GreenTech

Today, for a series of climate-related conversations organized by the global venture firm SOSV, we interviewed famed investor Chris Sacca, whose investment firm Lowercarbon Capital is managing $2 billion in capital across one fund that’s focused on nuclear fusion, another fund focused expressly on carbon removal, and the rest across a wide spectrum of bets.

Battery technology has made significant strides in recent years, but there’s one place they haven’t changed much — they’re still as stiff as a board. The era of inflexible portable power may be coming to an end, though, if Anthro Energy can bring its bendy batteries to market. It’s getting some help with that courtesy

The Biden-Harris administration, through the Department of Energy (DOE), announced Wednesday that 20 battery companies will receive a combined $2.8 billion to build and expand commercial-scale facilities in 12 states. This is the first phase of $7 billion in total from President Biden’s Infrastructure Law that aims to strengthen domestic battery supply chains and reduce

Born inside the Technical University of Munich, the engineers behind Reverion say they’ve had their heads down for seven years developing a way to get more electricity out of biogas and existing fuel-cell technology. Biogas comes from decomposing waste and is mostly made up of methane. It’s a form of chemical energy that must be

Over the last 10 years startups in Africa’s off-grid solar sector have attracted over $2.3 billion in funding. However, the largest share of the financing has gone to just seven pay-as-you-go (pay-go) Africa-based scaleups, leaving hundreds of others in the early-stage struggling to fundraise, according to the newly released biennial Gogla-World Bank report. The seven

RJ Scaringe, founder and CEO of electric vehicle maker Rivian, says the company’s future goes beyond electric trucks and vans. And he’s putting considerable human power behind that effort. Of Rivian’s nearly 15,000 employees, about half are focused on future products, Scaringe said while on stage Wednesday at TechCrunch Disrupt. “So that’s updated compute, updated

It almost sounds too good to be true: Take basalt dust that today is wasted in the manufacturing of things like asphalt shingles, sprinkle it on farmers’ fields, and it raises crop yields while also removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Where’s the catch? For the entire thing to work, farmers need to add just

Propeller, a new climate-tech investor with a focus on the ocean, tells TechCrunch that it has hooked $100 million for its first seed fund. Co-founded by former HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan, the venture firm said in a statement that it backs and incubates startups in areas like ocean carbon removal, algae packaging, offshore wind, desalination

Plastics are great for so many things, but they stay around for an awfully long time. Intropic leaps to the rescue with a set of enzymes that can be added to plastics at the very beginning of their life cycle, before it is even turned into products. The additives the company makes have been proof-of-concept

Advanced Ionics, a climate-tech startup that hails from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is striving to drive down the price of green hydrogen by slashing how much electricity is needed for electrolysis by as much as 50%. That’s an admirable goal, because despite all the talk of hydrogen as a “fuel of the future,” the industry is still

The electric everything revolution is here, and with it an unprecedented demand for critical battery materials. The most precious of all? Lithium, the crucial ingredient in the lithium-ion batteries that will power everything from your Tesla to your iPhone.  The problem is, extracting lithium is expensive, time-consuming, labor intensive and takes a serious toll on

In 2018, Neil D’Souza, a software engineer by trade and previously the VP of product development at Thinkstep, came to the realization that his ten-plus-year effort to solve enterprise product challenges in the areas of sustainability, compliance and risk were having little impact. The way he saw it, they took too long, which minimized their

As hundreds of thousands of EVs come to market over the next few years, demand for critical battery materials like lithium, graphite, nickel, and cobalt has never been higher. Automakers are scrambling to ensure their own supply of key raw materials and, in the process, reduce their reliance on China, the dominant force in the

Climate tech wrapped a strong Q3, landing three of the top four equity deals, including the whopping $1 billion Series A raised by fleet charging startup TeraWatt. While the broader market might be cooling, climate tech continues to be a hot ticket, with investment figures for top deals in Q3 outpacing the two previous quarters

Sono Motors, the company building an electric vehicle that’s partially powered by the sun, debuted its flagship Sion in New York City this week as part of a multi-city tour throughout the U.S. The company aims to launch the $25,000 five-seater hatchback in Europe first — production is expected to start in the second half

