đ¸ E-Lambos
(035) And plant-lamb
Good Morning
We thought last week was big for funding: this week alone, climate startups raised $1.675B+ by our count.
Headline roundup:
Lamborghini to bid farewell to pure combustion cars this year (BBG)
Apollo to shun fossil-fuel investments in next buyout fund (BBG)
 The first report, from the Deloitte Economics Institute, shows that rapidly decarbonizing the U.S. economy during the next 50 years could generate $3 trillion, and add nearly 1 million more jobs to the economy by 2070.
Globally, humanity invested nearly a trillion into the transition to clean energy in 2021, according to a new report, which also suggests that that number needs to at least triple.
The GreendicatorÂ
Top Deals of the Week
Wisk, a nearly three-year-old, joint venture between Boeing Co. and the electric aircraft maker, Kitty Hawk (founded by Google co-founder Larry Page), has raised $450 million more from Boeing to further its development of small, pilotless aircraft for short passenger hops in and around cities. (WSJ)
Indoor vertical farm tech startup Plenty raised a $400M Series E led by One Madison Group and JS Capital (BW)
Indian electric scooter ride-hailing company Ola Electric raised $200M at a $5B valuation in a financing round including Tekne Private Ventures, Alpine Opportunity Fund, Edelweiss, and more (TC)
Greenlabs, an agritech startup member of Born2Global, raised a $140M Series C led by BRV Capital Management, Skylake Incuvest, and SK Square (PRN)
Lithion Recycling, a Canadian startup working on recycling lithium ion batteries, raised a $125M Series A led by IMM Investment Global (BW)
Addverb, a nearly six-year-old, Noida, India-based company that uses robots to make e-commerce warehouses and energy production more efficient, has sold a majority stake in its business to Reliance Industries for $132 million. (TN)
Cowboy, a five-year-old Brussels-based startup that makes e-bikes and an accompanying app to manage various services related to them, has raised $80 million in Series C round of funding. Exor, HCVC and Siam Capital co-led the investment (TC)
Dublin-based Exergyn, which replaces refrigerants with solid materials, thus reducing the output of greenhouse gases - applicable in data centers - has raised a $35 million Series A led by Mercuria. (TC)
Culdesac, a nearly four-year-old, Tempe, Az.-based "post-car" real estate developer that's aiming to build Americaâs first car-free city, has raised $30 million in Series A funding. Khosla Ventures led the round. (RD)
Cana Technology, a nearly four-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based startup that just unveiling what it calls the âworldâs first molecular beverage printer,â has raised $30 million in funding from venture foundry The Production Board. At scale, Cana claims they âcould reduce the use of plastic and glass containers, water waste and the CO2 emissions of the global beverage manufacturing complex by more than 80%.â (TC)
Addionics, a chemistry-agnostic battery tech startup, raised a $27M Series A led by Deep Insight (BW)
Seurat Technologies, a Massachusetts-based 3D printing company for metals manufacturing, has raised $21 million in a Series B extension (TM)
Black Sheep Foods, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of plant-based food that tastes like lamb meat (and that's aiming to produce other meat flavors ties to Mediterranean staples), has raised $5.25 million in seed funding. Backers in the round include AgFunder. (TC)
Green Theory
Trader Noâs: Resisting the Church of Carbon Offsets
Each year, the average American emits ~17 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. To break out one component, conservatively, the average American diet makes up around 6 of those tons, compared to only 1.5 tons from a vegetarian diet. At the end of the year, a chunk of arctic ice big enough for a large family of polar bears to lay on has been lost, for each American. Most importantlyâespecially if reading as a momentary escape from a knowledge economy or other white-collar jobâthe wealthiest are polluting more, and feeling the impact less. One flight across the US and back constitutes about one sixth of the average personâs non-food emissions, so whatâs one to do?Â
Praying we stop making the same mistake
When fear of the supernatural reigned in medieval Europe, the Church harnessed Indulgences to commercialize and abuse charity while centralizing power and wealth. Martin Lutherâs reforms were part of a broader rebuke of this corrupt system. As Sarah Jaffe elaborates in Work Wonât Love You Back, this process of establishing ostensibly beneficent organizations rears its head in many modern philanthropies. Money earned through for-profit exploitation of workers and public wellbeing forms the base of large funds that then allow for-profit corporations and wealthy families to reduce their tax burdens. By both defunding public services, and (oops) centralizing power in the hands of the unelected ultra-rich, some of these organizations simply replicate the injustices they claim to work against. Â
