Good Morning
Update from the Green Bite: yes, you guessed it, a new section!
Our dear friend and reader Marshall Borrus is gracing us with a review of Black Sheep Farms’ fake lamb - a product we featured in last week’s newsletter after they raised a $5M+ seed. Check it out in the “Green Bites” section.
What we’re reading this week:
California state senators passed a law requiring companies to disclose annual greenhouse gas emissions. (W)
LA City Council votes to phase out oil drilling in the city (the city is home to ~1K wells)
China now has nearly half of the world’s offshore wind capacity (The Economist)
Global EV sales accounted for 8.6% of the global light-duty vehicle market, compared to about 2.5% in 2019, per a new International Energy Agency commentary.
The Greendicator
Top Deals of the Week
![](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%2F7f872740-706b-4c19-910d-62e8f79027a0_1600x1067.png)
Superpedestrian, a nearly nine-year-old, Boston-based company that prides itself on its "vehicle intelligence" tech, which it first installed in a bicycle wheel (the Copenhagen) and now is embedding into scooters, just raised $125 million in equity and debt funding from Jefferies and others (TC)
Verdox, a nearly three-year-old, Woburn, Ma.-based startup that captures carbon dioxide directly from the air, has raised $80 million from investors, including Bill Gates-led Breakthrough Energy Ventures. (BBG)
Dott, a nearly four-year-old, Amsterdam-based e-scooter and micromobility startup, has raised $70 million in extended Series B funding through a mixture of equity and debt. (TC)
Zero Acre Farms, a food startup seeking to replace seed oils with healthy, sustainable oils & fats made by fermentation, raised a $37M Series A co-led by Lowercarbon Capital and Fifty Years (PRN)
Zeta Energy, a lithium sulfur battery developer, raised a $23M Series A led by Moore Strategic Ventures (PRN)
Bodhi, a 3.5-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based software platform whose customers -- solar companies -- use it to personalize their communications with homeowners, has raised $4 million in funding led by Clean Energy Ventures. (B)
Green Theory
Who’s Playing Who’s Paying
With an invasion threatening the freezing eastern border of Ukraine, we want to examine the vacuum of violence: in communities, public consciousness, and the markets. The violence in this region has been persistent for almost 8 years, with over ten thousand lives lost. Hundreds of thousands of civilians live in harm’s way, as powerful elites negotiate a proxy conflict between 2 of the top 3 oil producers (while the 2nd-ranked in this unfortunate top-3 list is engaged in an ongoing war on an even more horrific magnitude).
Violence is so demanding that even its specter often supersedes any other priority. We must de-escalate and seek peace, not only for the lives endangered right now, but those impacted by future violence and destruction from the mutually enabling relationship between oil and war. As tensions mount, the price of oil has (predictably) spiked, and when “oil capitals like Moscow, [and] Riyadh…reap…a sudden influx of petrodollars not easily recycled into domestic economies, significant financial reserves become available for arms purchases and military adventurism.” The political and financial profits for violence quietly go hand in hand with fossil fuel interests, when conflict erupts, and then understandably consumes the societal consciousness.
Energy has played at the center of the Russo-Ukrainian war since early on, with a grid cyberattack impacting almost a quarter million people in the dead of winter in 2015. As it happens, one of Ukraine’s two large shale deposits rests just on their side of the violent internal border…and while power infrastructure tampering and economic sanctions are less dehumanizing than violence, these provocations carry life-threatening tolls, disproportionately borne by the most vulnerable.
Where demands for peace overlap with demands for climate action, rejecting those who profit off of the intersection of violence and oil may help us (most importantly) reduce conflict, as well as foster safer, more resilient communities.
Green Bites
The reviewer: Marshall Borrus - Friend, Eph ‘20, and climate modeling research extraordinaire @ Stanford Earth
The goods: Black Sheep Farms’ fake lamb @ SF’s beloved Souvla restaurant.
The review:
“My first time eating plant-based-lamb (Offered at Souvla in a salad or sandwich): Looks like lamb, tastes like lamb, feels like fake-meat. The flavor was there (both in the lamb and in the salad) and it made for an exciting lunch. Often times I find plant based meat (PBM) has a distinctive ‘Impossible’ taste (be it in sausage, patty, or ground format) which permeates any dish you make - but this was pleasantly absent in Black Sheep Farms: it tasted distinctly like lamb, not like fake meat. I was, however, reminded of the fact that PBM is limited by its medium. The cubes felt like other imitation chunks: soft, soy-ish, sometimes soggy. This worked well for a salad or a sandwich, as I'm not looking to fight through sinew in lunch, but it's the one aspect which brings you back to reality.”
Wanna be the next Green Bites reviewer?! Try some sustainable product and let us know what you think - can be as short as a text if you’d like!
The Closer
Such a wild vid