Good Morning
What we’re reading this week:
The Greendicator
Top Deals of the Week
![Lilium raised $42 million in venture capital. Lilium raised $42 million in venture capital.](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%2F86d59e48-e4a0-4500-8da6-11bc59ed9c5b_2048x1365.jpeg)
Low Carbon, a 12-year-old London company that is financing 450 megawatts of solar projects in Britain and the Netherlands, raised a $513 million round. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance was the deal lead. EQ International has more here.
Field, a three-year-old(!) London startup that develops battery systems to store energy generated during periods of low demand, which can then be released to the UK grid when demand is high, raised a $255.9 million round. DIF Capital Partners was the deal lead. Sifted has more here.
Lilium, which is developing an electric vertical take-off and landing jet, has closed a capital raise of $192 million (S)
Aeroseal, a startup building systems to reduce energy leaks from buildings, raised a $67M Series B led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Climate Investment (FN)
Energy Dome, a startup building a CO2 battery, raised a $60M Series B led by Eni Next and Neva SGR (BW)
EV charging ecosystem / charging location management startup ev.energy raised a $33M Series B led by WEX Venture Capital (BW)
Bright, a distributed solar company, raised a $31.5M Series C led by the Danish SDG Investment Fund (BW)
Sensorfact, an Utrecht, Netherlands-based provider of a platform for manufacturers to improve their resource efficiency, raised a $27.8M round led by Blume Equity (FN)
Blue Laser Fusion, a laser fusion technology company, raised a $25M seed round led by JAFCO Group and SPARX Group (FN)
Brevel, a startup developing microalgae-based alternative proteins, raised an $18.5M seed round led by NevaTeam Partners (TC)
Energy Dome, a three-year-old Italian startup that is developing carbon dioxide-based batteries, raised a $16.7 million Series B extension led by Innovation Development Oman Investments. SiliconANGLE has more here.
Dioxycle, a startup working on a process to produce ethylene at scale using recycled carbon emissions, raised a $17M round led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Lowercarbon Capital (TC)
Ampcontrol, a five-year-old New York startup whose software helps fleet operators using EVs maintain charger uptime, plan routes, coordinate with energy tariffs, and monitor their vehicles and chargers with live data, raised a $10 million Series A round. The deal was led by the Westly Group (NW)
ETCH, a startup converting natural gas into clean hydrogen and solid carbon, raised a $7.5M seed round from Emerald Development Managers (FN)
Flipturn, a New York startup that aims to help fleet operators manage the charging of their EVs, raised a $4.5 million seed round led by Accel (TC)
Voltpost, an electric vehicle charging company, raised a $3.6M seed round led by RWE Energy Transition Investments (FN)
Israel-based zero-emission ammonia producer Nitrofix raised a $3.1M seed round led by Clean Energy Ventures (FN)
Materials Nexus, a three-year-old London startup in the renewable energy generation and energy storage space that claims to use AI and quantum mechanics to discover materials that can later be patented, raised a $2.8 million seed round. Ada Ventures led the transaction (TC)
Carbon13, a venture builder aiming to decarbonize the economy, raised a $2.2M seed round led by True Ventures (BW)
Green Theory
Air Traffic Uncontrolled: Frequent Flyers’ Desires
Imagine a United States with only 100 people, that take 100 1-seater flights in total, each year. About half would never set foot on an airplane, leaving only 50 people to take all the flights. Meanwhile, just three people take around half of all of the flights, hopping on 17 each. These ratios reflect the distribution of flights in the US, but not the sheer magnitude of frequent flying.
In reality, there are far more than 100 people (331 million), and 100 flights taken (around 1.5 billion 1-way legs). The simple average of all US passenger flights taken, divided by the population lands at 3 roundtrips per person per year, but this figure obscures the dramatic inequality in the distribution of flying, and also flying emissions.
Though the world’s wealthiest indeed disproportionately emit far more than the rest of society, flying is even more unequal. The median number of flights per person in the US per year is zero. Meanwhile, fewer than 8 million people (about the population of New York City proper, or Washington State) take half of the flights: nearly 400 million roundtrips.
To put the distribution of flying among US adults in perspective, here’s a breakdown of what share of adults flies roughly what amount in a given year:
Precise data on how much individuals fly is hard to come by. Analyzing multiple surveys from Gallup and Statista, these figures fit the patterns reported across 2015, 2019, and 2021 findings. Importantly, these figures likely understate the emissions shares of the most frequent flyers: if those who fly more are also booking premium seats, their emissions are even higher than flyers in coach.
What proportion of all flights does each bracket guzzle up? Notice how just 3% of US adults take up over half of the flights—those that fly weekly:
90% of the adult population takes fewer than the average number of flights, totaling around 1 in 5 or 1 in 4 of all flights. Meanwhile, the remaining 9-10% of the population takes an average of 27 roundtrip equivalent flights: 9x the US adult average of 3.
An entire Mexico-sized portion of the US adult population doesn’t fly in a given year. A UK-worth portion just flies once, each. Clearly, the 3% of US emissions coming form aviation isn’t demanded evenly across the population.
With so many of the flights and emissions demanded by so few people, frequent flyers hold far more sway over emissions than the average person. Those catching weekly flight legs each year are responsible for about 11 metric tons of emissions from flying alone—most of the 14.5 metric tons the average US person emits in total, annually, and nearly 3x the 3.6 metric tons of total emissions per average person per year, globally.
Even those flying every few months fly over twice as much as the average US adult, and so hold over twice as much of the average amount of influence over total airline emissions.
Can flyers really impact airline emissions? What would it take to drawdown one of the most potent, personally controlled forms of pollution?
The Closer
Shameless plug this week for another side project Mack’s been working on: Oatmail: the most filling, nutritious & tasty vegan breakfast out there, in his mom’s opinion.
In NYC this weekend? Come by Sheep’s Meadow at 2pm for some free samples :) RSVP here.
that flight section is crazy, cool visualizations!