Purchasing a carbon indulgence makes sense in theory, but there are many shades of projects out there. Just as some of the Middle Ageâs churches must have used their money for good, there are no doubt ways to maximize the terms of your carbon trade. More and more companies tout their offerings to pay down your carbon guilt. Unfortunately, many offsetting projects, even the best-intentioned, reinforce systems that brought climate disaster to our doorstep, just as the best church charities of centuries past still concentrated power through their hierarchical undemocratic body.Â
Itâs not that I donât love treesâŚ
Going to purchase carbon credits as an individual can be a bit of a charade. World governments canât seem to avoid double counting, and companies have few incentives to deal honestly when âcreditâ for a guilt-driven offset is as free to generate as a thoughtless blessing. As discussed in GB26, carbon capture technology is overwhelmingly used to extract net new oil: gains due to cost declines from scientific advances in potentially reversing the concentration of greenhouse gasses are instead being exploited to the point of accelerating the climate crisis.Â
Moving on from bleeding-edge capture technology, what about old-fashioned trees? Optimistic forecasts of one ton of carbon storage in forests equates to Âź acre per year for the average American. And yet, even though healthy forests continue to store carbon, large tree plantations and planting projects fail, time and time again far underperforming expectations. Â
Climate Colonies
Beyond the ecological implications and questionable durability of storage, the frightening number of planting projects in the Global South reflect one of the hottest trends to sweep Europe after Martin Luther: colonialism. Is it right that a transatlantic flight should turn into a personal guilt plantation on another continent? If Europe had a better track record of letting capitalists make land use choices in other countries, perhaps it wouldnât be as alarming. Companies like Klima are a perfect example of a popular, for-profit group of Europeans pushing trees south of the equator. In fairness, they do work on some projects that may be technologically more sound and productive allocations of capital than planting. Nonetheless, the denial of local determination, and Klimaâs lack of incentive for emissions to go down remain suspect.Â
Takeoff from the Offset Paradigm
If youâre going to offset your emissions, any project that is run by Native peoples or local, democratically elected governments is likely a better bet for long-term sustainability and lower colonization risk. Be wary of projects that merely replace current technologies with newer dirty energy sources, continuing to force unindustrialized economies in the Global South to further rely on the Global North. For instance, Berlin-based Klima claims their clean cookstove project has the âsocial benefitâ of saving families in Ghana money. Klima also namedrops Drawdown.org as aligned with their projects, and yet the comprehensive solution guide clearly articulates that improved cookstoves imposes a lifetime stove cost on most families, due to the higher cost of fuel.Â
Investing in carbon-zero technology and research around it presents a more direct line to transforming our society and releasing us from fossil fuels. Further, negative spillover effects go far outside the emissions from the status-quo-reinforcing behavior that sparks many offsets. Clearly, the choice to become vegan represents a considerable carbon reduction for the average American (if itâs over 67% of the food-related emissions for a Brit). Our choices play a large role in our individual allocation of impact.
At the same time, zero-carbon solutions such as electric cars are prohibitively expensive for most. We may be a few years to a decade away from electric planes, but already, the least expensive way to reduce your transportation footprintâeven cheaper than colonizing the Global South, or reinforcing another for-profit Indulgence schemeâis to simply not fly. The most marginalized will bear the greatest burden if we continue on our current path. How would following the frameworks that got us here suddenly reverse our course?
The Closer
The worldâs biggest cuttlefish(!), as posted by Sway, a company making plastic-wrap replacement from seaweed.
Adding plant-lambs to my hit list