Good Morning
What we’re reading this week:
Sustainable packaging funding accelerates
Investment into foodtech reached a record $12.8 billion in venture investment globally in 2021—double the amount a year earlier, Crunchbase data shows.
Biden announces new funding to make homes more energy efficient (CNBC)
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%2F421e669d-926f-4635-960f-ca0c501ac20c_1390x926.png)
Smart electric panel company Span raised a $90M Series B led by Fifth Wall Climate Tech (TC)
Beewise, a 3.5-year-old, Israel-based developer of robotic beehives, has raised $80 million in Series C funding led by Insight Partners (TI)
Pixxel, a three-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based space tech company that's developing a constellation of hyperspectral satellites which can be used to measure the effects of climate change, raised $25 million in Series A funding led by Radical Ventures. (F)
David Energy, a five-year-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based retail electricity supplier, has raised $20 million in Series A funding co-led by USV and Keyframe Capital. (BW)
Treeswift, a two-year-old, Philadelphia, Pa.-based company whose product, SwiftCruise, involves a swarm of drones that navigate under the forest canopy to quickly collect data (for carbon capture estimation, timber value appraisals, and deforestation monitoring, among other things), has raised $4.8 million seed funding led by Pathbreaker Ventures. (TC)
RenewaFi, a 2.5-year-old, New York-based renewable energy marketplace, has raised $3 million in seed funding from First Round Capital and others. (A)
Hylo, a two-year-old, London-based athletic footwear startup that relies on renewable materials, has raised £2.5 million ($2.74 million) in Series A funding led by Eka Ventures. (HB)
Green Theory
Popping the Frunk on Electric Cars
Sitting down behind the wheel of an electric car (EV) for the first time, you might be surprised by the pick up. Jolting forward, the responsiveness of an EV brings a unique thrill to driving. With elegance and control, the combustion-weary driver breathes into new nimbleness. Could a climate solution be this fun?
Electrifying our mass of polluting, inefficient, and dangerous internal combustion engines stands to slash 18% of global emissions. Even if electricity is sourced from coal power plants, those EV miles’ emissions fall below the conventional tailpipe’s. In the US, about 9 in 10 households have a car. EVs, however, make up only 1% of cars on the road, and their owners are likely to make double the median household income. Globally, EV sales approach 10% of the car market, with China and Europe (and their standardization of charger types) leading the way.
Bolstered by promising innovations in batteries and grid resilience, as well as government proposals and programs, these cleaner, quieter, vehicles seem like the perfect replacement for a powerful symbol of fossil fuel dependence today: the traditional car. Fast, fossil-freer, and furious–what’s to slow down the lighting-hot electric car craze?
Equitable Vehicles
Cars, whether electric or not, replicate the highly individualized or privatized use of mineral resources, energy, and public space in car-dominated places. Industry interests in rare elements (central to electrification technology) trivialize and threaten indigenous peoples’ ways of life from Idaho to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Able to afford limited resources and emissions before catastrophic warming, some question the need for personal vehicles–especially large ones. Even more, an overhaul of public transportation desperately awaits. Reducing energy per passenger mile traveled, and increasing mobility for more would both rapidly accelerate with a blend of transport methods: from free, public rail to micromobile scooters, sparing private cars for more remote needs. Public transportation presents a more equitable allocation of rare earth elements themselves, and greater respect for the land from which they are extracted.
As discussed last week, public transportation reinforces inequalities of its own. For instance, women disproportionately suffer violence and harassment on public transit, and must string together more legs to get to their destinations. Enjoying a mobile community that relies on short walking, biking, and scootering sounds dreamy. Lacking collective effort, however, one may struggle to create a safe space to live this way.
Charging Ahead
Despite the dangers of driving, many cities or jobs require car ownership. Without transforming society, or your local town square, a (wealthy) person already has the option to pick out an EV and plug relatively well into the US car landscape. Still, it’s important not to lose sight of the costs to everyone when people drive: from the land devoted to parking and roads, to the collisions that take people from us. At the intersection of self-driving research, private mobility, and company ownership, technologists have been pushing the concept of the electric taxi-as-a-service since the 1890s. Regardless, many cutting-edge cars, without self-driving tech, include sensors and automatic braking that could change the selfishness and risk of personal vehicle use. Those sensors and brakes will be all the more essential if the joy of EV driving sparks more, jumpier driving.
With all the attention EVs get, a US transit overhaul seems unlikely to leap out ahead. Looking forward, cities could collect and recycle the batteries, and other critical components, from this massive wave of new EVs–building a future of mobility for all, subsidized by the early EV owners. As we reflect on how we get around, we must ask: what changes do we strive for in our own travel, and how can we make our communities more safe and enjoyable?
The Closer
Cool looking fella
That "many cities...require car ownership" is messed up. By definition, we're talking about dense places. But I don't think we should resolve car ownership (or at least the extent of daily use) as unavoidable, even in America. In liberal governed cities (so cities), how really radical is it to build metros, or at least broaden and support reliable bus services? I'm reminded of this (now a bit old) article on urban living as paradoxically green (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/10/18/green-manhattan). In particular, an average Manhattanite (consumer of consumers!) "consumes gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn’t matched since the mid 1920s."
I listened to that freakonomics podcast yesterday while... driving to Stanford when I could have taken the cal-train (in double the time, mind you!).
Really interesting to hear about the popularity of electric cars in the 1890's, how the ICE was an environmental solution for too many horses, and the ways we frame the shift:
"DUBNER: Name for me a year or an era when you see the global auto fleet being converted primarily to electric. Or maybe it’s not electric, maybe it’s something beyond electric.
STANDAGE: It’s interesting that you framed the question in that way because this is exactly how people thought in the 1890s. They were looking at the horse-drawn vehicles and they’re assuming that’s it’s just a one-to-one substitution. Every combination of a horse and a wagon gets replaced by an automobile and that nothing else changes. Of course, everything else changed. I think we risk falling into the same historical trap today, which is, “We could all just go on the way things are. All we have to do is switch over to electric cars. So, when are we going to do that? And then we can all just breathe a sigh of relief.” That’s not how it works. Electric cars are fundamentally different things, and you could do different things with them. You could use them for grid storage. You maybe don’t need to own them because they’re much, much smarter. Maybe you could call one to come to you, or maybe you could share them because you can unlock them with smartphones because they’re basically computers on wheels. I think this whole framing, which is that we just assume the world is the same, except that our internal combustion engines are electric motors, is just the wrong way of looking at it, and the history of the 20th century tells us we should not be falling into that trap."