GreenTech

The founders of HERO Software didn’t start out to help small tradespeople in construction with a platform. They started out to fight the climate crisis. But in doing so, they stumbled on a way to help the whole business. Now, the company has closed a €40 million Series B financing round, and plans to expand

Commonwealth Fusion Systems is shipping a pair of its specialized magnets to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the startup exclusively told TechCrunch. The move comes years before CFS anticipates starting its demonstration reactor, SPARC. It’s the first such deal, though possibly not the last, suggesting that the fusion sector has matured to the point where it

Fast-food chain Whataburger’s app has gone viral in the wake of Hurricane Beryl, which left around 1.8 million utility customers in Houston, Texas without power. Hundreds of thousands of those people may remain without power for days as Houston anticipates a heat wave, with temperatures climbing into the mid-90s. Amid frustrations with the local utility

The easiest way for a person to eat carbon dioxide is by consuming vegetables. David Tze wants his startup’s protein to be a close second. Tze’s company, NovoNutrients, has been working on a way to use microbes to turn carbon dioxide into protein that can be used in food for humans and feed for animals.

Solo founder Cat Jones took the plunge on setting up a travel business right around the time the pandemic was hitting Europe in March 2020. Fast forward to summer 2024 and her curated package tour business, Byway, is announcing close of an oversubscribed £5.04 million Series A round (around $6.4M at current exchange rates). Jones’

According to a recent Dealroom report on the Spanish tech ecosystem, the combined enterprise value of Spanish startups surpassed €100 billion in 2023. In the latest confirmation of this upward trend, Madrid-based VC fund Seaya has closed Seaya Andromeda, an “Article 9” €300 million climate tech fund based out of Madrid. Article 9 refers to the EU’s Sustainable

Google has issued its 2024 Environmental Report, a more than 80-page document describing all of the massive company’s efforts to apply tech to environmental issues and to mitigate its own contributions. But it totally dodges the question of how much energy is AI using — perhaps because the answer is “way more than we’d care

The amount of waste produced by the construction industry adds up to more than a third of the overall waste produced each year in the European Union. And it’s no better in the U.S. Stateside, the construction industry produces more than double the waste that households do each year. Sensorita wants to help the construction

Hannah Sieber knows just how transformative batteries can be. At her previous startup, EcoFlow, she used them to replace generators, whether for powering homes after a bad storm or RVs at a campsite. The experience made her wonder what else batteries could do, especially smaller ones.  “What are the other industries that could dramatically change?”

Amid a fraught environment for battery startups, Sila has raised $375 million to finish construction of a U.S. factory that will scale its next-generation battery technology for customers like Mercedes-Benz and Panasonic by the end of 2025. Sila, formerly known as Sila Nanotechnologies, is slated to finish construction of its Moses Lake, Washington plant in

Outside of AI, few startups have drawn venture investments like climate tech. And like AI, companies in the sector need large infusions of cash, sometimes well beyond what a typical venture investor might offer, to reach a size where they’ll be able to make a mark. A new deal involving Rondo Energy, which makes thermal energy

When it comes to building software for climate tech, you probably want to build something in the general vicinity of carbon accounting, given that the hottest software platforms in the space have something to do with either accounting, offsets, removals, or regulatory disclosure. For instance, New York’s Persefoni (accounting) raised $164.2 million to date, Plan

Ashley Beckwith spent years of her academic and professional career focused on the intersection of biology, materials and manufacturing to build medical solutions more efficiently. When she realized the tech could be applied to plants and plant-based materials, an area that desperately needed it, she decided to switch gears. “Life on earth is only as

Aether Fuels has raised $30.4 million of a $34.3 million round, according to an SEC filing. The e-fuels startup is working on producing fuel for aviation and maritime shipping using carbon dioxide and other waste carbon streams. The new round would give the company’s bank account a healthy bump; Aether Fuels had previously raised $8.5

When people think about the water they use, they tend to think about drinking water out of the tap or maybe their daily shower. But about 70% of the water we use goes toward growing the crops that feed us, a number that swells to as high as 90% in low-income countries. Finding water for

