GreenTech

Jonathan Greechan Contributor Jonathan Greechan is CEO and co-founder of the world’s largest pre-seed accelerator, Founder Institute. More posts by this contributor Do you fit the mold for the next generation of values-driven VCs? These best practices maximize the value of your online events Earlier this year, a report from the EU showed that 42%

There are several plastic clamshells sitting in front of me on a conference room table — around 20 or so boxes, labels facing forward, with a plate of turnips and a tub of those R&D strawberries we saw back in part two. It’s a nice photo opportunity, backdropped by Bowery Farming’s impressive grow system and

Agriculture has a 10,000-year history, and it’s predominantly a history of technology. Developments from the plow and wheel to enclosures and the modern mechanical miracles of gas-powered tractors and sorters have consistently improved crop yields, allowing humanity to expand from tens of millions of people to a global population projected to top 10 billion this

“The first thing you notice is just the smell,” chief science officer of Bowery Farming Henry Sztul says excitedly. “It’s got that smell, right?” There’s a kind of visceral sense memory that hits you as you enter Farm Zero, a Proustian moment that overtakes the senses after years of living in a major city. It

Marc and Lynne Benioff announced a $200 million donation this morning to combat climate change and encourage others to take action. Marc Benioff’s company, Salesforce, threw in $100 million more for a total donation of $300 million. The Benioffs’ portion is divided into two tranches, with $100 million going to the Benioff Time Tree Fund

Food is the very nourishment of life, but it’s also becoming increasingly challenging to grow at scale. A combination of explosive and unsustainable population growth, human-made climate change and depleted sources of clean water is contributing to overcultivation across the world. For its many advocates, vertical farming is a critical piece to solving that puzzle,

Farming is the most fundamental activity of civilization. Efficient, reliable and abundant food allows the great majority of people today to eschew cultivating plants and raising livestock and instead pursue every other activity that makes up an economy. It’s also an enterprise that has seen extensive innovation over the millennia, and farming has never been

Daring Foods closed on $65 million in Series C funding Wednesday as the plant-based chicken startup launches its products into 3,000 Walmart stores nationally. Daring offers four plant-based chicken products, including Original, Lemon & Herb, Cajun and Breaded, that looks, cooks and tastes like its chicken counterpart. CEO Ross Mackay told TechCrunch that the goal

Matt Rogers Contributor Matt Rogers built the first machine-learning thermostat as the co-founder of Nest. He was previously an engineer at Apple, where he helped build ten generations of the iPhone and the first iPad. He currently splits his time between Incite.org and a new company that he is developing. The best way to drive

Via Separations is a startup from a couple of MIT material science engineers who figured out a way to reduce the amount of energy required in a manufacturing process, resulting in lower carbon creation, lower energy usage and lower costs. Today, the company announced a $38 million Series B. The round was led by NGP

Eric Kosmowski Contributor Brett Hauser Contributor The climate measures in the budget reconciliation package now before the U.S. Congress could unlock an investment boom in clean energy, zero-carbon transportation and efficient manufacturing that would allow us, as a nation, to reverse the course of rising greenhouse gas emissions that threaten our future. Simultaneously, ​​these investments

Derek Zaba Contributor Derek Zaba is a partner at Sidley Austin’s Palo Alto office and co-chairs the firm’s Shareholder Activism practice. He counsels companies on a variety of matters, including activism defense/proxy contests, activism preparedness, takeover defenses, shareholder engagement and corporate governance. Sharon R. Flanagan Contributor Sharon R. Flanagan is the managing partner of Sidley

Arvind Gupta Contributor Arvind co-leads Mayfield’s engineering biology practice and is founder and venture advisor at IndieBio. He was the first investor in breakout bio companies such as Geltor, Synthex, Prime Roots, NotCo, Prellis, New Culture, DNA Lite and Memphis Meats. Climate in the last decade has been unprecedented in many ways, none of them

Planet-positive venture capital firm At One Ventures closed on its Fund I, aimed at injecting $150 million into startups that are innovating in the technical hardware space and specializing in environmentally positive technology. The Bay Area firm was started in 2019 by GoogleX co-founder Tom Chi, Laurie Menoud, who co-led venture capital for North American

