Good Morning
What we’re reading this week:
California Approves a Wave of Aggressive New Climate Measures (NYT)
Are Carbon Credits Still Working? (WSJ)
The Greendicator
Top Deals of the Week
![Outpost Space Raises $7M to Launch 'The SpaceX of Satellites' by 2023 - dot.LA Outpost Space Raises $7M to Launch 'The SpaceX of Satellites' by 2023 - dot.LA](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F17e166ef-8732-4a49-949d-cc9b1dc4fea2_1024x857.jpeg)
Lunar Energy, a two-year-old, Mountain View, Ca., startup that's attempting to build the full ecosystem of hardware and software needed to make homes completely energy independent, announced over the past two years it raised $300 million in two rounds from Sunrun and SK Group. Nasdaq has more here.
Aleph Farms, a five-year-old startup based in Rehovot, Israel, that develops cell-based meat products, raised a $40 million round; investors included L Catterton (FD)
Blue World Technologies, a Danish startup working on methanol fuel cells, closed a $37M Series B led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Vaekstfonden, and DEUTZ AG (PRN)
Vive Crop Protection, a 16-year-old startup based in Mississauga, Canada, that has create crop protection products using a nanoscale, polymer-based delivery system that it claims are more targeted than typical delivery mechanisms, raised a $26 million Series C round led by Emmertech (F)
Recurve, an open-source virtual power plant management platform, raised an $18M Series B led by Calpine Energy Solutions, Quantum Innovation Fund, and Toshiba Energy Systems Solutions (PRN)
Climate-conscious food company Neutral Foods is raising $12M in an investment round led by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures with participation from Mark Cuban, LeBron James and others (CNBC)
Oxwash, a four-year-old London startup that claims to use high tech processes to shrink the environmental cost of dry cleaning and commercial laundry, raised an $11.6 million Series A round led by Untitled VC (TC)
Populus, a 4.5-year-old, San Francisco-based transportation data startup that aims to help cities to manage new mobility and fleet services, has closed on $11 million in Series A funding round co-led by Zero Infinity Partners and Climactic (TC)
Clarity Movement, an eight-year-old startup based in Berkeley, Ca., that provides governments, campuses, businesses and communities with monitoring hardware and software to understand and respond to air pollution, has raised $9.6 million co-leads Amasia and the Active Fund (F)
Outpost, a startup building reusable satellites, raised a $7.1M seed round led by Moonshots Capital (BW)
Carbon Counts, a two-year-old startup based in Cambridge, Ma., that has developed a casual mobile game today called EverForest and aims to use the game to plant 100 million trees around the world by 2025, raised an additional $4.5 million in seed funding co-led by Borderless Capital, Algorand, and the Algorand Foundation (VB)
MEDU, a Mexican startup developing reusable PPE, raised a $4M seed round led by MaC Venture Capital (TC)
Loopworm, a three-year-old startup based in Bangalore that is looking to replace fish and krill meal with insect protein concentrate or insect meal in aqua, poultry, and pet food product, raised a $3.4 million seed round. The deal was co-led by Omniore and WaterBridge Ventures, with Titan Ventures also chipping in. The Hindu Business Line has more here.
Mermade Seafoods, a one-year-old Jerusalem startup that aims to manufacture cell-based scallops, raised a $3.3 million seed round. Investors included OurCrowd and Fall Line. (TC).
Pixxel, a three-year-old, Bengaluru startup that is building a constellation of low-Earth satellites that can help assess threats to endangered marine ecosystems or prevent forest fires, has announced an undisclosed strategic investment from Accenture Ventures. (EB)
PriceOye, a two-year-old, Pakistani startup looking to build a managed marketplace of electronics products, says it has raised (an undisclosed amount of) seed funding led by JAM Fund (TC)
Green Theory
How Far Can EVs Take Us?
Sitting down behind the wheel of a car for the first time, it took some getting used to. With a little practice, though, the expansive open road unfolded before you. The freedom to hurl your body through space so quickly brings both excitement and opportunity. The power to cover thousands of miles without breaking a sweat does not, however, come without its responsibilities. Beyond the due respect for others’ lives that a driver takes into their hands, the ability to drive also opens an individual to obligation: to run errands, to ferry non-drivers, or to schlep to work and back. In concert with a twentieth century industry and governmental push to car-ify the United States, passenger vehicles could take one further and further, and so grew the gridlock commute, putting the average US driver behind the wheel for about an hour each day. Drivers gain access to a vast network of roadways, but commit more waking hours limited to the confines of their vehicle. Simply put, some drive mostly for pleasure, others out of necessity.
