Good Morning
What weāre reading this week:
China goes all in on green industry to jolt ailing economy (WSJ)
Wind turbines are friendlier to birds than oil-and-gas drilling (E)
They Abducted a River in California. And It Wasnāt Even a Crime. (NYT)
The GreendicatorĀ
Top Deals of the Week
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EV charging startup Electra raised a $330M Series B led by Dutch pension fund PGGM and Bpifranceās Large Venture FundĀ (TC)
Aira, a Stockholm-based provider of clean energy technology solutions (including intelligent heat-pumps, home solar panels, and batteries), raised a $157M Series B led by Altor, Kinnevik, and Temasek (FN)
e2Companies, a provider of integrated solutions for power generation and distribution, raised $100M in funding from Global Emerging Markets (VC)
International Battery Company, a startup developing lithium-ion battery cells for EVs, raised a $35M pre-Series A led by RTP Global (TC)
Lightship, an all-electric RV startup, raised a $34M Series B led by Obvious Ventures and Prelude Ventures (PRN)
Solar energy company Soly raised $33M in funding led by ArcTern Ventures (FN)
TrusTrace, a seven-year-old Stockholm startup that helps fashion brands like Adidas track and manage the sustainability and ethical aspects of their supply chains, raised a $24 million led by Circularity Capital (JS)
ZymoChem, a startup building a carbon-efficient bio-manufacturing platform, raised a $21M Series A led by Breakout Ventures (PRN)
On-street electric vehicle charging startup Trojan Energy raised a $33M round: $10.4M from BGF and $22.6M from the Scottish National Investment Bank (EU)
SeeTree, a six-year-old Tel Aviv startup that uses AI to help growers track the health and productivity of their trees, raised a $17.5 million Series C round co-led by HSBC Asset Management and EBRD (CT)
Element Zero, a two-year-old Perth startup that says it has developed a way to cost-effectively convert metal ores such as iron and nickel to pure metals with zero carbon emissions, raised a $10 million seed round led by Playground Global. TechNode Global has more here.
Nasekomo, a six-year-old startup based in Sofia, Bulgaria, that produces animal feed and fertilizer from insects, raised an $8.7 million Series A round. Invenio Partners was the deal lead. More here.
Delfos, a Barcelona startup whose platform provides owners and managers of renewable energy assets with the means to identify potential maintenance issues before they happen, raised a $6.8 million seed round co-led by Contrarian Ventures and Headline (TEU)
TEMO, a six-year-old French startup that makes electric propulsion engines for small boats and dinghies, raised a $6.5 million Series A round. Investors included At One Ventures and Bpifrance. Marine Industry News has more here.
Tandem PV, a seven-year-old startup based in San Jose, Ca., that is developing perovskite-silicon tandem solar panels, raised a $6 million round led by previous investor Planetary Technologies. Renewables Now has more here.
Membion, a Roetgen, Germany-based wastewater recycling company, raised $5.5M in funding led by TechVisionĀ Fonds (FN)
Land Moto, a Cleveland startup that builds electric motorbikes, raised aĀ $3 million round fromĀ Nunc Coepi Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.Ā
FlyORO, a Singapore-based sustainable aviation fuel startup, raised a $1.6M pre-Series A round led by Audacy Ventures (FN)
Green Theory
Freezing Batteryās Day Off
Cold weather in Chicago turned Tesla charging stations into brickyards last week, and the media frenzy has consumers questioning whether frigid areas are ready for the EV revolution.Ā
Referring to their cars as ādead robotsā or āexpensive bricksā, Tesla drivers in Chicago had their cars towed to chargers, or towed out of multi-hour queues, after their batteries went empty in the sub-freezing temperatures.Ā
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What makes cars perform worse in cold weather?
