🌊 ClimateHack Vol 90: Wastewater to Energy

Hi There,

Friendly reminder, the price of HackSummit tickets increases next week.

Use the Easter weekend to lock in the best rates you’ll get to attend Europes’ largest climate tech conference for Founders, Funds and LPs with 1,500 decision makers in the room.

Code EASTERSPECIAL gets you 15% off your preferred ticket tier, but only until Monday at midnight - apply for yours here.

In Today’s Edition;

🌊 British startup WASE raised £8.5 million to convert wastewater into renewable energy.
🪨 Swedish startup Planboo secured over $1.1 million to scale its biochar carbon removal technology.
🏭 California-based Evoloh raised $20 million Series A funding to improve green hydrogen manufacturing.

Digest x Climate

🌎 These are the 30+ startups to watch in Latin America, according to VC's. We spoke to 12 regional investors to hear which startups they’ve got their eyes on.

📈 What’s up? The cost of some Easter eggs is up by 50% or more this year due to climate-change induced cocoa crop shortages in West Africa.

📉 What’s down? Data from the Science Based Targets Initiative shows that 239 major companies are on track to miss their net-zero deadline, including the likes of Microsoft, P&G, Unilever and Walmart.

🌳 Interesting: Globaïa created a climate visualisation of how many of our forests have been removed.

👀 Useful: Check out who’s investing in climate via the Climate Capital Stack launched by Sightline Climate.

AgriFood x Climate

🌴 Clean Food Group, based in London, secured £2.5 million to further develop its sustainable oil and fat alternatives, made primarily from food waste, ahead of a planned commercial launch next year.

🧀 Californian startup Climax Foods secured seed funding from investors including Untapped Ventures and At One Ventures. It uses AI to develop ‘groundbreaking’ plant-based dairy proteins which mimic the functionality and flavour of animal-based dairy.

🥔 Israeli agrifood startup PoLoPo unveiled its molecular farming platform, SuperAA, designed to produce animal proteins in potatoes and already deployed in potato plants at a greenhouse scale.

🏭 The Kraft Heinz Co. will receive up to $170 million from the US Department of Energy to support clean energy projects at ten of its US plants, including an electrification and energy storage project which should reduce annual emissions at the plants by more than 99% from 2022 levels. 

🍦 Unilever is set to receive up to $20.9 million from the US government to help reduce its ice cream factories’ carbon footprint, funding initiatives such as replacing natural gas boilers with electric boilers and heat pumps.

☕️ Paris-based NetZero raised €18 million and announced a partnership with Nestlé Nespresso SA to build a biochar production facility in Brazil, designed to support local coffee farmers to improve their soil health and adopt regenerative practices.

☕️ Nestlé is launching two initiatives aimed at reducing and removing carbon emissions from its cocoa supply chains, including promoting regenerative agriculture practices and supporting reforestation of deteriorated land.

Biodiversity x Climate

🌳 French startup Green PRAXIS secured seed investment for its tech platform which models large-scale nature-based solutions to support operators and infrastructure owners in managing natural assets.

👩🏻‍🚒 US-based Vibrant Planet’s tech platform uses AI and land mapping to help its users, including fire departments and government bureaus, to better manage land and prepare for potential climate issues such as wildfires.

Carbon x Climate

🪨 Swedish startup Planboo secured over $1.1 million to scale its biochar carbon removal technology. It uses IoT remote sensing technology as a tool for digital Measurement, Reporting, and Verification to ensure accuracy in the quantity and quality of carbon removal taking place.

🤝 Senken and Exomad Green announced one of the largest biochar carbon removal deals to date, set for a volume of 81,600 tons of CO2 between 2025 and 2028.

Cosmetics x Climate

🧴 French cosmetics brand 900.care, which makes refillable personal care products, raised €21 million in a round led by the Lombard Odier Investment Managers fund to support its goal of reaching €100 million in revenue within the next three years.

Energy x Climate

🏭 California-based Evoloh raised $20 million Series A funding to improve green hydrogen manufacturing. It manufactures high-performance electrolyser stacks, the core component of electrolysers, designed around inexpensive, domestically sourced materials and components.

🔦 London-based Oriole Networks raised £10 million seed funding for its all optical infrastructure, which uses light to directly connect thousands of AI GPUs into ‘super-brains’. Its aim is to enable wider deployment of more sustainable and cost-effective AI.

