GreenTech

Planet FWD, a carbon-assessment startup founded by Zume Pizza co-founder Julia Collins, grabbed another cash infusion in the way of 10 million Series A dollars to continue developing technology so that the $1.5 trillion consumer products industry can more accurately measure and reduce their carbon footprint. We profiled Collins’ journey from pizza to climate-friendly food

Humble Bee Bio is on a mission to create a biodegradable alternative to plastics by synthesizing the biology of bees. While the New Zealand-based company is still at an early stage — it’s about halfway through its proof of concept — if Humble Bee is successful, its bioplastics are likely to make it into the

The startup says most companies’ carbon footprint math is bogus Tim De Chant 7 hours When Wenbo Shi started Singularity Energy, a carbon intelligence platform that today raised a $4.5 million seed round, he never thought he would focus the company on a greenhouse gas. But one conversation with a customer changed the way he

Chrysler’s new EV will create a new category, drawing upon lessons learned from designing the brand’s minivan, according to chief design officer Ralph Gilles. “Chrysler was one of those brands that was honestly on the OR table, and we decided to reinvest in it big time,” Gilles said at the TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility conference last

Singularity Energy, a SaaS platform that reports on carbon emissions for the electricity grid, has closed a $4.5 million seed round led by Spero Ventures and Energy Impact Partners and joined by existing investors, including Third Sphere and J Ventures.  Singularity, based in Somerville, Massachusetts, provides detailed information about the carbon intensity on the grid

The next bottleneck in lithium-ion battery supplies isn’t cobalt, even though China has a stranglehold on the market, and it’s not nickel, either, despite nickel prices nearly doubling in the past five months. Cobalt can be partially replaced with nickel, nickel can be partially replaced with manganese, and both can be completely replaced with iron

Jiajun Zhu, co-founder and CEO of autonomous robot company Nuro, joined TechCrunch onstage during TC Sessions: Mobility on Wednesday to discuss how the startup aims to revolutionize commercial autonomous delivery. The company is most well-known for its cute self-driving delivery vehicles, which operate on roads, not sidewalks, and are purpose-built to carry pizzas and packages

How was your first day at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022? We hope you’re fully caffeinated and ready to roll because day two is packed with groundbreaking tech, opportunities galore and more top-notch programming. Finish your coffee, peruse the event agenda and plan your day. We took the liberty of highlighting just some of the presentations

MycoWorks, a company making a fungal-based biomaterial that can replace leather, brought in a fresh round of funding — $125 million in Series C financing — to fund a production plant for scaling the manufacture of its flagship product Reishi. CEO Matt Scullin says what his company is doing in terms of fabrics is different

Twig, a London-based fintech targeting Gen Z and younger Millennial consumers with an e-money account that gives them instant cash-outs on fashion and electronics they want to sell, has closed a $35 million Series A round of funding. The investment is led by UK-based fintech specialist, Fasanara Capital, with additional backing from a number of

IBM announced this morning that it has acquired Australian startup Envizi to add to its package of ESG (environmental, sustainability and governance) offerings to help measure environmental impact up and down the supply chain. The companies did not share the terms of the acquisition, but with Envizi Big Blue gets a platform for measuring, managing

Meat has been part of the human diet since before we found fire, but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the production of meat at scale is more of a detriment to the environment and the world than a benefit. Across cultures and geographies, animals have been such a vital part of the food chain that

Travel, conferences, hotels, they all have something in common: Everything is designed to be used once, and then discarded. Of course, it would be delightful if everyone was able to not use single-use plastics for their cups, razors, toothbrushes and everything else, but unless consumers rebel, that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. It ain’t just

Putting solar panels on the roof is increasingly realistic for the average homeowner, but they tend to be specialized, aftermarket affairs or else whole-roof replacements. GAF Energy, a division of the roofing giant, claims its new solar shingles are simple enough to install that no special equipment or knowledge is required, making home renewable energy

As a remote island nation in the middle of the South Pacific, New Zealand is experiencing the stirrings of a burgeoning startup scene. The country has historically been capital-starved, but recent investments from the government and foreign investors have significantly increased access to early-stage venture capital funding. Now, certain industries are emerging as potential areas

Shravan Kumar Alavilli Contributor If human societies do nothing, in just a few decades, the planet could warm to levels it hasn’t reached in at least 34 million years, leading to more melting glaciers and floods than ever before — as well as the dire effect of urban heat waves. In 2021, in the U.S.

