Good Morning
What we’re reading this week:
Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch Is Bursting With Life (WSJ)
Tesla cut U.S. prices for the sixth time this year
The Greendicator
Top Deals of the Week
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe399049d-d7fe-4fc2-a753-01407bd0c802_1360x1251.png)
Context Labs, a data provider that helps companies track carbon emissions, hired Barclays to help raise up to $150M at an over $1B valuation (RT)
myenergi, a UK-based eco-smart home technology manufacturer, raised a $37.2M round from HSBC UK (FN)
Sunvigo, a provider of residential solar systems, raised $21.4M in funding; $13.1M in growth capital from Future Energy Ventures and Triodos Energy Transition Europe Fund and $8.3M in financing from DKB AG (FN)
ClimateAI, a climate tech startup, raised a $22M Series B led by Four Rivers Group (FN)
nZero, a near-real-time carbon management and accounting platform, raised a $16M Series A led by Fifth Wall and a national US energy company (PRN)
Lithium extraction startup Novalith Technologies raised a $15.4M Series A led by Lowercarbon Capital (FN)
ChargeLab, an EV charging management platform, raised a $15M ($10M in equity / $5M in debt) Series A extension led by King River Capital and Silver Comet (PRN)
eniferBio, a biotech startup extracting protein from mushrooms, raised a $12M Series A led by Aqua-Spark (FN)
Eco-friendly home essentials startup EcoSoul Home raised a $10M Series A led by Accel and Singh Capital Partners (PRN)
BlueMark, a provider of independent impact verification and intelligence in the impact and sustainable investing market, raised a $10M Series A led by S&P Global (FN)
Evergrow, the all-in-one platform for clean energy tax credits, raised a $7M second round of financing led by First Round Capital, XYZ Venture Capital, Congruent Ventures, and Garuda Ventures (PRN)
Tvarit, a net-zero metal manufacturing startup, raised a $5.5M round led by Momenta and Futury Capital (FN)
E-bike subscription platform for last-mile delivery drivers Whizz raised a $3.4M seed round from investors including Joint Journey and TMT Investments (VCN)
Minagro, a Belgian startup developing green products for crop care, raised $1.3M in funding led by the management team (FN)
Green Theory
Don’t Boil The Ocean: Looking for Solutions
For all we focus on land use, there’s a lot more to planet earth, and the web of life. Trying to grasp the sheer size of the ocean, many see powerful potential in climate solutions that surf or dive into this space. Climate tech meets a vast sea of opportunities, obstacles, and perhaps enemies, in blue tech, and its salty subsector: ocean tech. With the increased funding and hype around ocean tech in recent months, the industry awaits our expanding imaginations, as we venture into a largely unknown part of our planet.
To succeed in the long term, and at the scale of the climate crisis, applying a holistic, systems lens will help us understand how we can mutually benefit from the ocean: seeing it for what it is, and not just for what we singularly need.
This frame will not be novel to frequent readers. In February, we discussed Suzanne Simard’s scientific forestry findings that trees are not just competing for light and resources, but supporting and sustaining one another. In Suzanne’s words, “it’s not just a dog-eat-dog world. That these plants are together, you know that they work together.” Who knows what mycorrhizal-style networks line the ocean? For a more human approach, this piece last month summarized the Bay Area air quality chapter from Heather McGhee’s Sum of Us, which unpacks how divisive zero-sum thinking costs everyone.
When it comes to the ocean and emerging tech interventions, one of NASA’s lead oceanographic researchers, John Moison, urges broadening our knowledge, before rushing to exploit. Moison reflects on the limitations of relying only on technology in finding the best ways to improve ocean and human health: “If I cannot measure life, how can I model it? I do not know how to write that equation.” Still, Moison was persistent in his work on NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud ocean Ecosystem (PACE) team, using data to better understand how the ocean and atmosphere exchange carbon dioxide. In seeking to implement sustainable solutions, we must not focus on ideas target only perceived parts of a complex system.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe2f23fb2-4f15-499f-a850-813e4f570490_2048x1366.png)
Take, for example, Running Tide Technologies: one of the companies promoting thoroughness in ocean tech solutions, but not necessarily walking the walk. The team sought to magnify the impact of a singular piece of the ocean system by deploying tens of thousands of micro-algae farms across oceans, to absorb extra carbon, and sink it to the depths of the sea. In addition to the selling of carbon credits’ questionable effects, this particular vision came at the cost of oceanic health, according to former employees.
Once grandiose ideas inevitably fell apart, without any give from big-name buyers (such as Shopify and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative), the company turned to the fastest solution they could generate. Sinking large batches of wood chips, “possibly covered with micro algae,” Running Tide performed an activity shown to result in oxygen-depleted, microbe-dominated zones, where very few species are equipped to survive.
Knowing that our best solutions are often those that consider a problem in its broadest context, we can turn to emerging ideas from places like the University of Hawaii for their systems-based approach to carbon capture, relying on existing pathways that also benefit from stabilizing climate change. Learning more about our biggest mammals, this study from December discusses the multi-dimensional impact of whales throughout the ecosystems they inhabit, and the monumental role they alone play in the oceanic carbon storage system.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F22d22a3f-e657-45d0-a1e4-91ce2023779b_765x804.png)
The authors of this study emphasize that the effective realization of this research will demand a highly connected and coordinated effort to better design solutions to the problems implicated in their research. “This will require interdisciplinary collaboration between marine ecologists, oceanographers, biogeochemists, carbon-cycle modelers, and economists.” Alissa Peterson, co-founder and CEO of SeaAhead, a group mobilizing and coordinating interdisciplinary efforts in bluetech, went on Catalyst to share that there’s more to the ocean than seafood. Peterson shares insights about the burgeoning field, including that most ocean tech should be thought of as coastal tech, given the terrifying power of the deep ocean. She admits that much is still unknown, but finds hope in bringing topics such as the essentiality of whale health into the conversation about ocean shipping.
Especially in our least-explored places, it is tempting to apply our newest and most-specialized technologies to innovate on point solutions. While it’s important that we ultimately seek to enrich the environments we study and leverage as a resource, there is no way to isolate parts of an ecosystem, and no way to benefit from only pieces and parts of its rhythm and harmony. As Moison notes, “The only real ecosystem model is the reality itself.” Our solutions should reflect this reality, and seek to harness the potential of the ocean—in saving our futures for the ocean it is, and not the ocean we seek to use. In order to best solve our most pressing climate problems, those on the cutting edge of critical technologies should find inspiration in the ways we and our oceans are connected, in need of holistic consideration, and interdependent on one another.
The Closer
This short video is 100% worth a watch.