💎 French deep tech startup Diamfab secured €8.7 million to make more efficient semiconductors with a lower carbon footprint through its research into nanoelectronics and semiconducting diamonds.

🌊 British startup WASE raised £8.5 million to convert wastewater into renewable energy. Its anaerobic digester uses electro-active microbes to harvest methane from organic waste, and the company claims its system is significantly smaller and can squeeze about 30% more methane than typical systems.

🚗 Evari emerged from stealth and announced a $7.5 million seed funding round led by Clean Energy Ventures. Its goal is to extend the range of EVs while also eliminating fossil fuels from home heating, thanks to its core technology related to rocket turbomachinery. 

🔌 Munich-based ecoplanet secured €3.5 million to “revolutionise the way enterprises handle energy in their daily operations”. It is developing the world's largest B2B energy platform, designed to help companies cut both costs and their CO2 emissions.

🇬🇧 Sustainable Ventures is joining forces with CPI in a government-backed effort to deliver £1.5 million of private investment to hydrogen startups in the North West of England, citing plans to “transform Manchester into a European hydrogen hub”.

Transport x Climate

🚗 Lucid Motors raised another $1 billion from Ayar Third Investment, an affiliate of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, as it hunts for buyers for its expensive Air sedan electric vehicle.

🚎 Scottish startup Ember raised £11 million Series A funding to build an all-electric intercity bus network across the UK, having started in 2019 with just one vehicle and grown to 24 vehicles to date.

🔋 US-based Ionobell secured $3.9 million in a seed extension round. It uses a porous silicon structure, made primarily from a waste material, to extend the capacity of EV batteries.

🚄 Rail transport optimisation company SP Tech Solutions secured €3 million from the Vinci HiTech fund, having grown its revenue nearly 1000% in the past two years, to extend its operations in the Polish market and further expand towards Western Europe. 

🚎 Kenyan electric bus startup BasiGo raised $3 million in equity funding from CFAO Group to expand its operations and increase production of its electric buses, for which it already has reservations for 600 units, in Kenya and Rwanda.

Funds x Climate

🇺🇸 Matter Venture Partners raised $300 million in their first fund to invest in “hard tech” across six “buckets”: semiconductors everywhere, robotisation due to blue-collar labour shortage, generative AI, manufacturing on-shoring and friend-shoring, energy building blocks and life science automation.

🇺🇸 New Summit Investments is raising a $100 million impact fund to invest in managers backing companies focused on environmental and social issues. To date it has invested in the likes of Black Opal Ventures, Buoyant Ventures, ArcTern, Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management and Obvious Ventures.

🇬🇧 Greensphere Capital secured £66.3 million for its Gaia Sciences Innovation Fund, to support businesses linked to a number of British bioscience and environmental science institutes that are working to tackle biodiversity loss and climate change.

🇬🇧 London-based Ascension VC raised £17 million at the first close of its tech for good fund, with which it will support “commercially astute mission-driven founders who are at the forefront of key tech trends”, working within sectors including AI, digital health, future of work, fintech and energy.

🇬🇧 The UK government announced £16.6 million in funding to support semiconductor research for electric vehicles and clean energy, to give researchers and businesses in the field access to new equipment to test new chips.

🇬🇧 1991 Ventures launched a £15 million industry-agnostic fund to back “mission-driven” startups in Ukraine and Central and Eastern Europe.

🇱🇺 Climate tech VC Satgana closed its first fund with €8 million, with which it will support up to 30 early-stage startups in Africa and Europe working across sectors including mobility, food and agriculture, energy, industry, buildings and the circular economy.

Community x Climate

Upcoming Free ClimateHacks Meetups in:

🇳🇱 Amsterdam: 17th April - “Carbon Dioxide Removal 101” with speakers from Carbon Rating, Skytree, SeaO₂. Register Here.

🇺🇸 San Francisco: 22nd April - “Dancing with Elephants - how startups and corporates can build impactful partnerships”. Register Here.

🇨🇭 Zürich: 23rd April - Closing the Loop: Innovating for a Circular Tomorrow with Impact Hub, Ponera Group, reCircle, Treeless Pack. Register Here.

🚨 Hurry: Less than 15(!) startup booths remain for the HackSummit in June. Want to be featured in front of an audience of 1,500 decision makers? Apply for your booth before it’s too late.

Memes x Climate

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Editorial by Arman, Curation by Nicola