Good Morning
What we’re reading this week:
The Climate Economy is About to Explode (The Atlantic)
If you're in the market for a new heat pump, check out this Forbes article to get a better understanding of cost.
Alaska’s Fat Bear Week proves conservation can be joyful (E)
The Dark Side of Essential Oils (H)
The Greendicator
Top Deals of the Week
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Form Energy, a Somerville, Ma.-based developer of long-duration battery storage using iron, raised $450 million in Series E funding led by TPG Rise.
Seed technology startup Inari raised $124M at a $1.5B valuation in a financing round including new investor Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and other existing investors (BBG)
Zero Motorcycles, an electric motorbike startup, raised a $107M round led by Polaris, Exor, Hero MotoCorp, and more (BW)
onX, an outdoor navigation startup, raised an $87.4M Series B led by Summit Partners (PRN)
Euler Motors, an Indian EV startup, raised a $60M Series C at a $200M valuation led by GIC (TC)
Gourmey, a startup working on lab-grown foie gras, raised a $48M Series A led by Earlybird Venture Capital (TC)
Loop Global, an electric vehicle charging infrastructure company, raised a $40M Series A-1 led by Fifth Wall Climate and Agility Ventures (BW)
Overhead line monitoring and energy management software startup LineVision raised a $33M Series C led by Climate Innovation Capital (PRN)
PATH, a sustainable bottled water brand, raised a $30M Series A led by Altos Ventures (PRN)
EcoCart, a startup building infrastructure for sustainable e-commerce, raised a $14.5M Series A led by Fifth Wall Climate (TC)
Trash Warrior, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that matches companies with waste haulers, says it has raised $8 million in "pre-Series A" funding led by AltaIR Capital (A)
Anthro Energy, a Palo Alto startup that is developing polymer electrolyte batteries that it claims can easily integrate into existing battery manufacturing facilities, raised a $7.2 million seed round co-led by Union Square Ventures and Energy Revolution Ventures (F)
7Analytics, a two-year-old Norwegian startup that uses AI and machine learning techniques to calculate the risk of flooding, raised a $2.5 million seed round led by Momentum Partners, with Construct Venture, Link Capital, and Obos VC also contributing. TechCrunch has more here.
TissenBio Farms, a year-old, South Korean alt protein company (it's focused on cell-grown meat), has raised $1.6 million in seed funding. Envisioning Partners led the round (VC)
Green Theory
Big Transition Energy
Air, water, food, and shelter top the list of basic needs for survival. Whether supporting one of these core needs or another, energy demands connect to almost every moment of modern life. Whether you’re cooking, driving, listening to music on a walk, or playing a board game under light bulbs, you’d be hard pressed to find a time when you’re not drawing power in some way. Even if you’re sitting in an unlit, non-conditioned room, or out for a run, are you running a refrigerator and freezer at home? Further, for people reliant on power-dependent medical equipment, power outages directly threaten their wellbeing, if not survival. Perhaps energy deserves a spot on today’s shortlist of basic needs.
“The Energy Transition”
Unfortunately for our planet, and all of us, global energy dependence also represents the overwhelming majority of greenhouse gas emissions. Enter: “The Energy Transition.” Ushering in an age of clean power generation, the energy transition aims to tackle the largest form of human-caused emissions. The word “transition” refers to the gradual nature of the change: though fast on the scale of human history, zero-emission energy scenarios mostly point toward roughly 3 decades from now (2050) to reach full form. A little less than one sixth of global energy comes from “low-carbon” sources (nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, biomass, and others) today. Looking just at energy for electricity production, the share of renewables rises to about one third. Clearly, humanity has a long way to go in the energy transition.
To better understand what the next few decades may hold, let’s start by looking back to the year 2000. At that time, renewables (excluding nuclear) produced almost 3000 TWh per year, mostly from hydro. Today, buoyed by nearly 100,000% growth in solar generation, and 6,000% growth in wind generation, renewables produce nearly 8000 TWh annually. In that time, the share of global electricity coming from nuclear and renewables (together, widely considered “clean” power) has only increased from 36% to 38% between 2000 and now. With that rate of 1 percentage point change per decade, it’d take us until 2642 to decarbonize fully. Anyone planning to be around then?
Friction in Transition
Driving these trends, plummeting costs for renewables (such as wind and solar) meet a rapidly expanding global demand for energy. Since wind and solar alone fail the reliability needed to power the grid 100% of the time, fossil fuel plants are turned on and off to supplement. Also, upfront investment in new fossil fuel infrastructure presents a lower initial barrier to energy access, prompting many countries to take a dirtier route and invest in new oil and gas—and even coal—projects. Nuclear energy provides a clean baseline load of energy, though public perception has mired the safest energy source, and stagnated expansion in the US, among other countries. Next up to solve the renewable’s reliability gap: batteries. Lithium-ion batteries grow less expensive by the year, and yet-unproven large-scale storage technologies offer thrilling possibilities for further cleaning up the grid. Energy storage lets us smooth out our consumption of these clean, renewable sources, by using wind-derived electricity when the air is calm, or solar energy at night. In addition to new or more robust transmission lines to carry a growing abundance of electricity, smart grid technologies will help improve the efficiency of balancing energy supply and demand, further increasing renewables’ effectiveness. Despite hurdles in capturing fossil fuels’ share, growth in clean energy capacity illuminates the possibility of a greener future.
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Flipping the Switch in Time
Clearly, not only will the total capacity of clean power need to expand, these energy sources must also capture more and more of the dirty share of total energy. What’s the plan to shorten that transition timeline from 2642 to 2050, or sooner? Saul Griffith, Australian-American inventor and scientist, knows his priorities. He sums up the first step in the energy transition in two simple words: “Electrify Everything.” Changing sources of electricity from fossil fuels to clean power represents one part of the challenge, but he also notes the downstream needs to replace gas heating, gas cars, and gas cooking appliances. Clean power produces fewer emissions, but—important to Electrify Everything’s ruthless focus—these electric vehicles and appliances demand a lower amount of energy in the first place. How much lower? He reports less than half of the primary energy needed today could power the fully electrified world economy. Reducing emissions, or “drawing emissions down,” must be achieved by alternative avenues, beyond electrification, too. Covering the most substantial solutions, Paul Hawken’s Project Drawdown tries to provide a comprehensive guide to reversing global warming, including details of the energy transition. Though the full slate of climate challenges appears daunting, the energy transition hones in on and tackles the biggest buckets of today’s emissions.
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For a people so dependent on energy, we stand at a critical inflection point. After more than a century of fossil-fuel dominance, the generational opportunity to change our energy generation and consumption finally rears its head. The future of life on earth may depend on the speed with which we capture this opportunity. With the energy transition already underway, but far from complete, will we harness human ingenuity and cooperation to transform our global energy system in time?
The Closer
Worth a clickthrough.