🐝 Old Bacteria, New Tricks
(066) Printed in Oil
Good Morning
What we’re reading this week:
California narrowly avoided blackouts for a second day today, but it’s nothing compared to what's been happening in Pakistan and India.
California bans sales of new gas cars by 2035 (link)
The Atlantic’s How Animals Perceive the World
The Greendicator
Top Deals of the Week
Battle Motors, a startup building electric trucks, raised a $150M Series B led by an unnamed global institutional investor (BW)
Dutch solar powered vehicle startup Lightyear raised $81M in funding led by Invest-NL, SHV, Dela, and more (TC)
Tesseract, a nine-month-old, London-based energy company founded by Alan Chang, the former CFO of Revout, has raised $78 million in funding led by Balderton Capital and Lakestar (SC)
Planted, a nine-year-old New York startup that combines alternative proteins with biostructuring and fermentation processes to create vegan meat such as plant-based chicken, raised a $71.6 million Series B. L Catterton led the round. TechCrunch has more here.
Bridger Photonics, a company providing methane detection technology, raised $55M in funding led by Beaverhead Partners (PRN)
Ascend Elements, a seven-year-old startup based in Westborough, Ma., that recycles lithium-ion battery materials, raised a $50 million round led by SK ecoplant, the environmental unit of Korean conglomerate SK Inc. (B)
Albedo, a two-year-old startup based in Austin, Tex., that takes photos of Earth from very low-Earth orbit satellites for clients in areas such as agriculture, forestry management, defense, and intelligence, raised a $48 million Series A round co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Shield Capital (FC)
Crop intelligence and management platform Taranis raised a $40M Series D led by Inven Capital (PRN)
Pathway Power, a San Diego startup that is focused on developing solar batteries for utilities, raised a $36 million round from Forest Road Renewables. More here.
Bond Pet Foods, a seven-year-old startup based in Boulder, Co., that makes plant-based pet treats, raised a $17.5 million Series A round. (TC)
Neutral Foods, a three-year-old, Portland, Ore.-based maker of organic milk products that calls itself the "first carbon neutral food company in the United States" (it says it works directly with farmers to reduce the carbon footprint of their dairy products), has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures. (More)
Populus, a five-year-old San Francisco startup that collects data on shared fleets like scooters, e-bikes, and car-sharing and shares it with cities to help planners and regulators understand and manage how streets are used, raised an $11 million Series A. Zero Infinity Partners and Climactic co-led the deal. TechCrunch has more here.
BioBetter, a startup aiming to cheaply cultivate meat, raised a $10M round led by Jerusalem Venture Partners (PRN)
BioBetter, a two-year-old startup based in Kiryat Shemona, Israel, that has developed a protein manufacturing platform for producing growth factors using tobacco plants as natural, self-sustaining, animal-free bioreactors, raised a $10 million Series A led by Jerusalem Venture Partners (FBM)
Smart energy startup Flair raised a $7.6M Series A led by Active Impact Investments and Lowercarbon Capital (PRN)
Odyssey Energy Solutions, a 5.5-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based investment and asset management platform that aims to enable the financing of distributed energy projects at scale, has raised $5.34 million in a seed round led by Equal Ventures. (TC)
EnviroSpark, an eight-year-old Atlanta startup that has installed more than 5,000 electric vehicle chargers across the United States and Canada, raised a $5.25 million Series A round led by Ultra Capital. More here.
Ceezer, a one-year-old Berlin startup whose platform aims to simplify the planning, purchasing, and monitoring of complex carbon market portfolios, raised a $4.2 million round from Carbon Removal Partners and Norrsken VC. TechFundingNews has more here.
Puna Bio, a two-year old, Buenos Aires-based biotech startup that's using extremophiles – microorganisms that are 3.5 billion years old and sourced from La Puna, the highest and driest desert on Earth – to develop biological inputs for agriculture, has raised a $3.7 million seed round. At One Ventures and Builders VC co-led the financing (TC)
Tozero, a three-month-old, Munich-based battery recycling startup, raised €3.5 million from Atlantic Labs, Verve Ventures and Possible Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
CorePower Magnetics, a two-year-old Pittsburgh startup that manufactures inductors and transformers that operate with increased temperature stability in smaller, lighter packages, raised a $2.5 million pre-seed round led by Volta Energy Technologies (More here)
Green Theory
Careful what you Click
Last fall, we looked into climate newsletters conspicuously taking ad money from some of the largest fossil fuel think tanks and corporations. Almost a year later, though Axios Generate removed Chevron’s name from the top of their emails, the oil giant’s advertisement still looms large for those who scroll on.
How about Politico’s climate newsletter? In the seasons that passed since this German right-wing billionaire purchased Politico—perhaps unsurprisingly—little has changed.
Oil snapped up the ad space, leaving readers to ponder the slant on the news they receive, or not. Troubling as it is to see these institutions’ names here, journalists claim their writing sits outside the influence of these corporations—at least, that’s what Axios Generate writers told us last year. Stepping outside of this ceaseless weekday bulletin, one finds far more blatant lengths to which energy and utility companies will go to protect their reputations.
From Stoking Scandals to Crowding out Local Papers
Unfortunately, unsavory ads present only the tip of the iceberg. As Emily Atkins details in her non-fossil fuel-funded newsletter, HEATED: secretly utility-funded, The Capitolist paper promoted salacious rumors about a public servant and watchdog group member who investigated her utility company’s attempts to suppress rooftop solar. As Atkins goes on, more fossil-run news sites sit on a spectrum of transparency. One must dig to uncover The Alabama NewsCenter’s proprietor, Alabama Power. Facebook readers would have no way of knowing their articles come from a public relations press room. Chevron—granted, a step more transparent—still bounds beyond buying Axios ads toward the unethical journalism end of the paradigm. Their corporate publications, The Richmond Standard and Permian Proud, pose as local newspapers, albeit with Chevron disclosures. Molly Taft, with Gizmodo, examines both papers’ sordid pasts. She showcases how Chevron pushing corporate PR as local “news” displaces already rapidly declining, or nonexistent, genuine local press. Atkins’ piece relays a journalism ethics professor’s message that “there’s no way that the not-fully-engaged consumer is going to realize that what he’s looking at is PR.” Take these faux news sites’ stories to social media and the blurred ethical journalistic lines grow ever fuzzier.
Social media strips the already limited markers of source and authenticity of information, yet its convenience defies this lack. Today, most in the US access news via social media, but youth still show the highest levels of trust in traditional newspapers and local news, compared to newer types of news sources. Multi-disciplinary artist Jenny Odell’s How To Do Nothing translates internet researcher dana boyd’s work on context collapse among social circles online to the public political space. Without time to process deeply, the scroller requires simpler and simpler messages, pushing context out quickly. Following the money presents one way to identify slanted or sold-out climate media, and following HEATED, another. Trust in traditional media aside, and due credit to those wary of news in online networked spaces—in the face of the disappearance of more and more local newsrooms to make way for misinforming corporate media, that Axios’ self-styled climate reporters post ads for a corporation actively greenwashing and undermining the free press, at the same time, strikes as doubly odd. As always, we remain free of fossil fuel sponsors.
The Closer
Return Fire 📽 by @irfanbaradia
Female leopard chases down a couple of warthog piglets.
The sturdy mother hog wasn't keen on losing today, and successfully saved one of the two piglets attacked by the big cat by fighting back.
Any idea what happened to GRN last week? Did I miss something?