Climate change has been the deepest, most challenging cognitive puzzle for humans to untangle these past years. It’s systems on top of systems, with emergent properties that can easily turn intuitive notions into catastrophic dead ends. Every action has a reaction or ten, and improving one part of the system almost invariably leads to weaknesses

Roughly two hours pass between my initial email and our first Zoom chat — on a Sunday, no less. I skip the post-gym shower and pop on a baseball cap, because I’m not sure when the opportunity will present itself again. After more than two decades of espousing the benefits of vertical farming around the

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson isn’t a book that lauds ecoterrorists. In fact, it mostly manages to avoid the subject across its many pages. Yet, at the center of its speculative account about the eponymous ministry and its leadership over the next few decades, the dark side is the linchpin for

Buckle up, it’s going to be a wild ride. The pace of change over the last few decades is only set to accelerate in the coming years, as improvements in biology, medicine, spacecraft, manufacturing, software and more continue to transform the very foundations of society, economics and politics. We cover these innovations pretty much daily

We’re just weeks away from COP26, the big environmental policy confab where scores of world leaders will descend on Scotland and determine the future of the planet, answering the question, “Should we all die or live?” That’s meant a whole truckload of new books on the subject, as well as renewed attention to older works

For the last decade, battery chemistry company Sila has been working to replace the graphite anode in lithium-ion batteries with silicon, a material that’s easier to come by, more environmentally friendly and allows for a battery cell that’s denser and cheaper. In September, the company shipped its first commercial product with Whoop wearables. Now, Sila

Jane Mosbacher Morris started her career in the U.S. Department of State helping women fight terrorism. Now she is helping them find fairly paid work. She recognized that for women to drive change they needed access to resources, so she started studying agriculture and other sectors and become interested in the strategic investment in supply

Before Gene Berdichevsky became the co-founder and CEO of battery chemistry company Sila Nano, he was the seventh employee at Tesla Motors. As principal engineer on the Roadster battery, Berdichevsky was one of the first people crazy enough to experiment with shoving a lithium-ion battery pack into a combustion engine vehicle. The result? The Roadster

Dutch social enterprise Fairphone has announced its first 5G smartphone, the Fairphone 4. The ‘greentech’ mobile maker differentiates from almost the entire smartphone industry through a promise of sustainability via repairable modularity. It combines this with a big push around socially responsibility and ethical electronics — touting fairly sourced materials and better conditions for workers

In 2019, Rivian showed up at the Overland Expo West in Flagstaff, Arizona with a prototype of what is now known as the camp kitchen. Now, with production ready 2022 Rivian R1T electric pickup trucks coming off the assembly line, the final version of the kitchen is ready for prime time. The automaker has made

One of the greatest challenges for farmers today is the increasingly volatility in the climate, leading to unpredictable weather patterns, making growing conditions challenging. If farmers can’t grow crops, then our food security is as risk. Gradually, the field of AgTech is attempting to address this issue. There are increasing numbers of FaaS or ‘Farming

Energize Ventures, an early and growth-stage venture fund, has announced the closing of its second fund with total capital commitments of $330 million. Fund II will be used to help scale and commercialize software across renewable energy, mobility, cybersecurity, battery storage, critical infrastructure and climate resiliency. The fund, which is worth exactly double what Energize

Extra Crunch is now TechCrunch+. In addition to updating our name and logo, we’re offering military, student and government membership discounts and have expanded access to new regions. Also, Extra Crunch Live, our weekly video series with investors and founders, is now TechCrunch Live — and you don’t need to be a member to join

The decarbonization of the planet will be the next major disruption of the 21st century, according to SOSV managing general partner Sean O’Sullivan and Carmichael Roberts of Breakthrough Energy Ventures. A disruption of such magnitude will bring about changes that will touch every industry and corner of daily life, and as a result, a complex

Tesla broke ground on its “Megafactory,” a new production facility in California, so christened because it will produce the company’s large-scale battery system Megapack. News of the previously unannounced factory was confirmed by the Lathrop Mayor Sonny Dhaliwal in a Facebook post that was deleted and re-posted. “We are proud to be the home of

We started this competition with 20 impressive startups. After three days of fierce pitching in the virtual yet incredibly competitive Startup Battlefield arena, we have a winner. The startups taking part in the Startup Battlefield have all been hand-picked to participate in our highly competitive startup competition. Like last year, we reproduced the nail-biting excitement