In the nearly 20 years that James Quazi has been a climate tech founder and operator, he’s seen a lot. From solar to geothermal, energy audits to energy storage, he’s had a front row as homeowners have sought to slash their energy use. He’s also been able to observe what makes those startups successful. “You

If there’s one thing holding batteries back, it’s cost. The most widespread type of battery, lithium-ion, still costs around $140 per kilowatt-hour for a pack. While that’s low enough to have triggered quickening adoption of electric vehicles, even the cheapest lithium-ion chemistries are still too expensive to put a big battery in every home to

Earlier this year, BASF had to delay the opening of a battery materials plant in Finland when a court agreed with environmental groups that the company didn’t have a good plan to deal with its wastewater.  As battery factories spring up around the world, the specter of wastewater threatens to stall their construction. One startup,

For an industry that’s about 20 years old, residential solar is still pretty tumultuous. Some of that can be blamed on shifting regulations, like what happened in California last year where a policy update lengthened the amount of time it took for homeowners to recoup their investments. But other bumps can be attributed to the

Gorilla, a Belgian company that serves the energy sector with real-time data and analytics for pricing and forecasting, has raised €23 million ($25 million) in a Series B round led by U.S. venture capital firm Headline. Founded in 2018, Antwerp-based Gorilla works with energy providers across Europe, the U.S. and Australia, including British Gas’ parent

The folks at Collaborative Fund certainly like a challenge. They don’t specialize in venture capital’s favorite business model, SaaS, preferring instead to invest in sectors like climate, health and food. What’s more, they like companies that focus on consumers, whose fickle attitudes can add another layer of complexity to any business plan. Oh, and they

When you’re looking for a startup idea that could slow climate change, you might become an expert at home energy assessments. At least, that’s what happened to the founders of Kelvin, a French startup that is using computer vision and machine learning to make it easier to audit homes for energy efficiency. Clémentine Lalande, Pierre

EnerVenue, a startup that has developed an alternative to lithium-ion batteries for long-duration renewable energy storage, is raising $515 million in fresh equity, per an SEC filing seen by TechCrunch. The company is in the process of building a gigawatt-scale factory in Kentucky to produce its nickel-hydrogen batteries, an endeavor that’s estimated to cost $264

Climate change might be the most significant environmental disaster facing humanity, but it’s not the only one. In fact, humanity already faces five others out of a total of nine possible doomsday scenarios. With each line we cross, we jeopardize the planet’s ability to self regulate. This concept of planetary boundaries is helpful for scientists,

Brendan Smith didn’t intend to be in the critical minerals business. He initially thought his high-tech filters would be good at desalination. But it was hard to beat existing systems, so he and his advisor, MIT professor Jeffrey Grossman, quickly ruled it out. After a few years “where we sort of intentionally meandered,” they found

Since the shock of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, solar energy has been having a moment in Europe. Electricity prices have been going up while the investment required to get solar panels installed on your roof has been going down. This is due to new subsidies, better technology and several European startups that are working

Conner Galloway and Alexander Valys have followed developments in nuclear fusion research since they were roommates at MIT some 20 years ago. For much of that time, it wasn’t the most exciting pastime: breakthroughs were few and far between, and commercial fusion remained perpetually on the horizon, always 20 years away from providing inexpensive, inexhaustible,

When someone says a product is “new and improved,” it’s wise to take it with a grain of salt. But with Mill’s redesigned food waste bin, you can believe it. As before, the bin accepts a wide variety of food waste — only a handful of items like oyster shells are off limits — and

A surge of battery recycling startups have emerged in Europe in a bid to tap into the next big opportunity in the EV market: battery waste.  Among them is Cylib, a German-based startup with a pitch automakers may find financially compelling. The company says it can extract pure forms of all materials in a battery

2023 was the hottest year on record, it doesn’t look like we’re cooling down anytime soon. Rising temperatures have made farming increasingly difficult in areas that were once prime agricultural resources where heat and drought have severely impacted crops. For most farmers who rely on traditional methods and lack access to high-tech greenhouses, the need