If your daily endeavors extend beyond video calling, you must find a way to travel to work, school, or other tasks. The car dominates US households, as around 6 in 7 people drive their daily commute in a private car. Fewer than 1 in 20 in the US bike or walk to work, and the US also scored the lowest in proportion of people taking public transit among a global survey. India, the only country with fewer than 40% of commuters taking cars, still saw a larger share of drivers than of public transit riders or cyclists.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb36d45ab-e5ae-4cd0-9542-abcf772a334a_1214x1600.png)
All of these passenger cars on the road make up about 10% of global emissions. With the stock of cars set to double before any net zero pledges come due, rethinking personal transportation must accompany the energy transition to cleaner power. Car ownership isn’t pushing 90%+ in more and more countries by accident. As Vox explains, “For decades, planners have designed American cities, towns, and suburbs with the primary aim of making driving fast, cheap, and safe.” Favoring cars’ impact on US society ripples through the fabric of daily life: giving rise to the suburb, the superhighway, and cripplingly limited public transit. The simplest switch to get a car-hungry nation to go green appears in the form of an electric car or vehicle (EV). Though they may look similar on the outside, these zippy automobiles emit nothing from their nonexistent tailpipes. Are EVs the silver bullet to decarbonizing passenger travel?
Melting ICE Caps
Compared to an internal combustion engine (ICE), or traditional automobile, an EV wins for dramatically lower emissions and a more responsive driving experience–achieving these feats with roughly comparable lifetime costs, today. Unless you’re drawing power from the Estonian grid (or another that has a large factor of coal used in electricity production), driving an EV will always beat its ICE equivalent for emissions, even on gas-powered grids. Still, building a new EV requires rare metals and intensive manufacturing. Could it be better to buy a used ICE? How to Save a Planet answers this question succinctly: if you really want to avoid buying a new car, just get a used EV. Outside of coal-burning areas, you’re going to generate less emissions driving off of electricity. Better batteries and less expensive, cleaner grids will tip the scales even further toward EVs’ economics and second-order emissions. Still, with supply chains under stress, EVs replicate and reinforce ICEs’ history of driving the allocation of transportation resources toward private hands. And even if cars are getting safer, having fewer hunks of independently controlled metal hurling around ought to be even less risky. Though definitively greener than a private ICE, and the most easily compared, EVs present only one option to reducing passenger transport emissions.
One Foot on the Platform…
Private passenger vehicles may give drivers more flexibility in timing, course, and destination, but public transit relieves the risk of causing grave bodily harm to themselves and others, frees the hands and mind to other focuses, and democratizes access to mobility. And although most commuters drive, perspective shapes who views cars as a tool of independence or dependence. That’s why the mayor of Boston called to make public transportation free. As she elucidates, a study “Harvard conducted showed that the factor most closely linked to a family’s ability to rise out of poverty…wasn’t the test scores of schools in the area, it wasn’t the public-safety statistics…it was the average commute time to work.” Expanding public options for getting around, and making public transportation less expensive, driving would face steeper competition.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F755e9925-6516-4add-9208-ad71214e8227_940x539.png)
That being said, many drivers-by-choice advocate for or support public transit enhancements in their area, since they think it will cause more of their fellow drivers to forgo the roadways, opening up more space to swerve and speed. While improving public options for travel lays the foundation for a healthier, happier society, reducing fare prices might not induce a progressive wealth transfer to those less fortunate. In San Francisco, for example, the average downtown BART commuter earns far more than the average worker driving downtown. Also, even if one desires a reduction in car dependence across society, the benefits of car ownership to low income households are linked with (unsurprisingly) better access to healthcare, food, education, and more. Rather than restrict some communities from getting cars, increasing public transit capacity–layered with safe space for pedestrians, bikes, and scooters–cities and towns can enable safer, greener, shared travel.
Changing Lanes
Looking out to the next century of passenger transit, you’re unlikely to see a car ad that locates the driver in traffic or a fatal collision. EVs give the environmentally conscious car-seeker a substitutable plug-in for their ICE dreams of yesteryear today, but don’t, on their own, deliver a more resource-efficient, mobile society. If EVs fall to half the cost of ICEs, could drivers stomach the growth in congestion? Could autonomous EVs eliminate traffic and accidents? The car industry sees dollar signs in the EV revolution. With effortful policy and planning, shared transportation infrastructure and protected non-vehicle travelways will yield happier, safer communities. Together, these solutions can take a big bite out of 10% of today’s emissions.
The Closer
Such a great video. “All birds have built-in vision stabilization to compensate for the up and down body motion caused by flapping their wings in flight.”