Good Morning
Have you noticed gas prices are ridiculously high lately? Same. I need an EV…
From Axios Generate:
“European natural gas prices soared to fresh records this morning while U.S. oil prices are at seven-year highs, the latest signs of convulsions in the global energy system that could shake climate policies … The commodity surge stems from a suite of overlapping forces — including weather and demand revival from the pandemic — that are now being felt worldwide.”
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%2F2deaa578-1eb2-4ff2-82e9-ad3aa111a5fd_375x549.png)
Made of Air raised a ~$6M seed round led by TD Veen (TC)
The story: This five-year-old, Berlin-based startup makes ‘carbon negative’ thermoplastics from forestry waste products like sawdust.
Why we’re excited about it: Since reading the equal parts inspiring and depressing “The Uninhabitable Earth,” I’ve been really stoked on carbon negative projects. We’ll absolutely need them in the short-run, as the gargantuan task of transitioning our entire energy grid off of fossil fuels is going to take a long time. This is an exciting project with clear pathways to scale.
Spudsy raises $3.3M Series A led by KarpReilly and Stage 1 Fund (BW)
The story: The four-year-old, Los Angeles-based snack company is salvaging waste sweet potatoes to make crunchy straws and vegan cheese puffs.
Why we’re excited about it: Billions of pounds of yummy produce is wasted at the farm level. With broken linkages in the produce supply chain, Spudsy joins a concert of innovators such as Imperfect Foods and Full Harvest.
Other Deals This Week
BeeHero, a five-year-old, Santa Cruz, Ca.-based precision pollination platform, has raised $15 million in Series A funding from ADM Capital and others. (TC).
Sunday, a two-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based lawn care startup, has raised $50 million in Series C funding. Bond led the round (F).
Ola Electric, a 4 year old Bangalore-based primarily scooter based EV startup, raised $200M at a $3B valuation led by Falcon Edge Capital (TC)
UK green energy tech startup Octopus Energy Group received a $600M investment at a $4.6B valuation from Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management fund (TC)
One Actionable Item
Give Us Feedback On the New Website!
Yep, we made a website. The site is still a bit under construction (doesn’t even have a real URL yet) and we’d love to enlist your help in building it.
Here’s the goal: We hope to scale positive impact by sharing good ideas and creating a climate-conscious community. The website will give us a home base, where we can share really important longer-form and one-off ideas that don’t necessarily fit in the confines of an easily skimmable Friday morning newsletter.
So help us out and tell us what you think about the site.
What do you like about it? What would you like to see more of - some favorite planetary health-related volunteer ops, climate job search recs, podcast and book recs?..
Check it out here and let us know!
Green Theory
More Comfortable with Less
Believe it or not, home energy use per capita in the US has fallen over the last 10 years. With electricity demand roughly flat, and natural gas use declining, this trend ought to be celebrated as we continue to renovate stock, build smarter, and upgrade appliances. While the pandemic ushered a temporary, and substantial, shift in energy demand from commercial to residential use, more recent data from San Diego suggests residential use has returned to normal since October, 2020.
Residential and commercial use, combined, made up 13% of emissions in 2019. As a share of our emissions, however, it has stayed more or less constant, as industrial and transportation emissions soar.
What’s next for these utility-fed emissions that heat and cool our buildings? The need to electrify appliances and decarbonize those electricity sources is still strong. Population growth in the South and West, with their warmer temperatures, could be credited for part of the per person demand changes. As our warming climate drives highs higher and lows lower for the next few decades (at least), days of heavier heating and cooling needs are ahead. If we can electrify swiftly, and keep up the pace of insulation advancements and use, perhaps we can avoid this spiral of emissions begetting emissions.
The Closer
Paul Nicklen is a pro photographer who takes absolutely glorious photos for Nat Geo. If you’re on IG you should follow him #stat.
Also, we should Pacaso an EV!
You had me at "precision pollination platform".
CTVC took the pallet.xyz route for their job board and it seems like the way to go compared to listing them yourself.
I always thought it would be nice if someone had sparknotes for important/big scientific papers as there are too many to read and abstracts are too dense and hermetic. Might be too ambitious for the site. More topical: I like Ebert style book/podcast/movie/food/app reviews. I would like to see those on the site!