Good Morning
What we’re reading this week:
How to Hand Out Billions in Climate Subsidies? Very Carefully. (NYT)
Historic fusion energy achievement will boost Pacific Northwest’s burgeoning startups (GW)
The Greendicator
Top Deals of the Week
Group14 Technologies, a seven-year-old startup based in Woodinville, Wa., that is making silicon anode batteries for EV manufacturers such as Porsche, raised a $214 million round at a $3+ billion valuation. Investors included Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund. The WSJ has more here.
Redaptive, a company that manages energy-efficiency upgrades for commercial buildings, raised a $200M round at a ~$1B valuation led by Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (BBG)
Arcadia, a climate-tech startup enabling the energy transition, raised $125M in funding led by Magnetar Capital (PRN)
NotCo, a seven-year-old startup based in Santiago, Chile, that is developing plant-based foods, raised a $70 million Series D1 round at a $1.5 billion valuation. Princeville Capital was the deal lead. Food Dive has more here.
5B, a nine-year-old Sydney startup that manufactures modular solar arrays, raised a $13.7 million round. BP Ventures and previous investors AES Corp. and Artesian Venture Capital co-led the deal. PV Magazine has more here.
Equinom, a 10-year-old Israeli startup that develops non-GMO crops optimized for food with minimal processing, raised a $35 million round led by Synthesis Capital. Calcalist has more here.
EnCharge AI, a startup based in Santa Clara, Ca., that claims its hardware uses AI to accelerate applications in servers and “network edge” machines while reducing power consumption, raised a $21.7 million Series A round led by Anzu Partners, with AlleyCorp, Scout Ventures, Silicon Catalyst Angels, Schams Ventures, E14 Fund, and Alumni Ventures also pitching in. TechCrunch has more here.
Basecamp Research, a three-year-old London startup that designs protein products based on those found in natural biodiversity, raised a $20 million Series A round led by Systemiq Ventures. Sifter has more here.
Tepeo, a four-year-old U.K.-based startup that claims it has developed a new form of low carbon heating that can work with existing heating and hot water systems, raised a $13 million Series A round led by BGF, with Clean Growth Fund, Bonheur, and Renewable Environmental Investments also participating. More here.
ArkeaBio, a year-old, Boston startup that is developing a vaccine to drastically reduce methane emissions from ruminant animals, raised a $12 million seed round led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures. More here.
Avarni, a one-year-old Sydney startup that automates the reporting of carbon emissions, raised a $7 million round led by Main Sequence, with additional participation from previous investors Vulpes Ventures and Common Sense Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Oxyle, a two-year-old Zurich startup that claims that its wastewater treatment and monitoring process eliminates persistent and toxic micropollutants from water in a sustainable manner, raised a $3 million round led by Wingman Ventures, with SOSV, Better Ventures, and Another.vc also chipping in. TechCrunch has more here.
Green Theory
Harnessing Water to Simulate Solar
Since humans started smashing atoms together in the 1930s, efficiently capturing nuclear fusion’s released energy has remained elusive. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) grabbed headlines with the first net energy-positive fusion reaction a few weeks back. What exactly did their reactor accomplish?
Today, nuclear fission provides a critical, reliable base load of global energy, while unsolved challenges keep fusion to a science experiment. Nuclear fission plants capture energy from the decay of unstable, heavy atoms (often uranium) after exciting them and setting off a chain reaction that keeps splitting other atoms. The odd subatomic particle out, after the split, releases energy that can be harvested.
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Fusion, on the other hand, attempts to combine atoms. The ideal elements are among the lightest, and the energy output per mass is 4x that of fission. Similar to fission, however, it’s still isolating and harvesting the odd subatomic particle out after the reaction that presents the energy payoff. In nuclear fusion, physicists ask: can we capture more energy from combining atoms than it costs us to push through their inherent repulsion?
Unequivocally, the answer has always been “no.” This repelling force isn’t any ol’ force—it’s the driving factor that keeps the joining of atoms into heavier elements so rare outside places like the sun itself. Until now! Sort of…GeekWire reports:
NIF’s experiment produced 3.15 megajoules (MJ) of fusion energy output, which required an input of 2.05 MJ with the laser.
But it had to draw 300 MJ from the grid to fire the laser.
