Good Morning
Happy six months of the Green Bite! This has been a really fun project for Josh and me, weāre learning a ton, and I hope you feel the same :) Cheers to many more.
Anyway, itās been a fun week for the EV industry:
ā” Biden went to a GM plant in Detroit this week to promote the infrastructure billās goal of building 500k EV charging stations.
ā” Rivian is now the worldās third-most-valuable automaker, a week after going public.
ā” Lucid Motors just won MotorTrendās car of the year award (and is also pretty valuable).
Top Deals of the Week
AllTrails raised $150 million led by Permira (TC)
The story: AllTrails is an 11-year-old, SF-based startup whose app helps people explore the outdoors with trail maps, photos, reviews and user recordings.
Why weāre excited about it: Making the outdoors more accessible is a noble mission in and of itself. In addition, fostering a worldwide appreciation for natural spaces is absolutely vital work as we build momentum for global green movements.Ā AllTrails has been a favorite app amongst our friends for years now and weāre excited to see it continue to grow!Ā (Also, they currently have a job opening for a āfield testerā in Icelandā¦ wow)
CleanFiber raised $11 million led by Aligned Clima Capital (IFG)
The story: The 9-year-old, Buffalo-based company makes carbon-negative, cellulose-based building insulation.
Why weāre excited about it: Building insulation has the power to greatly reduce our energy demand, but the traditional inputs have not been the friendliest to the environment.
Other Deals This Week
Health-and-sustainability-conscious frozen food product startup Daily Harvest raised a $77M round at a $1.1B valuation led by Lone Pine Capital (BBG)
Nuritas, a seven-year-old, Dublin, Ireland-based developer of plant-based bioactive peptides, has raised $45 million in Series B funding. Cleveland Avenue led the round (BW)
Titan Advanced Energy Solutions, a startup working on ultrasound-based battery management solutions, raised a $33M Series B led by HG Ventures (PRN)
Zoomo, a four-year-old, Sydney, Australia-based startup that builds e-bikes and offers micromobility subscriptions to gig workers and couriers, has raised $30 million in Series B funding co-led by Grok Ventures, Skip Capital and ArcTern Ventures. (TC)
TreeDots, a 3.5-year-old, Singapore-based B2B marketplace for reducing food waste, just raised $11 million in Series A funding co-led by Amasia and East Ventures. (AG)
Global sustainable packaging platform Noissue raised a $10M Series A led by Felix Capital (TC)
Sustain.Life, a SaaS startup helping companies measure carbon output, raised a $7M pre-seed round from Dame, You.com, and more (TC)
Electric motorcycle startup Zembo received a $3.4M investment from Mobility 54 Investment (TC)
DiviGas, a two-year-old, Singapore-based startup that says it has developed a new process for isolating and storing hydrogen that involves separating the H2 and CO2 gases, has raised $3.6 million in funding led by Mann + Hummel, a German industrial filter company. (TC)
One Actionable Item
Next time you replace a bulb, go for LEDs
They can use up to 80-90% less electricity than other bulb types. (Source)
While weāre talking about electricity - think about unplugging your appliances when theyāre not in use, too. Saves money and energy!
Green Theory
Carbon Capturing your Attention
![](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%2Fbaad775c-f834-4f54-b439-49baf434dd0e_1448x802.png)
We have way too many greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.Ā Achieving a zero-carbon world will require truly reducing our emissions to 0, by replacing existing technology with new, clean upgrades. Companies, products, and countries that report net-zero carbon commitments strive for a different goal: one including capturing carbon and subtracting it from the greenhouse gases they continue to pump.Ā
Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) covers diverse technologies and natural processes. Sequestration or āremovalā refers to sinking or āstoringā the carbon so it does not re-enter the atmosphere, though 81% of carbon captured with technology has been used to extract more oil. Advocates of CCS as a key climate solution argue we need a broad umbrella of solutions and must find a way to pull out historical emissions, though you wonāt find any CCS technologies among Drawdownās climate solutions.
CCS technologists view carbon as a market, with emissions and the captured carbon both commodified.Ā They rate technologies by the cost effectiveness of the capture pathway, and find or forecast buyers who accept the price per ton of carbon that they offer.Ā Many companies boast their business solution for re-selling and re-releasing their captured carbon.Ā
CCS industry leaders say we cannot reduce our emissions effectively enough with existing technology for a few tricky sectors, and--at the same time--that we need to invest more money and attention in scaling nascent CCS technology. Instead, we could invest directly in technology to decarbonize those more economically complicated polluters such as steel and concrete, or accelerate electrification.Ā Further, while removing historical emissions is essential, we already have a myriad of functional and natural solutions.
Depending on their market, businesspeople looking to profit on carbon capture are seeking cheaper ways for existing polluters to keep polluting and not adapt upstream, or lower-cost inputs they can re-sell for oil extraction or other applications. Excusing emissions with carbon offsets fails to account for the ecological devastation of oil drilling, other gases, and more. Recycling carbon may be preferable to new emissions. Still, it takes energy to capture, and, most importantly, these business modelsā incentives align with increases in total emissions, rather than reductions.Ā
If emissions collapse, the carbon market disappears, but if they make CCS cheap enough before we get a handle on global emissions, these companies can make polluting fashionable, excusable, and affordable.Ā True, our emissions arenāt going away overnight, and CCS solutions make an impact on the concentration of carbon in the air. It will take dedicated stewardship of these organizations and intentional policy to prevent powerful CCS interests from greenwashing oil & gas operations or combatting emission-reducing governance.
The Closer
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