. Investors line up, and this time they pledge more money while giving the company a healthy valuation bump. What’s wrong with this picture? It’s 2023, a year in which plenty of investors have rolled up the welcome

A newish leadership team is taking over at Arcimoto, a Eugene, Oregon–based startup that makes doorless, three-wheeled electric vehicles. On Thursday, the company said that board member Chris Dawson will step in as CEO, replacing interim CEO Jesse Fittipaldi. Arcimoto added that Fittipaldi will stick around as president and report to Dawson going forward. Two

The Arctic is melting, while hurricanes, blizzards and heat waves leave millions of people and animals in disarray. Lisa Lambert, the head of National Grid’s CVC National Grid Partners, told TechCrunch+ that environmental and social concerns should be top of mind right now for any smart investor. “Not because it’s the right thing to do,

What do you do when the lights go out? When the snow became too much for the power lines as a kid, I remember candles and Primus stoves. In today’s world of high-tech electrification, we’re going in a slightly different direction and Dabbsson today announced its new Portable Home Backup Power Ecosystem, which harnesses the

Munch-based climate tech startup Tanso, which sells software to help industrial manufacturers carry out sustainability reporting and carbon accounting, has banked €6.5 million in early stage growth funding. The investment breaks down into a €4 million seed raise, led by Cologne-based investor Capnamic, with existing investors including as UVC Partners also participating; and €2.5M it

Congruent Ventures new fund bucks the trend of venture pullback, suggesting continued confidence in climate tech Tim De Chant 8 hours Climate tech may have started the year with a down quarter, but don’t count it out just yet. Amid a backdrop of depressing figures from much of the venture capital sector, climate tech deals

Electric and autonomous trucking company Einride is expanding to the U.K., representing the latest in a line of European market expansions. Einride said that it’s looking to target the 1.6 billion tonnes of goods that are transported by road freight in the U.K each year. Its first U.K. deployment will be in partnership with PepsiCo

Taiwanese two-wheeler battery swapping company Gogoro has a plan to give energy back to Taiwan’s electrical grid and make money while doing it. The company is partnering with Enel X, an energy services provider, to integrate 2,500 of its GoStations in Taiwan into Enel X’s Virtual Power Plant (VPP). A VPP is a collection of

The United States Treasury updated its list of electric vehicles eligible for a $7,500 EV tax credit per its new rules for battery sourcing, and BMW, Nissan, Rivian, Hyundai, Volvo and Volkswagen are no longer on it. The new requirements will go into effect Tuesday, and they’ll also cut credits for the Tesla Model 3

Noya’s pitch a few years ago was pretty straightforward: lower the cost of capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by using existing industrial cooling towers, which are pretty much everywhere. Noya would inject its special carbon capture compounds into the tower’s water supply and after the water had done its cooling work, remove the carbon

A slew of new funds indicate potential for dedicated pools for climate startups Annie Njanja 7 hours Venture capital activity around climate tech has been heating up in Africa despite the global VC funding cooldown. The continent’s climate tech startups secured over $860 million in equity funding, largely driven by clean energy technologies, representing 3.5x

Opportunities abound as new rules push EVs to the forefront Tim De Chant 7 hours If there was any question as to whether the Biden administration is serious about the electrification of the U.S. economy, this week’s announcement of new automotive emissions regulations should put that to rest — along with any doubts investors have

When the financial markets go all wobbly, conservative investors turn to scarce resources that are unlikely to plummet in value, including things like silver, gold, palladium and platinum. Diamond Standard wants to add diamonds to that list and has created a blockchain-based system to create tokens that gives investors access to diamonds, much like how

But first it’ll have to prove its business model Tim De Chant 9 hours We’ve spent the last century and a half pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and it’s clear that we’ll have to spend the coming decades removing a significant fraction of that. But then what do we do with it all? Some

