Good Morning
What we’re reading this week:
Drexel University's Self-Heating Concrete Tech Is One Step Closer to Clearing Sidewalks Without Shoveling or Salting (E)
How Cherry Blossoms Portend the Future (V)
The Greendicator
Top Deals of the Week
Greenly, a Paris-based carbon accounting startup, raised a $52M Series B led by Fidelity International Strategic Ventures (TC)
Blue Laser Fusion, an inertial fusion company, raised a $37.5M seed round led by SoftBank and others (FN)
Profluent, an AI-first protein design company, raised $35M in funding led by Spark Capital (BW)
Residential energy efficiency startup Sealed raised a $30M round led by Keyframe Capital (FN)
Electric ferry startup Candela raised a $25M round led by Groupe Beneteau (TC)
Poseidon, a startup building technology for aquaculture, raised a $20.8M Series B led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund (BW)
Fuel procurement and management platform Fuel Me raised an $18M Series A led by Pritzker Group Venture Capital and Tribeca Venture Partners (PRN)
Pure Lithium, a lithium battery technology company, raised a $15M Series A led by Oxy Low Carbon Ventures (FN)
AirMyne, a startup building carbon capture technology, raised a $6.9M seed round from Alumni Ventures, Another Brain, Liquid 2 Ventures, and more (TC)
Buzz Solutions, an AI company that inspects and protects critical energy infrastructure, raised a $5M round led by GoPoint Ventures (FN)
EV leasing solution Pelikan Mobility raised a $4.4M seed round from Pale Blue Dot, Seedcamp, and others (TC)
Monaire, a startup using AI to curb waste and emissions from small commercial buildings, raised a $3.5M seed round led by Construct Capital (FN)
Amber, a startup helping EV owners navigate the warranty process, raised a $3.2M seed round led by Era and Primer Sazze (TC)
Sprih, a provider of an advanced AI tech platform for sustainability, raised a $3M seed round led by Leo Capital (FN)
Enapi, a German provider of a connectivity platform for EV charging collaboration, raised a $2.7M pre-seed round led by Project A Ventures (FN)
Green Theory
How would you live without the grid?
While we sleep, the grid keeps our fridges and internet humming. As we rise, we might draw energy to make tea, coffee, or toast. Flicking on a light switch or TV, we rarely question whether power will arrive. And plugging our phones into the wall at the end of the day, we can fall asleep confident it’ll be fully charged by morning—probably sooner.
From the office to the kitchen, from cafes to concerts, imagining our lives without the grid is so tough, it may not even cross your mind.
By 2030, 700 million people still won’t have access to a robust electrical grid, and nearly 2 billion won’t have clean cooking tools, according to the UN (7). Without natural gas or public electrical infrastructure, without utility companies or wall sockets, off-grid families today are nonetheless finding ways to bring the wellbeing, empowerment, and liberation of modern appliances into their daily lives.
Could you keep the lights on, the fridge cold, and water flowing, without the utility company?
Climbing the Ladder
To understand the challenges and joys of adopting off-grid appliances, 60 Decibels, a nonprofit measuring social impact, interviewed over 79,000 customers across Africa, South Asia, and Latin America.
For most major appliances stocked in US homes, off-grid alternatives allow less-electrified communities to rapidly achieve new standards of living, without waiting on public infrastructure projects.
As a household acquires better appliances, it moves up the energy ladder, generally replacing more expensive and dangerous energy sources with more cost-effective, safer ones. The jumps can be swift, but more often, just as in climbing a real ladder, a household rests on multiple rungs at once. Over time, the energy mix gets cleaner, and the burdens of the household diminish (19).
If you’ve lived your entire life without any shake-up in how your home lighting is powered, the breadth of fuels families use today could be wider than you expect. Since solar lamps are simple and affordable, many households acquiring a solar lamp remain dependent on lower rungs of the energy ladder, especially when it comes to other household needs.
In this way, the energy mix of a household is composed not only within appliance types, but across them, too. The ascent up the ladder is not always smooth or simple, but it brings tangible improvements in access to information, education, and economic opportunity.
Know your off-grid product
The bounty of off-grid appliances spans everything from roof to well, including some products that may surprise you. Besides the usual clean cookstoves and solar lanterns, 60 Decibels also interviewed customers who got solar-powered TVs, solar-powered water pumps, and thousands who developed their own “mini-grids.”
Customers across all categories overwhelmingly reported improvements to their quality of life, with over half agreeing the products “very much improved” their life (19).
While solar lanterns and water pumps are associated with the elevation of domestic life and educational opportunities, products such as e-bikes and off-grid refrigerators more often power new business ventures and careers (60, 64).
When the ladder breaks
It’s not all sunny news coming from the off-grid world. About 1 in 20 customers reported feeling over-indebted by their new appliance payment plan, revealing a potential credit risk, as well as a threat to the reputation of cleaner fuels, even if financing was to blame (42).
Even more prevalent, about 1 in 3 or 4 customers reported some challenges using their off-grid product, depending on type. Though many of these challenges were resolved, the upfront issues point to a need for more emphasis on education and human factors in new product rollouts (36).
Turning off-grid ON
In order to bring modern comfort to the hundreds of millions of people left out of grids across the globe, off-grid appliance suppliers will need to dedicate more energy to consumer protection and customer service.
With daily hours of chores eliminated, and hours of light extended, the tremendous level of added resilience and quality of life brought by off-grid products might be hard to comprehend in societies with secure access to electricity. Despite this empathy gap, off-grid appliances are already delivering inclusivity and empowerment, and stand to drive even more, for some of the most overlooked folks on earth.
The Closer
A kingfisher, truly. (Source)