Top Deals of the Week
![About 2 — Hyfé Foods About 2 — Hyfé Foods](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%2Fd485d613-c61d-469c-8418-947e89a8c220_2315x1483.jpeg)
Inspiration Mobility, a one-year-old Washington, D.C., startup that makes fleet management software for electric vehicles, raised a $215 million round. Macquarie Asset Management and Ferrovial co-led the deal. The company has raised a total of $415 million. (More)
Onsite power generation provider Mainspring Energy raised a $150M Series E led by Lightrock (PRN)
Zolar, a six-year-old Berlin startup whose online configurator provides homeowners with an easy way to buy or lease customized solar installations, raised a €100 million Series C round co-led by Energy Impact Partners and GIC (TC)
Adam Neumann’s web 3.0 climate technology startup Flowcarbon raised a $70M round led by a16z crypto (BW)
FloorFound, a two-year-old reverse logistics startup based in Austin, Tex., that streamlines the recovery and resale of returned, lightly used and open-box items that are oversized, raised a $10.5 million Series A round co-led by Next Coast Ventures and LiveOak Venture Partners
Singularity Energy, a SaaS platform helping decarbonize the grid, raised a $4.5M seed round led by Spero Ventures and Energy Impact Partners (TC)
Seabound, an eight-month-old, London-based startup that is currently prototyping carbon capture equipment that connects to ships’ smokestacks to cut carbon emissions, has raised $4.4 million in seed funding. Lowercarbon Capital led the round
Hyfé Foods, a year-old, Chicago-based sustainable food-tech company that produces low-carb, protein-rich mycelium flour, has raised $2 million in pre-seed funding led by The Engine
Green Theory
A Green Bite Best Served Cold
Just like ice in your water bottle on a hot day, humanity’s grander attempts to defy outside temperature are temporary, and fragile. As ambient air pulls the cool out of your ice cubes–slowly, at first, then starting to liquify faster and faster–the bottle may help preserve the crystal form, but not forever. Somewhere, near or far, the freezer that invited your now-drinkable water to its icy past probably still hums along, drawing power to battle the natural course of its own contents to rise to the temperature outside the insulated walls. If you’re in the US or China, where there’s roughly 1 air conditioner for every 2 people, the temperature on the other side of the freezer walls is likely climate controlled too. Unfortunately, hot days outside doesn’t mean you’re blessed with abundant AC inside. Accounting for about one tenth of all global electricity used today, and bracing for more frequent and intense heat waves, cooling keeps people happier, or at least alive, while accelerating the very causes of climate change.
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How can we keep the chill going today without ruining things tomorrow? From documenting the horrors of recent heat waves, to the paths to AC futures, this article from last week outlines the paradoxical state of climate control. As with many other pieces on sustainable cooling, the piece presents more efficient devices (that don’t leach pollutants) paired with clean electricity as key solutions. Efficiency-based indoor climate tech spans beyond air conditioning units, including insulation and smart home devices, and these products do offer consumers a chance to reduce their energy consumption while maintaining their standard of living. On the other hand, these devices both come at a premium, and private companies will push dirtier ACs as long as legally allowed. Despite progress in cooling technology, challenges block the smooth decarbonization of air conditioning.
To take a more intimate look at the cooling tradeoff between people today and future generations, 2019 Nobel Prize Laureates Banerjee and Duflo explore the political choices of modern governments. In advocating for delayed enforcement of global AC sustainability measures in its own country, “the Indian government” chose “to save lives today rather than tackle the problem” (Chapter 6). That decision comes with the weight of “realizing its citizens are both the victims and the cause of global warming,” but at the same time calling out the role of high-income countries in bringing us to this dire point. The Nobel economists posit that the decade-long delay offers India time to gain economic power, enjoy a greater leap in benefits from technological breakthroughs, and (hopefully) falling real costs in AC products. Still, they warn that “a very rapid spread of old-style appliances in India” might take off in the time that lapses, “and these will stay operational and…pollute for years after 2028,” when the proposed restrictions would begin. Ultimately, it remains unclear whether advances in AC technology will deliver the planetary improvements we desire. Examining “on-the-ground performance” of weatherization and energy efficiency appliances, “rather than predictions of engineering models, there is less good news,” according to the authors, due to overoptimistic algorithms, among other issues. No doubt, AC helps people survive unbearable heat today. At the same time, the very use of air conditioning pushes more and more people to need it.
With rising temperatures predicted across the US, people’s wellbeing is at stake. In the face of direct threats of heat, wildfires, and increased strain on electrical grids, we can both mindfully prepare for the summer, and hope for a safe, pleasant season.
The Closer
“Elysia crispata aka the lettuce slug [aka the Solar Powered Sea Slug].
This specific slug has the ability to perform something of a super power; kleptoplasty. It can steal chloroplasts from algae it eats and incorporate them into its frilly parapodia where they can perform photosynthesis for up to 40 days and provide the slug with sugar. This clade has other members that can do this and are joking called the “Solar Powered Sea Slugs.”