Planet A Ventures

BIG NEWS! Carbon Re and ABB have teamed up to help cement producers cut emissions and boost productivity. Why this matters 👇 Did you know the cement industry produces more carbon emissions than deforestation, global shipping, and aviation combined? 🤯 Carbon Re’s AI-powered solution detects energy inefficiencies, lowers costs, and cuts emissions in cement plants. In a recent collaboration with Heidelberg Materials (one of the world’s largest cement companies), the combined power of Carbon Re and ABB already delivered impressive results: 🔻 4% reduction in fuel cost index 🔻 2% cut in carbon emissions 🔻 33% drop in C3S variation, leading to better product quality Oh, and it gets better—ABB's stock saw a 0.75% bump after the partnership with Carbon Re was signed. A boost that translates to roughly £600 million added to its market cap. So, if you ever doubted that green tech could drive returns, here's your proof! Congrats to Josh, Buffy, Daniel, and the entire team for pushing the boundaries of what's possible in climate! Check out their latest case study in the comments below.

It’s time to invest in climate adaptation tech🚨 Climate change is here, with catastrophic effects. Each week brings news of historic floods, wildfires and temperatures around the world. That’s why we’re re-sharing our GP Lena’s piece on why we urgently need more solutions that combine climate mitigation with adaptation. Climate adaptation tech has huge potential to help industry, society and communities adapt to our new climate reality. 👀 But until now it has only attracted a fraction of total climate tech funding. Here’s why that’s about to change 👉https://lnkd.in/dbKfmaQP Founder building something in the space? We’d love to hear from you! 👋

Events Done, Let’s Get To Work 💪 We are wrapping up an intense month of climate events, here are the team's top three reflections: 👉 No time to lose Great energy in New York as always, but it’s more important than ever we turn talk into action. The devastation of Hurricane Helene, yet another historic extreme weather event, is another signal the earth’s system is losing stability and a reminder climate needs to stay top of the political agenda. 👉 Policy is power Legislation has a crucial role to play in cutting emissions and unlocking funding to meet Net Zero targets. At The Drop we talked about the active role we in the climate community need to play by building trusted relationships and sharing deep industry knowledge with policymakers. Speaking of… 👉 European energy independence is at risk Another topic we explored at The Drop. Luckily, this means there is a huge opportunity for solutions solving: → Dependency on foreign suppliers of critical materials and devices (solar panels, inverters, batteries, etc.) → Hardware Risk (vulnerability of actual assets; e.g. how well defended are offshore wind parks, train control stations, etc.) → Software Risk (already today, infrastructure is constantly under attack, how well defended are those assets) In short: even the most renewable grid won’t get us places if we cannot keep it up. Founder building on something in the space? Ping Nick! Up next: Insights from key climate change makers at Bits & Pretzels on turning talk into action. 👀 See you soon(ish) - who’s going to Norrsken Impact Week and Slush? 

WHY CHEAP CARBON CAPTURE CAN’T WAIT 👀 The latest IPCC report stresses we need to capture and store a median average of 665 gigatonnes of CO₂ by 2100 to reach Net Zero 😮💨 Carbon removal is crucial to that goal, but high costs, energy demands, and manufacturability challenges have held us back from investing—until now! Last week we celebrated Phlair - our first (and long-awaited!) investment in this space. So, why now? What's different? And why can’t the world wait? Today we share our take on why the time is right for DAC. Explore market insights, learn how third-gen DAC is solving the price problem, and discover what's next in the space. 👉 https://lnkd.in/e-RYyBCk

How do we go from talk ➡️ action fighting the climate crisis? 🌍 This is the urgent topic our GP Fridtjof is exploring together with activist-founder Michael Fritz on stage at Bits & Pretzels next week. They’ll be talking to real change-makers from the worlds of entrepreneurship, politics, science, and sports about the moment they decided to dedicate themselves to building a better future for our planet. Excited to hear speakers including Maja Göpel, Dr. Maximilian Oehl, Jana Degrott, Anne Lamp, Christian Sigmund, Jan Wilmking, Thomas Riedel and Felix Caspar van den Hövel share their stories! ”Cutting through the noise: Real talk with real change makers” → Monday, September 30th → 14:30 to 16:30 → Movers Stage 👀 Bonus! Catch Fridtjof talking what it takes to build climate tech at scale I Sunday 29