A round-trip efficiency of 1% (3.15/300 MJ) isn’t that great: on-par with the harvesting efficiency of solar panels of the late 1800s. In the GeekWire piece, an NIF program director goes on to explain that designing an efficient laser wasn’t the focus of the experiment, and that a better laser numbered among other hurdles to building a truly energy-positive solution. For a more complete fusion puzzle, we may have to look past the giant lasers. Anything less than 100% energy return isn’t ready to change the world as a power source, but one fusion startup claims 95% round-trip efficiency: Helion.
Russia’s Levitating Plasma Donut
Pacific Northwest-based Helion takes water as its primary feedstock and converts it into atoms to fuse together, replicating the atomic interactions that power the sun’s intensive inferno and unrelenting rays. Unlocking sun-level powers, simply starting from life-sustaining water: Helion sounds too good to be true. What makes their version of fusion different? Real Engineering’s exclusive set of interviews and visualizations explains. Combining energy conservation and recycling to optimize an old solution along new lines, Helion’s Trenta reactor presents a compelling case for fusion.
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Borrowing back to Soviet research discoveries from the 1960s, Helion leverages a tokamak design for positioning their masses of atoms for fusion. When trying to push self-repelling plasma fields together, fusion scientists need a way to efficiently keep these floating clouds of atoms away from the walls of the reactors. The Russians suspended their plasma (fuel) in a levitating donut, via a series of magnetic fields. Nuclear fusion physicists across the globe began adopting this superior format as soon as the USSR proved its efficacy, but it remains generally unknown due to the obscurity of fusion energy. Helion’s Trenta, like a traditional tokamak, starts with these humble plasma donuts and then smashes them together, but their process brings other innovations, too.
Squeezing the Toothpaste
Hundreds of miles per second, Helion squeezes these donuts toward one another by firing a sequence of electromagnetic pulses: shifting the fields that maintain the plasma donuts closer until, under greater heat and compression, they fuse and release energy. The CEO described this process as squeezing toothpaste out of two tubes…perhaps if they got to 100 million degrees.
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Particle Party
When the small, light atoms of the two donuts collide, several reactions benefit Helion—most simply, the energized odd subatomic particles left out exert an outward force, bending the electromagnetic field, delivering power to the handy harvesters that surround the center of the machine (orange coils, below). Therein lies Helion’s biggest efficiency improvement over large-scale fusion plants or plans today: instead of taking the thermal energy from the reaction to heat water, which would steam-power a turbine to generate electricity, Helion translates the energy from the reaction directly into electricity. Their next prototype will attempt to actually deliver power externally, beyond just measuring output.
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Turning Clear Water into Nuclear Watts
Greek god of the Sun, Helios, was thought to rise from the ocean each day. Helion (the fusion startup) begins with water on its journey to emulate the sun’s mighty power. How is that possible?
Because of fancy chemistry reasons, traditional tokamak reactors have opted to fuse tritium (hydrogen isotope, or type) with deuterium (another hydrogen isotope). Today, worldwide tritium supply sits at less than 50 pounds, and one modern commercial fusion reactor would burn through that supply in a matter of months. To get around the tritium tightness, fusionthusiasts build “breeding blankets” that encourage tritium to spawn as a byproduct of their reactions. These lithium blankets, unfortunately, require radioactive and expensive beryllium, too.
Helion says, no covers, no problem, by passing on tritium as a core ingredient. Starting with deuterium, a far more common hydrogen isotope, and using it to produce helium-3, they combine another deuterium with their new helium-3 to generate fusion power. Thus, Helion only needs one feedstock as input: regular water (or purified deuterium).
Cleaner Together
For all the power that nuclear fission (separating atoms) has delivered to grids around the world, its limitations (radioactive inputs, large upfront investment, and hazardous waste) continue to mar its place in the energy mix. Historically, nuclear power has been synonymous with division, because the inefficiencies of fusion leave fission as its sole representative. Now, Helion, the NIF, and other fusion-focused organizations may get the chance to reshape the public imagination of nuclear power, and offer a new nuclear mindset.
Clean, water-derived, and less expensive than old tokamaks—new blasts bringing atoms together may yet bring people together, too, in peaceful energy independence.