GreenTech

For a few years now the Sustainable Ocean Alliance has been a stalwart advocate for the “blue economy,” and an incubator for ocean-focused early stage startups. Now empowered by $15 million in new funding, the nonprofit hopes to expand its scope and more tangibly support the class of climate-motivated founders they call “ecopreneurs.” The funding

The auto industry is banking on electric vehicles to slash planet-cooking emissions, but EVs are still too expensive to knock gas-guzzlers out of the game. For now, at least. Sure, EV sales are up, maintenance costs are low, and gas prices are high, making combustion engines look all the worse. But on the flip side,

Global plastic waste has more than doubled, and 40 percent of that waste comes from packaging. Luckily there are no shortage of sustainable packaging startups in Europe. Just take a look: Circleback (Germany), Recup (Germany), Sourceful (UK), one • five (Germany), Shellworks (UK), Woola (Estonia), Papkot (France), Biotic (Israel), FunCell (France) and Traceless (Germany). The

Vibrant Planet — which is creating an “operating system for forest restoration” — comes as a pleasant surprise, and not one I expected. Climate tech, while relatively new, has settled into two camps: hardware and software. And while Vibrant Planet is definitely a software play — from its cloud focus to its per-seat licenses, it’s

When it comes to moving the transportation sector over to EVs, commercial fleets are probably some of the lowest hanging fruit. More often than not, they have consistent routes, reserved off-hour parking, and cost a lot less to drive and maintain. But for many commercial operators, EVs are still a wildcard. Gagan Dhillon and Andrew

For Allison Wolff, the 2018 wildfire season in California marked a turning point. During that record-breaking year, she started asking a lot of questions. “We were in the middle of the 2018 wildfire season, with the Carr Fire, and what I thought at the time was the worst season ever,” Wolff said. “I started asking

Einride, the Swedish startup that wants to electrify the autonomous freight industry, will begin operating its purpose-built, self-driving pods on public roads in the U.S. this year as part of an existing partnership with General Electric Appliances (GEA). Einride’s pods are built without a front cabin for a human safety operator, which the company says

Fusion startup Zap Energy has reached two milestones that could nudge it ahead in the race to offer low-cost, carbon-free energy — a $160 million Series C round and a successful test of a prototype fusion reactor that could pave the way to a commercial version. Fusion power has become an unlikely investor favorite as

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is still “hopeful, positive and in fact bullish” that Congress can agree on “a significant push into clean energy,” despite the regulatory body’s virtual gridlock on issues like climate. Before Congress breaks for August recess, Democrats have said they hope to reach a deal on a budget reconciliation bill. Effectively

Despite being one of the countries in Europe with the most hours of sunshine, Spain has extremely low levels of household solar installations. Madrid-based Samara, a startup founded in May this year — which is launching a service in its home market today — wants to change that, spotting what it believes is a major

Thanks in no small part to the fossil-fueled cult of obstructionism, we’re on track to blow past the 1.5 degrees Celsius global-warming threshold laid out in the 2016 Paris Agreement. Without sweeping change, we can expect “more melting ice, higher sea levels, more heatwaves and other extreme weather,” per the World Meteorological Organization. And that’ll

Most of us have a variety of fermented food products in our kitchen: you can’t make tofu, chocolate, vinegar or bread without agreeable microorganisms that can be produced at scale. Today, precision fermentation is innovating the alternative protein industry as food tech startups find the best methods for brewing eggs, dairy, meat and seafood in

You’ve probably heard of unicorns, and you may have heard of soonicorns. But have you heard of gigacorns? Unlike its other more common cousins, the term “gigacorn” doesn’t refer to valuation. Instead, it tells us how well a startup can help fight carbon dioxide emissions, climate change and its implications. According to venture capitalist Christian

Onstage at TC Sessions: Climate 2022 this week, climate modeling expert Dr. William Collins shared why he’s deeply skeptical of carbon offsets, and tree-based offsets in particular. According to Collins, they are, “as far as we can tell, a feel-good measure.” Likewise, tree-planting programs pedestalized by companies like United Airlines are “fool’s gold,” he said.

