🧲 ClimateHack Vol. 41: Magnets and Water

Hey There,

If you didn't login into Linkedin on Wednesday, you might have missed us takeover the feed for an hour.

The goal, to shed light on the fact that our climate disaster is only getting worse each year, and to encourage those with a drive to make a change to come and talk solutions at the HackSummit in May, alongside 800+ other leaders in climate.

As the post suggests, If not now, then when? 

In today's edition:

👾 List of 30+ startups working within AI and climate change.🧲 Germany's Magnother raised €6.3M for energy friendly fridges.🦣 Controversy around the rights for cultivated mammoth meatballs. 

Digest x Climate 

📉 What’s down? On both ends of the Earth, the ice is melting. The Arctic’s peak ice cover has shrunk by 400,000 square miles, an area larger than Egypt. And the ice sheet in East Antarctica is melting earlier than anticipated.

📈 What’s up? Data from Australia’s Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries shows that battery electric vehicle sales grew by 19.5% year-on-year in March, and plug-in-hybrid sales increased by 33.3%.

💡 AI/ML in Climate: Helena Merk of Blockchain protocol Spirals set up a directory of startups working within AI and climate change.

Carbon x Climate 

🌊 UK-based Seafields won a £250,000 grant from Innovate UK to test its carbon reduction technology, designed to remove billions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere by cultivating and harvesting seaweed in the Atlantic Ocean.

⛏ UK-based Levidian has deployed its LOOP decarbonisation devices for the first time. Stugalux, based in Luxembourg, will use the devices to break methane into hydrogen and carbon atoms, then turn the carbon into graphene for use in residential construction.

💡 Good Read: Eurazeo’s article on carbon markets is worth a read, and it’s the fifth instalment of its Climate Tech trends series.

Food x Climate

🥬 Babylon, based in the US, raised $8 million Series A funding and received a $500,000 National Science Foundation grant. It produces the Galleri, a $15,000 wall appliance designed to grow more than 50 different plant varieties for on-site harvest - AKA a personal vertical farm.

🐄 Alga Biosciences, based in California, raised $4 million seed funding to stop cows burping methane. Its algae-based feed supplement helps cattle to burp less and grow faster.

🍎 Canadian startup Sepura secured $3.7 million seed funding, in a round led by Germany’s Blanco, for its under-sink food waste device, designed to separate water from foods for better composting.

🫐 Switzerland-based Agrinorm closed a “seven-digit” funding round to further develop its AI software platform for quality risk management in fresh produce value chains, that helps reduce costs and minimise waste.

📝 The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization collaborated with WHO to publish its first global report on cell-based food safety, with the aim of providing a solid scientific basis to begin establishing regulatory frameworks and to ensure the safety of alternative proteins.

🦣 Following Vow’s cultivated mammoth meatball, which grabbed headlines across the world, Belgian precision fermentation startup Paleo is considering legal action, claiming to have previously “developed the exact same mammoth protein (myoglobin)”. In turn, Vow says that its mammoth meatball “owes nothing to any technology or alleged invention by Paleo”.

Energy x Climate

🧲 Magnotherm, based in Germany, secured €6.3 million in an oversubscribed seed funding round. It develops and builds highly-efficient and sustainable cooling and heating solutions based on magnetic materials, and is targeting hazardous refrigerants.

🏡 German startup tado°secured €12 million from S2G Ventures just a few months after raising €43 million. Its planning to scale its home energy management solutions that optimise energy consumption without sacrificing comfort. ICYMI, tado° is on our list of 100+ German climate tech startups to know.

☀️ Nestle SA is investing in Texas-based solar project Ganado as part of its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and says its investment will enable Ganado to add 208 megawatts of solar electricity to the US power grid.

🔧 Utrecht-based HeatTransformers raised €15 million in a Series A funding round led by Energy Impact Partners. It specialises in heat pump installation to reduce environmentally-damaging gas dependence.

💡 Swiss startup Lumvin secured CHF 400,000 for its sustainable, intelligent and autonomous lighting systems, which help save up to 80% energy of conventional lighting systems.

🔋 Australia’s first sodium-sulfur battery is up and running at a mine in the west of the country, thanks to the Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre and German chemicals giant BASF. These batteries are designed to store energy for a long time, and have the capability to shift large amounts of energy to periods of low renewable energy generation to meet demand.

Materials x Climate

👕 Germany’s AMSilk secured €25 million in its extended Series C round, bringing the total to €54 million, for its biofabricated silk protein materials, which are a sustainable alternative to conventional silk.

🚗 Generation Phoenix, formerly ELeather, raised $18 million in a round led by Material Impact and featuring Jaguar Land Rover and Dr. Martens, among others. It upcycles leather waste from tanneries into a usable, leather-like product.

⚪️ Switzerland-based Impossible Materials secured $3.8 million seed funding to commercialise its first product, a cellulose-based alternative to white pigment titanium dioxide, which has recently been banned in the EU for use in foods.

🗑 Scientists from the University of South Australia are using artificial intelligence in public rubbish bins to monitor waste levels and help to predict which areas require more frequent servicing, preventing overflowing bins and unnecessary collections.

Transport x Climate

⛴ Swedish electric boat maker X Shore raised €26.6 million to ramp up its in-house production, having debuted its first all-electric watercraft in March last year, and accelerate its US market growth plans.

Funds x Climate

🇺🇸 VC firm Bidra Innovation Ventures, based in California, raised $200 million to support startups working in sustainable agriculture and clean energy. Its portfolio of investments so far includes Niqo Robotics, a startup that uses robots to reduce chemical usage, and carbon sequestration startup Travertine, among others.

🌍 Equator, a climate tech VC focused on sub-Saharan Africa, secured $40 million at the initial close of its first fund. It will use the cash to support seed and Series A startups in the region working within the clean energy, agriculture and mobility sectors.

🌱 Australian environmental restoration startup AirSeed Technologies, which uses drones to autonomously plant seed pods, is partnering with impact investment manager Conscious Investment Management to set up a $200 million carbon sequestration fund.

🇦🇺 Australia’s federal parliament has approved a A$15 billion National Reconstruction Fund, to support the nation’s struggling manufacturing sector, including investment into clean energy, agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, among others.

Resources x Climate

🇩🇪 Last week we released our list of 100 German Climate Tech startups to know, we're actively looking to update these maps, so if you see someone we've missed - please add them to the comments here. 

Events x Climate

🇫🇷 Free Meetup: Our next ClimateHack meetup just launched, this time we come to Paris on the 27th of April for an evening co-hosted with our friends at Marble and Serena to talk all things Deep Tech Funding. It's free, and very likely to sell out.

⏰ Tickets Increase: Just 6 hours to go until ticket prices to our HackSummit in May increases. We're now all sold out on the startup fair but you can still grab a Startup, Investor or General Attendee pass here. Speakers include:

• Clea Kolster, Partner at Lowercarbon Capital

• Pippa Gawley, Partner at Zero Carbon Capital

• Patrick Torbey, Co-founder at Neoplants ($20M+ raised)

• Jan Wilmking, Co-founder at Project Eaden ($12M+ raised)

• Francesco Volpe, Co-founder at Renaissance Fusion ($16M+ raised)

• Plus 60+ other leaders in Climate Tech

Memes x Climate

Thanks to Steve at Clear Current Capital for sending this one in, and we promise no more stunts like this until next year 😁

Thanks for reading. For those of you taking the extended weekend, enjoy the time off 🐇

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Editorial by Arman, Curation by Nicola.