In the U.S., around 13% of greenhouse gases are spewed out of commercial and residential buildings. You’d be forgiven for scratching your head and asking why. If you tour a typical New York building, you’ll often find that the tech that runs deep in the underbellies of the brick-clad behemoths looks like the 1960s and

While there is plenty of technology out there to help make a building more sustainable, the ability to incorporate features into its design can be easier said than done. Enter cove.tool, a startup that wants to make sure buildings are sustainable by design from the moment of inception. The Atlanta-based startup, which has raised $30

Food waste is a $2.6 trillion problem globally as some 40% of food is wasted annually. Full Harvest believes this is a distribution problem that can be solved by digitizing the produce supply chain. The San Francisco-based company’s produce business-to-business marketplace provides a way for produce buyers and sellers to quickly close deals on surplus

Climate change is affecting the way farmers grow their crops, and Phytoform, which knows all about the harsh United Kingdom growing conditions, is out to make crops more impervious. The biotechnology company with headquarters in London and Boston announced $5.7 million in funding, led by Eniac Ventures, to scale its artificial intelligence genome editing technology

Supply chains are made up of a web of carbon-intensive activities, and trying to nail down which company is contributing pollution along the way has been difficult to parse. CarbonChain, an early-stage startup based in London from some supply chain veterans, wants to make it easier to account for carbon every step of the way.

The odds are against San Francisco-based electric vehicle battery swapping company Ample. Other companies have tried to build a business on exchanging dead batteries for fresh ones to solve the problem of long EV charge times: Fourteen years ago, Better Place raised nearly a billion dollars to do what Ample’s doing, and it ended up

Seamus Donoghue Contributor Climate change is the issue of our time. From policymakers to the individual, every one of us has a responsibility to do our part to ensure that sustainability and green practices are implemented throughout society. Indeed, governments across the world, from the U.S. to China, are increasingly taking a proactive stance on

Peter Gajdoš Contributor Peter Gajdoš is a partner at Fifth Wall, where he co-leads the Climate Technology Investment team. When I started getting involved in clean tech 1.0 financing back in 2005, “climate change” was some future event. Hurricane Katrina had just happened, and many experts viewed it primarily as a failure of the government

Karma Automotive has raised a $100 million lifeline from outside investors, as reported by Bloomberg, with the struggling electric vehicle maker’s fortunes likely buoyed by the current market optimism on other EV companies including Tesla. Karma is the reincarnated version of Fisker Automotive, which previously faced bankruptcy before being acquired by Wanxiang Group in 2014.

Tesla’s 2014 acquisition of SolarCity turned the electric vehicle manufacturer into the undisputed largest player in residential solar, but that lead has steadily eroded as its major competitor, Sunrun, surged ahead with more aggressive plans. Now with the $3.2 billion acquisition of the residential solar installation company Vivint Solar, Sunrun looks to solidify its place

Replenysh has been kicking since 2016, but up til now, the Orange County, California startup hasn’t done much press. That changes today, as the company announces that it has raised a $2 million seed round with the fairly lofty goal of transforming recycling in the U.S. A press release outlining Replenysh’s plans offers up plenty

As perennial front runner for the title of probably-the-most-evil tech company, Amazon has a long way to go to rehabilitate its image as a take-no-prisoners, industry-consolidating wealth machine. In a bold effort to do so, the company announced today that it would buy the rights to Seattle’s KeyArena, a not particularly noteworthy stadium currently under

Roger Duncan Contributor Roger Duncan is a former Research Fellow at the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin and the former General Manager of Austin Energy. He is the co-author of the upcoming book, “The Future of Buildings, Transportation and Power.” The economic lockdown resulting from the coronavirus pandemic has had an

DroneBase, a Los Angeles-based provider of drone pilots for industrial services companies, has raised $7.5 million during the pandemic to double down on its work with renewable energy companies. While chief executive Dan Burton acknowledged that the company was fundraising prior to the pandemic, the industrial lockdown actually accelerated demand for the company’s services. Even