Few sectors have boomed in the past few years like climate tech has. But despite the burgeoning urgency driving interest and investments, the ongoing market downturn is threatening to dim the prospects of many bright startups. But are climate tech VCs as gloomy as the rest? Three investors active in the space joined me on

Kenya-based Crossboundary Energy Access (CBEA), a mini-grid infrastructure fund, has raised $25 million from ARCH Emerging Markets Partners Limited, Bank of America, and Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund to back renewable energy projects across the continent. The CBEA, a subsidiary of the investment group Crossboundary, said in a statement that the new funding will unlock an

It’s difficult to build high-growth clean tech companies using venture capital: Despoiling the planet has a much higher return on investment than saving it. Twenty years ago, there were high hopes for companies aiming to mitigate environmental impacts, but an extended recession, China’s dominance over solar power manufacturing and low natural gas prices were just

Climate tech has been one of the biggest successes of the last few years. By 2025, investors are expected to sink $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion annually into a wide range of startups that promise to upend everything from travel and commuting to agriculture, construction, and more. Oh, and they’ll either trim carbon emissions or

Even as India is increasingly adding generation capacity from solar power, setting examples for many other developing nations, there’s a large population of the South Asian nation that is yet to join the clean energy bandwagon: Indian households. Less than a percent of Indian homes has rooftop solar systems. Such slower adoption could dampen Prime

More updates from not-for-profit climate action search engine Ecosia: It’s given itself its first major branding refresh since launch back in 2009 at the same time as announcing a shift from 3-year to 20-year contracts for its tree planting projects — idea being to ensure that the trees planted with profits from its search ads

Solid Power, a solid-state battery company, today unveiled a pilot production line for EV-sized cells that will be sent to automotive partners for testing. The move represents another step in the steady march toward solid-state lithium-ion batteries, which promise to bring unprecedented range and safety to electric vehicles. “We validated that we can use industry-standard

Solid Power’s new pilot line is a groundbreaking moment in the march toward solid-state batteries for electric vehicles. But don’t count on a revolution in lithium-ion battery chemistry happening on the line itself. That’s by design. The new facility, unlike the company’s previous pre-pilot line, will be “highly inflexible,” said Doug Campbell, Solid Power’s CEO.

There’s an idea floating in the ether (or at least in my ether) that there’s enough sunny federal land in Nevada to power the entire United States with solar. Some very rough back-of-the-envelope math suggests it’s possible, requiring just over 11% of Nevada’s federal land. None of that includes room for batteries for storage or

Gia Schneider raised $65 million on the road to unlock distributed hydro resources. In July 2021 Libby Wayman from Breakthrough Energy Ventures led Natel Energy’s $20 million Series B, and on June 8, 2022, the two industry leaders are speaking on TechCrunch Live. We’ll take a look at Natel Energy’s early pitch deck, and hear

Bosch’s venture arm just announced its fifth fund, saying it’s on the lookout for startups with the “potential to improve quality of life and conserve natural resources.” The new, $295 million (€250 million) investment vehicle ups the stakes from Bosch VC‘s prior fund by about $53 million, yet the German firm’s global focus on deep

For most of the last decade, Americans largely ignored electric vehicles. Some brands sold decent numbers, like the Chevy Bolt or Nissan Leaf, but they were largely targeted at thrifty commuters or EV diehards. Others, like the Ford Focus Electric, were intended only to comply with laws that mandated a small number of EV sales.

Novoloop, a plastic upcycling startup, said Wednesday it has raised a $10 million Series A extension round co-led by South Korean chemical firm Hanwha Solutions and Taizo Son’s Mistletoe. This follows a first raise of $11 million in February and brings the Series A to $21 million and its total funding to $24 million. Other

While going to great lengths to promote itself as an environmentally conscious tech firm, Apple joined several industry associations that are “fighting efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” according to a new report from the Tech Transparency Project. As recently as 2020, the company was an active member of several “business groups that seek to

Bacterial secretions might dye your future wardrobe, and that’d be an improvement. That’s because textiles usually get their hues from toxic chemicals, and the resulting wastewater—laden with dyes, acids and formaldehyde—destroys rivers, such as those surrounding Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. Wastewater treatment, when it happens, is just one of the energy-intensive (read: carbon-spewing)

Want to bring inflation to heel? There’s no single, simple fix, of course, or we would have done it already. But a good place to start would be weaning the economy off gasoline and diesel. Prices for fossil fuels are through the roof. Gas prices are up over 75% since last year, and diesel is