Good Morning
What we’re reading this week:
Are Sea Cucumbers a Cleanup Solution to Fish Farm Pollution? (Y)
Uber steps up EV push in India with Uber Green (RT)
The Greendicator
Top Deals of the Week
![St. Louis Inno - St. Louis agtech startup Pluton Biosciences raises $16.5M to add staff, advance product development efforts St. Louis Inno - St. Louis agtech startup Pluton Biosciences raises $16.5M to add staff, advance product development efforts](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc0c92200-b890-4b62-8fb9-f5e29da3b39c_1600x901.jpeg)
Peak Power, a cleantech startup providing energy optimization software and services, raised a $35M round led by Greenbacker Capital Management (FN)
Accelergen Energy, a solar and storage developer, raised $30M in funding from Leyline Renewable Capital (FN)
ConnectDER, a provider of fast connection adapters for solar and other distributed energy resources, raised a $27M Series C led by Energy Innovation Capital (FN)
ESG data management startup Novisto raised a $20M Series B led by Inovia Capital (PRN)
Pluton Biosciences, a startup using microbes to fight climate change, raised a $16.5M Series A led by Illumina Ventures and RA Capital (PRN)
Thermal imaging startup Satellite Vu, which enables more efficient building heating, raised a $15.8M Series A-2 led by Molten Ventures (TC)
Odyssey, a business-in-a-box platform for distributed energy in emerging markets, raised a $15M Series A led by Union Square Ventures (PRN)
Australian clean tech startup Endua, which aims to solve clean energy’s intermittency problem using hydrogen power banks, raised a ~$7.8M round from Queensland Investment Corporation, Melt Ventures, and 77 Partners (TC)
Green Theory
ForestTech’s Tree of Life
For Californians coming out of a wet winter and spring, choking wildfire smoke of seasons’ past may seem a distant challenge. By the end of the 2022 fire season, we had indeed seen far fewer acres burned by wildfire than years’ past: the second-least destructive season in the last 10 years.
Still, across North America, citizens are waking up to smoky days. Canada’s unseasonably hot spring is sending plumes of smoke over 1,000 miles, as far as Colorado, Missouri, and Indiana. How can we equip our wildland defense for the 21st century, and beyond?
Modern technologists, leveraging indigenous wisdom and (sometimes literally) cutting-edge engineering, offer promises to help undo “a growing array of challenges stemming from climate change and a legacy of misguided forest management,” according to a recent blog post from forest management startup, Kodama Systems.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80f5b4ea-0120-4678-97bb-d4705fc40bfc_1704x1478.png)
Means, Motive, and Opportunity
Why is forest and fire tech spreading like wildfire right now? Mack Radin’s post with Kodama Systems highlights the unique urgency, and chance to help, in 2023:
Eight of the ten largest fires in the state’s recorded history occurred since 2017 (source), along with three of the five deadliest (source) and six of the ten most destructive (source). These are sobering statistics.
Frontline workers and emergency response personnel are stretched thin, and solutions-minded builders and innovators are heeding the call to support them. The federal government has added more fuel to the fire through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, which complement each other to allocate extraordinary funding - $10B+ combined - to projects tackling challenges related to forest and wildfire management.
Clearly, the problem, and the increasing financial means to solve it, are coming together. For a sense of scale, the US spent an average of $2.5B in annual federal forest defense over the 5 years ending in 2020.
A Young Forest of Solutions
Large incumbent utilities and government agencies still handle much of wildland management and protection, today. Still, the last decade has seen a dramatic rise in both wildfire acres burned, as well as startups founded and funded to help restore forest health.
The Kodama team mapped forest tech startups and incumbents to subsectors, including Fire Tech and Forest Health. Fire Tech, in Kodama’s formulation, refers to response, detection, defense, and forest management. Forest Health includes carbon removal, carbon management & marketplaces, data management & visibility, and reforestation. You can read more about these subcategories in their blog post.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5b8a3f9b-89df-4817-ad13-d3dc1775545b_1328x1470.png)
Kodama straddles Fire Tech and Forest Health, combining undergrowth-thinning automation hardware, with long-duration carbon removal offerings. As longtime Green Biters will know, carbon removal projects, and especially carbon credit and offset schemes, have a shaky history with delivering on their promises, and the Kodama article highlights a beacon of truth in a murky area: (carbon)plan.
According to Radin, writing for Kodama, “(carbon)plan, a non-profit that analyzes climate solutions based on the best available science and data, is an invaluable third-party resource for evaluating the integrity of carbon removal and offset projects.” Combining economics, data science, and life sciences, (carbon)plan is helping keep the industry honest.
The field of forest tech innovation spans far wider than carbon markets, and Kodama’s landscape map shows just how wide:
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_5760,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F026559c5-e2aa-49a1-8b84-01241f3aa669_1831x2048.png)
Kodama’s multi-pronged approach to meeting the market for forest tech, as well as leadership in organizing and clarifying the space, show foresters, policymakers, and technologists the possibilities for combining insights and innovations—old and new—in supporting healthier forests and wildlands, for a healthier biosphere, and a healthier human community.
At Benchmark Labs we were developing weather forecasts for prescribed burns (“Burncast”) bc the systems that are currently used are inaccurate (and therefore costly and dangerous if you're gonna do a burn).
The field of Fire Weather is crazy for how behind the times it is (multiplying the risks people take...)