Good Morning!
What we’re reading this week:
Forest loss emitted as much CO2 as India last year (buy carbon offsets! but maybe not)
The Greendicator
Top Deals of the Week
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UPSIDE Foods (formerly known as Memphis Meats), a startup creating cultivated meat / seafood / poultry from cells, raised a $400M Series C at a $1B+ valuation led by Temasek and Abu Dhabi Growth Fund (PRN)
Crusoe Energy Systems, a startup working to reduce natural gas flaring, raised a $350M Series C led by G2 Venture Partners (BW)
Sustainable fertilizer startup Anuvia Plant Nutrients raised a $65.5M Series D co-led by Riverstone Holdings and Piva Capital (PRN)
Enervee, a utility product efficiency startup, raised $35M in financing from Kerogen Capital and JP Morgan (BW)
Autonomous electric plane startup Pyka raised a $37M Series A led by Piva Capital and Prelude Ventures (TC)
Greenly, a three-year-old, Paris-based provider of carbon emissions tracking and reduction solutions for SMEs, raised $22 million in Series A funding co-led by Energy Impact Partners and Xange. VentureBeat has more here.
Zeno Power, a developer of advanced power systems that use radioisotopes, has raised a $20 million Series A funding round led by Tribe Capital, the company first told Axios, Andrew writes.
Red Sea Farms, a four-year-old, Saudi Arabia-based agtech startup that uses salt water to grow local produce more sustainably to reduce carbon emission and food and water scarcity, has raised $18.5 million in fresh funding co-led by Wa’ed, the venture capital arm of Saudi Aramco, and The Savola Group. (More)
SWTCH Raises $13 Million Series A, led by Aligned Climate Capital, to Provide Equitable Access to Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure in Communities Across North America (BW)
South 8 Technologies, a lithium ion battery startup, raised a $12M Series A led by Anzu Partners (BW)
Carbon Upcycling Tech, an eight-year-old, Calgary, Alberta-based developer of a CO2-embedded cement and concrete additive, just raised $4.7 million in funding led by Clean Energy Ventures. Other backers in the round included CEMEX Ventures, Amplify Capital and Oxy Low Carbon Ventures. Axios has more here.
Freshflow, a year-old, Berlin, Germany-based startup whose forecasting platform aims to help retailers optimize stock replenishment of fresh, perishable goods like fruit, vegetables, and meat, has raised €1.7 million in seed funding co-led by Capnamic and World Fund. TechCrunch has more here.
TômTex, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based outfit trying to turn agricultural waste into leather alternatives, has raised $1.7 million in seed funding. SOSV led the round (More here)
Aisti, a nearly three-year-old, Jyväskylä, Finland-based building materials startup developing recyclable wood-fiber tiles, has raised €1.6 million in seed funding led by Maki.vc. Axios has more here.
Green Theory
Why Read a Climate Tech Newsletter Anyway?
The human race will go extinct if you don’t read this paragraph! With the rise of the attention economy, messages of doom pour into our everyday life, and clamor for relevance. Especially if someone's trying to sell you something, it can be hard to separate genuine dangers from general distractions.
When disaster strikes, the stakes for decision-making rise even higher, and time grows scarce. Tumult exposes and exacerbates inequality: leaving the vulnerable stranded–or worse–and amplifying the powerful. Reporting in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Maria, and other crises, Naomi Klein exposes the playbook for exploiting events to reap profits at the expense of the most marginalized, in the most marginalizing moments. She explains how corporations and politicians seize on the fog of anxiety to entrench their own power: bulldozing poor neighborhoods, extending control over energy systems, and crushing local organizers. In the context of the ongoing climate catastrophe–what makes climate tech any different than Klein’s so-called disaster capitalists?
Climate technology holds the possibility of breakthroughs that could dramatically redirect our hurdle toward the humanity horizon. Unlike other urgent marketing pleas, evidence for the imminence of climate disaster abounds. From organic solar panels to green steel, any innovation in the sustainability space generates excitement, especially since irreversible climate outcomes loom constantly. In his 2022 letter to CEOs, the head of the largest US investment management firm wrote that the next wave of a thousand startups worth over $1B will “be sustainable, scalable innovators – startups that help the world decarbonize and make the energy transition affordable for all consumers.” Visibility from such an influential financier thrilled the green tech sector. As the saying goes, all publicity is good publicity, but hype and long-shot ventures go hand-in-hand.
The Depth of Greenness
Whether climate technologists sell a vision, a service, or anything else–careful judgment of their product, impact, and perspective remains crucial. Climate tech leaders upheld the aforementioned CEO quote, but the letter goes on to explain that his firm’s imperative for sustainability stems from their stewardship of capitalism, not of the planet. Unsurprisingly, this CEO defends and invests in the very corporations running disinformation campaigns that promote climate denial. Sadly, audacious pro-sustainability messages may cover ugly truths. Dodging explicit climate denialism still leaves one vulnerable to greenwashing, where companies lie about their own sustainability or obscure practices. Saving ourselves from intensified natural disasters and extinction events demands the attention of leaders from communities to companies. Unfortunately, even global disaster doesn’t eliminate the crop of charlatans and opportunistic profiteers.
Given the gloom of global emissions forecasts, some groups try to isolate uplifting stories of innovators who claim to tackle climate change. While no clean, green transition will be possible without sustaining joy and a vision of hope for the future, here at the Green Bite, we also find it important to shine a spotlight on questionable or downright troubling corners of the climate technology space. Take, for example, the common practice of carbon offset companies charging Westerners for local land-use efforts in the Global South. On the surface, activities such as selling credits for Community-Based Conservation could represent precisely the “sustainable, scalable” innovations the world needs. Kimaren ole Riambit, for one, would recommend caution–the Indigenous leader points out that external forces pushing to conserve others’ land often infringe on the rights of local people. Further, the financialization of conservation turns the investor, rather than the steward, into the conservator. Investigating multiple perspectives, and digging past the glossy websites and flashy headlines of well-funded climate technology companies, the aspiring change-maker may better direct their attention.
The climate crisis unfolds before us, alongside the opportunity to do something during this critical time. Pathways for change outside of private ventures range from policy to direct action, but there’s no denying the money (and influence) flowing to green tech. The sustainable technology sector holds the potential for soaring successes, fantastic flops, and parasitic profiteers. By separating the blossoming from the blustering, perhaps we can better steer the power of green tech to ensure a just transition to a cleaner future.
The Closer
“Nurse logs” are a fascinating ecological process within Redwood forests- when old trees fall down they do several key things to support the future of the ecosystem.
After falling and making a hole in the canopy for crucial sunlight to reach the forest floor, old trees become prime real estate for the next generation of plants to grow upon- plants colonize the log and burrow their roots into the rotting wood, pulling nutrients as they shoot upward towards the new sunlight. It is not uncommon to see new redwoods springing up from the remains of the old ones, either budding off from the fallen tree as a clone or growing from seed on top of it. The nutrients and support of nurse logs are one of the many things that are lost when an old growth forest is logged, and part of the reason why secondary forests are seldom as healthy.