Good Morning
What we’re reading this week:
Do EVs have a bigger carbon footprint than internal-combustion cars? (NYT)
Beyond Catastrophe - A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View (David Wallace-Wells)
If you think Bitcoin Spews Carbon, Wait Till You Hear About...Banking (Bill McKibben)
The GreendicatorÂ
Top Deals of the Week
Ascend Elements, an engineered materials and lithium ion battery recycling company, raised a $300M debt / equity Series C led by Fifth Wall Climate (PRN)
AM Batteries, a startup developing lithium-ion dry-electrode tech, raised a $25M Series A led by Anzu Partners (BW)
High-energy lithium ion cell developer Ionblox raised a $24M Series B led by Applied Ventures, Catalus Capital, and Lilium (BW)
AgroSphere, a biomanufacturing startup developing crop-based biodegradable products, raised a $22M Series B led by Lewis & Clark AgriFood and Ospraie Ag Science (PRN)
Hoxton Farms, a two-year-old startup based in London that is developing lab-grown cultivated fat, raised a $22 million Series A round. The deal lead was Collaborative Fund (VC)
Heura, a Spanish plant-based protein startup, raised a $20M Series B bridge round from Unovis Capital, NBA player Ricky Rubio, soccer players Sergi Busquets / Sergi Roberto, and comedian David Broncano (TC)
Nitricity, a four-year-old San Francisco startup that produces nitrogen fertilizer using only air, water, and renewable energy, raised a $20 million Series A round co-led by Khosla Ventures and Fine Structure Ventures (CA)
Renewable energy and battery storage market operator SYSO Technologies raised a $10M Series A led by Lacuna (PRN)
Joro, a personal carbon-cutting app, raised a $10M Series A led by Sequoia and Amasia (TC)
Lithos, a Seattle startup that uses software to deploy basalt rock to help farmers remove carbon, raised a $6.3 million seed round co-led by Union Square Ventures and Greylock (GW)
Sunsave, a London startup founded this year that is offering consumers a subscription plan to switch to solar power, raised a $5.65 million round in January 2022 from investors including Neurone Group and Plug and Play Ventures. (S)
Buddha Brands, a plant-based snack and beverage company, raised $5.25M in funding from Fondaction (BW)
Forsea Foods, a one-year-old Israeli startup that claims it is growing eel meat ex vivo as a three-dimensional tissue structure without requiring the scaffolding stage, raised a $5.2 million seed round led by Target Global (VB)
EV leasing startup Zevvy raised a $5.4M seed round led by MaC Venture Capital (BW)
Forsea Foods, a startup using organoid technology to cultivate seafood, raised a $5.2M seed round led by Target Global (PRN)
Green Theory
What’s in Store for Watts in Store
Grid operators keep our lights on by striking the Goldilocks level of energy supply at any given moment. While wind and solar offer renewable energy, their variability necessitates other sources of electricity generation, such as fossil fuels. Even if we can predict wind and sunlight, it may not come when we need energy most. Polluting facilities help grid operators handle peak demands, as they can often be stopped and started with relative ease. In order to eliminate fossil fuels from our power sources, we’ll need to expand energy storage, letting us spend wind energy on a calm day, or solar at night.Â
When you think of energy storage, a battery might come to mind. They’re in phones, earbuds, cars, and more, but we have a lot of non-chemical ways to store energy for the grid. In fact, pumped-storage hydroelectricity represents 90% of grid electricity storage capacity around the globe, despite not grabbing headlines. These facilities spend surplus energy to pump water from a lower reservoir uphill, and then deliver energy back to the grid using the force of the falling water when electricity demand is high again. We lose at least 20% of the energy put in, but helping to shift loads off of fossil fuels, these schemes clean grids up. Siting these projects presents an enormous challenge, not to mention the ecological damages from appropriating the water. Still, their reliability over the last century proved invaluable, and countries, led by China, continue to invest.Â
Batteries, or chemical stores for electrical energy, make up most of the rest of grid storage, at about 10% of global share. Of that, lithium ion batteries comprise 90% of battery storage capacity on the grid. Economies of scale have allowed lithium ion battery costs to plummet, though other competitors loom, such as solid state and flow batteries. Regardless of the type, the International Energy Agency predicts a 40-fold increase in grid-scale battery capacity needed by 2030 to meet net zero goals by 2050. Innovations in manufacturing, financing, and deploying these systems may all support a rapid expansion in grid-scale battery systems.
However niche today, new applications of older forms of intentional energy transfer might help get fossil fuels off of the grid even faster. Thermal storage technologies can heat up liquids or solids and store the heat for later functions, including cooling and electricity generation. Mechanical technologies hold promise in flywheels that smooth delivery of energy, and compressed air which can improve pumped-storage hydro efficiency, or store on-demand energy on its own. As widely deployed solutions keep getting more competitive, the untested newcomers face steeper paths to mass market adoption. At the same time, a patchwork of various storage tools could bolster grids’ resilience.Â
A key lever for slowing the climate crisis, energy storage serves as the unglamorous backbone of any large-scale just transition. With a long way to go, staggering projects already unleash unprecedented flexibility for local clean power. Spotting the commanding towers of the Moss Landing Power Plant off California’s Highway 1 near Monterey, passersby and shorebirds may be shocked that these smokestacks emit nothing. The former fossil fuel facility instead houses the largest battery energy storage system (BESS) in the world. Enough energy for 150 US households’ yearly needs on one charge, the Moss Landing BESS is still dwarfed by at least the 25 largest pumped hydro stations. Though battery systems may not provide the striking symbol of a wind turbine, solar panel, or reservoir, they’ll continue to play a critical role in making renewable energy reliable, and securing a more resilient, cleaner planet for all.Â
The Closer
I like the squirrel.