“What will it take to accelerate climate and nature technologies more effectively?” This is the question that drew our GPs together and led them to co-found Planet A four years ago. We knew venture capital had a huge role to play, but only by finding solutions that *really* move the needle on the climate and wider ecosystem crisis. That’s why we started a new kind of science-backed fund: one that truly evaluates how much better an innovative solution is compared to the status quo. Today, we are proud to support founders tackling the world's largest environmental problems and help them maximise their impact. Thanks for the profile Maddyness! Catch our GP Lena talking about her path into climate action, why legislation is crucial and what she looks for in a founder. 👉 https://lnkd.in/esg6zP-e

We invested in direct air capture! Congratulations to Phlair on raising €14.5m to deliver low-cost next-generation CO2 capture, at scale, for the first time. Here’s why we’re so excited. 🏭The problem We urgently need to both drastically reduce global emissions AND permanently remove CO2 from the atmosphere, at scale. Specifically? Limiting global warming <1.5C or even <2C means we have to remove ~500-900 bn tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere before 2100. Direct air capture (DAC) has the potential play a huge role but high costs, energy consumption and manufacturability have prevented the technology being deployed at scale. Until now. 💡The Solution Phlair’s first-of-a-kind hydrolyzer-based solution uses off-the-shelf components and is compatible with the intermittent nature of renewables. This makes it cheaper and easier to scale. A huge breakthrough. Welcome to Planet A Malte, Paul and Steffen! We are thrilled to support you in this critical mission alongside Extantia, Verve Ventures, Atlantic Labs, Counteract and UnternehmerTUM. Read more in TechCrunch 👉 https://lnkd.in/dbbK_6xS 👀 Watch out for our deep dive, outlining our take on DAC next week!

Is green tech the key to Europe’s economic revival? Last week, the EU released a much-anticipated report from Mario Draghi, outlining strategies to drive sustainable growth across the region. So, we did the hard work for you and pulled out the key insights in our latest policy navigator 🤓 TLDR – it’s mostly great news! From increased innovation funding to a bold clean industrial strategy, green tech is at the core of many proposals. But what does this mean for the future of green tech financing? And more importantly, are we focusing the public debate on the right parts of the report? Swipe till the end for our take and what needs to happen next 👀 As always, a big thank you to DWR eco for helping us get to the bottom of this!

HIVED is UK Startup of the Year 2024! 🏆 Huge kudos to the team for scooping up the awards for ‘Startup of the Year’ and also for ‘Consumer Services of the Year 2024’ at the Startup Awards in London. This customer-obsessed team is on a mission to put sustainability at the heart of every delivery. Congratulations to Murvah, Mathias and HIVED on this recognition of your incredibly hard work - accelerating the green transition one parcel at a time. 📦 Find out more about HIVED: https://lnkd.in/dwQZJz_m

BIG leap towards decarbonising massive industries like shipping! 🧪⛴️ C1 Green Chemicals AG has successfully commissioned its pilot plant in Leuna - faster than ever imagined - and is celebrating the first batch of green methanol produced there. 👀 WHY IT’S EXCITING C1 is developing an ultra-efficient catalysis to mass-produce green methanol, one of the most widely produced chemicals on earth. Up until now, it has been mainly obtained from coal or natural gas. Green methanol has the potential to cut gigatonnes out of the global chemical industry and is a hugely exciting emerging energy source! The project is being funded with a total of €10.4 million by the Bundesministerium für Digitales und Verkehr as part of the Renewable Fuels Funding Program. Up next: Commercial demo plant! 👷🏻 Congratulations to Christian and the C1 team! Check out more details in FAZ → Link in the comments below 📰