There’s a long list of things corporations can do to lessen consumer electronics’ environmental impact. Making systems easier to repair is up there, along with encouraging device recycling and updating manufacturing and supply chain processes. Utilizing recycled material in the devices themselves is a big piece of this puzzle, as well — it’s good publicity

Nonprofit Arts Help is launching a $6 million fund to build the world’s first digital climate library to provide public access to the archives of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The UNFCCC, which was formed in 1992, has more than 1.7 million paper documents related to the treaty, many of which

Device42, a startup that helps companies understand and manage their hybrid infrastructure, can see a lot of information about each customer’s hardware and software usage. The company decided to use that ability to look at how each part of the system was contributing to carbon emissions. “Our focus as a platform is to discover IT

Eager to secure all the lithium it needs to power a growing lineup of electric vehicles, General Motors said on Tuesday that it will lead a $50 million investment into lithium extraction and refining startup EnergyX. With the deal, the legacy automaker says it will help EnergyX scale its lithium-extraction tech. In exchange, GM will

The automotive industry’s transition to electric vehicles is ushering in a tidal wave of demand for batteries that’s upending national industrial policies, reshaping geopolitics, and sparking a surge of new factories that will pump out billions of cells. It may seem like the sector has exploded overnight, but founders, investors and multinationals have been laying

A few years ago, mattress company Casper’s co-founders Philip Krim and Jeff Chapin were banging their heads against the wall. Krim was in Long Island in New York while Chapin was in Wyoming. The weather in New York can be pretty different from that in Wyoming, but when bad storms roll through, they both suffer

Disposable plastic and paper cups are an environmental mess. GaeaStar, a startup based in Berlin and San Francisco, thinks it can do better with just clay, water, salt and sand. After piloting disposable clay cups and bowls in Germany, GaeaStar says it is gearing up to introduce its products to the U.S. via a trial

A new state bill might move the needle for V2G charging Haje Jan Kamps 12 hours If you have solar panels on your roof, it makes sense to add batteries, too, so you have some degree of self-sufficiency should you lose power. In fact, it might be a good idea to have such a storage

In the Netherlands, central heating boilers will be banned by 2026 and its government has incentivized the installation of heat pumps. Meanwhile, the U.K. government estimates that heating buildings accounts for 25% of the U.K.’s greenhouse gas emissions. It passed the Energy Security Bill, and is aiming to install 600,000 heat pumps a year by

Cows are a significant source of methane emissions, primarily due to their unique digestive system. Milk and beef cows are ruminants, which means they have a specialized stomach chamber (called the rumen), which houses billions of microbes that facilitate the breakdown of fibrous plant material. The process is called “enteric fermentation,” and as these microbes

For the last two years, climate tech was on a tear. To be fair, so were a lot of other sectors. But when a slowdown hit tech investing in the middle of last year, climate tech startups bucked the trend and kept racking up the deals. Now the party might be over, if preliminary data

Africa contributes less than 3% of the world’s energy-related carbon dioxide emissions but the continent will be one of the most impacted by the adverse effects of climate change. Some explanations for Africa’s vulnerability include poor diffusion of technologies and information relevant to supporting adaptation, usually provided by clean or climate tech companies. Despite the

The materials developer formerly known as ELeather has a new name and $18 million in fresh growth funding from some of the world’s fanciest brands. Now going by Generation Phoenix, the upcycler says its new investors include Coach parent Tapestry, Jaguar Land Rover and Dr. Martens, plus lead investor Material Impact and prior investor Hermès.

Here’s a clever new bit of kitchen tech. Victoria, BC firm Sepura recently introduced its eponymous home appliance, which sits under a sink in place of a garbage disposal. There’s an included Bluetooth button, which can be stuck anywhere near the sink. The system itself sits underneath the sink and is designed to hook directly

Battery materials and recycling startup Redwood Materials is expanding a partnership with Volkswagen of America in its bid to collect more end-of-life batteries from consumer electronics and strip out the valuable materials so they can be used to make batteries for electric vehicles. Redwood has said its technology can recover more than 95% of the