Good Morning
What we’re reading this week:
A reboot of its previous venture “Studio X,” Shell’s new endeavor Onward is just greenwashing by another name (D)
VertueLab launches Jumpstart to help BIPOC founders in climate tech (TBJ)
Mind the Gap: A Design for a New Energy Technology Commercialization Foundation (ITIF)
The Greendicator
Top Deals of the Week
Vertical indoor strawberry farmer Oishii raised a $134M Series B led by NTT (TP)
Tsubame BHB, a startup working on small distributed ammonia production plants, raised a $47.4M Series C led by Heraeus Beteiligungsverwaltungsgesellschaft, and others (FN)
Range Energy, a startup building powered trailers for the commercial trucking market, raised $23.5M in funding led by Trousdale Ventures (BW)
Vegetarian Express, a UK-based supplier of vegetarian and vegan ingredients, received an $18.3M investment from NVM Private Equity (FN)
Altilium, a London-based cleantech group making EV battery material sourcing more sustainable, raised a $9.4M Series A led by SQM Lithium Ventures (FN)
Miruku, a four-year-old New Zealand startup that is focused on creating animal-free dairy products by genetically modifying oilseed crops to produce dairy proteins and fats, raised a $5 million round led by Motion Capital (V)
Sway, a San Francisco startup that makes packaging products from seaweed as an eco-friendly alternative to plastic, raised a $5 million seed round led by Third Nature Investments (BM)
Prefer, a two-year-old Singapore startup that is creating a sustainable, bean-free coffee alternative that still contains caffeine, raised a $2 million round led by Forge Ventures (GQ)
Sparqle, a sustainable delivery platform, received a $1.3M investment from a group of angels including the ex-MD of Deliveroo EU and the former CTO of Just Eat Takeaway (EU)
Green Theory
Sparking the next generation of fueling
For over a century, we’ve been gassing up our passenger cars at shared stations. Whether you’re in Albuquerque or Algiers, gas stations look roughly the same. Our car-driven communities have come to count on these consistent, convenient fill stations, but in order to realize a switch to EVs, we’ll need to adapt to new modes of refueling.
In order to service the 275 million gas cars in the US, we have fewer than 2 million gas pumps. Given nearly all fueling takes less than 10 minutes, this works out fine.
For the fewer than 4 million EVs on the road here today, there’s one charger for every 20 vehicles (180,000 chargeports). EVs can take the better part of an hour to get a substantial fast-charge under normal conditions, one cause of why there are more chargers per vehicle, than gas pumps per car.
Trickle Nights
Home charging provides another reason for the high incidence of chargers-to-EVs. Even though this method of charging isn’t an option for many Americans, today, it will become more accessible over time, opening new possibilities for how we live, work, and get around.
Many utilities offer subsidies on home charger installations, incentives for charging during off hours, and rebates for giving demand flexibility back to grid operators.
Still, less than 10% of chargers are at home, leaving the question of who should build, own, and operate the next hundred-thousand “public” chargeports.
Who will own the new nozzles?
Should gas stations become the superchargers of the future? What about gyms, or restaurants?
The constraint on charging networks isn’t parking space, but rather grid interconnection opportunities.
To build your new public fast charger, you’ll need a “make ready” from the relevant utility at your project site. This mini infrastructure project includes a new meter, electrical panel, and wiring to the charger electronics.
Knowing this constraint, one might see utilities as the perfect candidate to finish the job by building the charger, too. Advocates of this approach also cite the utilities’ ability to fund the upfront cost by raising retail energy rates. From a financial perspective, we’ll need $35B of capital deployed by 2030 to build enough public fast chargers to run 33 million US EVs, according to the National Renewable Energy Lab.
Naturally, some criticize the notion of utilities forcing all ratepayers to fund EV network expansion, especially when EV owners skew wealthier. At the same time, even if you don’t have an EV, you benefit from every e-driver who chooses not to pollute our air. Just how much?
If the average US car burns 500 gallons of fuel per year, and the social cost of each gallon is $3.80, each American will get about $88 of benefits per year, simply from the deployment of 30 million EVs between now and 2030. That’s roughly $175B in social benefits from this first step in the EV transition over the next 6 years, well covering $35B in initial costs.
Still, it’s not predetermined that utilities will own and operate charger networks. Both utilities and companies specializing in charger installation and maintenance can accuse the other of putting their own interests ahead of EV drivers. That being said, utilities have a clear, essential role in developing and deploying “make readies,” while charger-focused operators command better insight into EV drivers’ needs.
For these reasons, partnerships across the value chain are growing in popularity, despite many markets remaining mired. Time will tell the best approaches for local grids and EV drivers, but one big national shift is nearly sure to boost demand and reliability: connector standardization.
Standard, not just for oil
When you get to a gas station, you never question whether the nozzle will work with your gas car. EV chargers hope to replicate this reliability, as consistency standards are established in more and larger markets. Just this December, for example, US regulators endorsed the Tesla charging standard—now called the North American Charging Standard, or NACS.
As February 2024 ended, Ford vehicles gained access to tens of thousands of Tesla charging stations, and VW stands alone as the only major car manufacturer who hasn’t announced a switch to NACS. While this development may frustrate some innovators, it’s bound to unlock yet more improvements to other parts of the EV ecosystem, given the tremendous costs to continuing with varied connector hardware.
Even for the holdout EV brands, and current models at other brands with legacy “CCS” chargers, compatibility with NACS is increasing, too. This trend toward standardization will not only help networks grow faster, it will take some strain off of EV drivers, too.
Beyond cars(’ emissions)
By keeping us dependent on roads, EVs don’t solve all the issues brought on by cars. Still, passenger internal combustion engines drive about one fifth of all US emissions, equivalent to the total emissions of Japan.
To cut emissions fast, we need to say goodbye to gas fumes and pumps, and make ready for new ways of getting around. As sector players attempt to carve out their niches in this rapidly expanding market, it’s so early that room for innovation abounds.
The Closer
“This lemon flavored lesser long-nosed bat isn’t normally this color; it’s actually covered in pollen! An unsung hero of fragile desert ecosystems, lesser long-nosed bats pick up tons of pollen while drinking nectar out of blooming cacti and agave flowers. One could say they’re the perfect pollinator.” -USFWS