Battery chemistry slows down in the cold, slowing charging, while discharging (or using the charge) becomes less efficient, especially on a per-mile basis. Both of these forces increase the likelihood of a battery losing all energy, which brings its own headaches, or worse.Ā
If anyone has dealt with a traditional car in especially cold weather, you know:
not to leave less than half a tank of gas
the battery has trouble starting the car
and the car takes longer to heat up the cabin.Ā
EVs share in all of these needs, to varying degrees of severity.Ā
Though thereās no tank to freeze, EV batteries operate less reliably in the lowest charge states. Also like regular cars, thereās a small battery that helps start up EVs, so sometimes a simple jumpstart is all your frozen EV was missing. That last issue, heating up the cabin, is a bit more serious in cold EV use.Ā
Cabin Fever
EVs spend far less energy than internal combustion engines, in large part due to less energy lost to heat. This efficiency improvement in the motor comes back as an energy cost when itās cold outside, and your EV doesnāt have a series of endless explosions from which to draw heat, and warm the cabin.Ā
Without this explosive heat source, EVs need to divert more useful energy to keep us warm on freezing days, and so battery drains faster, limiting range. This phenomenon is readily recognized by gas guzzlers consuming excess fuel on hot days, when air conditioning cools the cabin.Ā
Stuck inside energy-intensive cabins, EV drivers lose time in cold weather on two different levels. First, individuals with ready access to charging need to spend far more time stuck in their cabin, waiting to get the same amount of charge theyāre used to, due to the battery chemistry. Imagine if filling your gas tank took an hour or more. Next, in places like Chicago, EV drivers had to add on long stretches spent waiting for the mere chance to charge, since all other drivers were also taking excess time to charge.Ā
All that time spent heating cabins, waiting for chargeāone can start to see why supply-constrained, freezing EV charging markets would lead to lots full of zapped batteries.Ā
Why was this Chicago cold snap so tough on EV drivers?
Local media largely portrayed the issue as uneducated EV owners not knowing how their fancy new toys worked. The most common remedies suggested were keeping your EV in a garage (surely no one parking on the street in Chicago ever considered this), or installing a home chargerāa multi-thousand-dollar endeavor, if youāre lucky enough to own your home.Ā
Indeed, there was a mismatch between the relatively slow supply of electrons and the high demand for those chargers.Ā
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Once we move past telling Tesla owners to stop being poor, however, we can uncover deeper causes of this cold-charging crunch. Local news mostly addressed EV owners and business owners with their suggestion, telling them to increase the supply of charge points.Ā
On the demand side, however, thereās a large class of EV drivers who went overlooked. These drivers donāt own their cars, and are even less likely to have access to a garage or home charger than the average EV owner, but drive far more many miles per day than most drivers of any kind: rideshare renters.Ā
New pressure on public chargers
Rideshare EV renters represent a substantial trend in driving for Uber or Lyftāa model where drivers rent an EV (usually a Tesla from Hertz) and reap the rewards of savings on fuel to offset the car payment.Ā
As a testament to the power of EV economics for those driving the most on their own dimes: EVs makeup about 1% of cars on the road in the US, but a whopping 5% of rideshare miles driven. From interviews, Chicago has at least this share of EV rideshare miles, if not slightly more than the national average. Though Hertz is pulling back some of its grander Tesla plans, just half of its fleet getting rented to rideshare drivers would represent about 1% of all rideshare miles, and about 2% of all Teslas on the road.Ā
Naturally, if there are more EV drivers, and theyāre driving the most miles per day, with less access to non-public charging, there will be chargepoint supply bottlenecks. Add on the increasing Tesla compatibility with other brands, and a bout of extreme cold, and we see compounding strains on the limited supply of these charging connectors.Ā
Systems solutions to EV charging in cold weather
If we take a step back from the chargers (supply) vs. cars (demand) paradigm, another essential resource comes into sharp view. Since the immediate shock is the cold ambient weather slowing down charging, causing long lines at Superchargers, what if we could simply keep chargers warmer in cold snaps?
If we assume each stall is about 20x10ā, and we know the average Supercharger has 10 stalls, thatās a 4,000ā space to insulate, provided room to maneuver. These calculations mean itās about $5,000 to build a temporary shelter around an average Supercharger lot.Ā Tesla makes about $100 per charging stall per day, or $380,000 per average Supercharger station per year.
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If extra safety or storm-proofing made our shelter triple the cost, itād still provide plenty of profit on Teslaās connectors, which pay for themselves after about 2,000 uses. This remedy wouldnāt need to be applied to all public chargersāonly those in extremely cold places during extremely cold spells.Ā
Governments interested in this public benefit could also offer other winter resources such as shelf-stable food or candles via the tents. Surely, there are even simpler ways to insulate chargers, even if they are temporary and reactive. Keeping the chargers warmer, and keeping the lines of drivers moving faster, charging operators might be able to mount a defense before the next cold wave leads to towing turmoil.Ā
EV Winterizing Rising
As EVs grow in popularity, and our influence over battery chemistry improves, EV batteries are performing better and better in winter conditions. In the meantime, huge shocks to supply from cold weather could meet demand more nimbly with insulating solutions.
Installing home chargers is not economically possible for the EV drivers who depend on public chargers most in the cold. Finding other ways to protect the most fragile segments of the EV market from the cold will be critical in accelerating a just transition.
The Closer
āA sea wall at Jakobshavn [Greenland] to shore up the melting glacier might cost some $500 million to build and could represent the most difficult construction project in human history. And such a geoengineering effort would almost certainly pose problems beyond costs and logisticsā¦ā (Source)