There are big, overarching top-down trends, and there are little-bitty baby trends that have a way of growing into bigger ones. A big trend right now, for example, centers on certain firms that passed out enormous checks to startup founders in recent years and drove valuations sky high in the process. It turns out this

Lightrock, the London-based backer of neobank Niyo and “wood modification” company Kebony, has secured about $834 million (€860 million) for a new fund focused on climate tech. The private equity and venture firm plans to pump the money into startups in areas such as clean energy, decarbonization and sustainable agriculture. Lightrock will write checks as small

Net Purpose, a platform for sustainable investors, has raised $11 million in a Series A round led by ETF Partners, funding which will be used to expand its product and team, says the company. The company is benefitting from a shift to investing in sustainable products. According to the UN Principles for Responsible  Investment, $120

Shortly after the COVID pandemic hit, inspiration struck Ryan Abernathey and Joe Hamman. The pair had been watching the “mass mobilization” of the epidemiology research community, Abernathey said. “Joe and I were both thinking at the time, ‘We wanted to be part of something with that level of intensity and urgency around climate change.’” Abernathey

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing over whether the world will get its act together enough to prevent catastrophic warming. There’s certainly a case to be made there — we’ve spent the last several decades kicking the can down the road at every opportunity. Well, here we are again, with the can again before us

In February, I received a letter from Chrysler saying that our 2017 Pacifica Hybrid was subject to a new recall. Several of the minivans had inexplicably caught fire and, given the evidence, the automaker suspected it might have to do with the high-voltage battery pack. The recall notice told us not to recharge the vehicle

Form Energy closed a $450 million Series E fundraising round yesterday to continue its work turning iron into rust. The round was led by TPG Rise Climate and joined by new investors GIC and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Existing investors ArcelorMittal, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Capricorn Investment Group, Coatue, Energy Impact Partners, The Engine, NGP

FlyFeed claims it signed more than $10 million worth of contracts and closed a $3 million round of investment to launch its first insect farm in Vietnam, in its push to produce low-cost, high-nutrient protein for human consumption. The company was founded less than a year ago and is targeting the three billion people who

To state the (painfully) obvious: The fates of agriculture and climate change are inextricably linked. The weather dictates what grows where and when, but as the Earth warms beneath a wool blanket of excess carbon, agriculture is especially vulnerable in ways you might not expect. Record-setting heat and droughts fry grasses that farmers depend on

Wildfires have become an ever-increasing threat as houses are built closer together and the growing impacts of climate change wreak havoc on natural landscapes. Entrepreneurs, in response, have started to develop tech meant to minimize the scale and damage of these natural disasters. Convective Capital is a new VC firm looking to back them. Bill

Michigan, long the automotive manufacturing capital of the United States, is now getting pumped with investment both publicly and privately to build out a series of battery manufacturing plants that will power the wave of electric vehicles coming to market. The demand for domestically produced batteries has reached new peaks after the passage of the

Failing to address climate change via investments endangers constituents (and the economy) Dominic-Madori Davis 8 hours Less than two months before Hurricane Ian swept across Florida, its governor, Ron DeSantis, referred to ESG investing as a danger to economic freedom. His office even released a statement saying the practice sought to “advance a woke ideological

Climate change and geopolitical instability are wreaking havoc on agriculture. To gauge how VCs are responding to these issues, we spoke with seven investors. For starters, rising greenhouse gas emissions are driving punishing droughts and storms, which are harming crops, exacerbating food insecurity and threatening countless livelihoods. At the same time, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Elon Musk has his fingers in a lot of pies. He’s CEO of automaker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX. He also founded tunnel construction firm the Boring Company and co-founded Neuralink, a brain implant startup. Now it looks like Musk will spearhead the effort to take Twitter private and potentially roll it into an “everything

French startup Gourmey just raised a Series A funding round led by Earlybird Venture Capital. In total, the company banked $48 million (€48 million). The company has been working on cultivated meat, and more specifically lab-grown foie gras. It is part of a new wave of companies that want to turn cell-cultured meat products into