COnovate, Inc.’s Post

Portfolio company Xpansiv rounded out 2023 with a spot on the AgFunder News list of 2023's top agtech deals for its acquisition of Evolution Markets Inc. Inc and a $125 million capital raise. It's starting 2024 just as dynamically, with the announcement that Xpansiv has acquired a minority interest in leading clean economy registry provider and certification body Evident. As Xpansiv's CEO John Melby said of this new agreement, "Building institutional-grade infrastructure for the rapidly expanding environmental markets is central to both companies’ missions. Furthermore, our clients are increasingly integrating I-RECs, alternative fuels, and carbon removals into their sustainability programs, making a closer partnership a natural next step." You can read about the agreement with Evident here ➡ https://lnkd.in/g73rdTns And Xpansiv's 2023 investment and acquisition here ➡ https://lnkd.in/eR_xHewf The full AgFunder News list is here ➡ https://lnkd.in/gi76Rf67 #RenewableEnergy #NetZero #CarbonMarkets

Austria's OMV to collaborate with startups in low #carbon #energy innovation 👉 OMV has allocated €5bn for investments in #lowcarbon projects, extending its focus until 2030. Read more 👉 https://lnkd.in/giCUbvwx #GasPathways #energy

#NewsIE | A Series D fundraising round of about $65 million has been secured by LevelTen Energy for its platform that will include granular certificates and clean hydrogen. Leading the financing was B Capital , a global multi-stage investment firm; other participants included #Aster, Constellation, Equinor Ventures, Google, Intercontinental Travel Exchange., Microsoft's Climate Innovation Fund, NGP, Prelude Ventures, and ZOMA Capital.   💻 LevelTen Platform is the largest online marketplace for buyers, sellers, consultants, asset owners, and financiers of carbon-free energy. 💬 "The clean energy industry’s growth has been astonishing, but the climate crisis demands that we deploy even more clean energy at a much faster rate. Rapidly growing electricity demand is straining our infrastructure and threatening to undermine climate goals. Our existential need to keep global warming in check requires us to scale procurement and bring new technologies to mass markets even more quickly,” said Bryce Smith, founder and CEO at LevelTen Energy. ➡️ https://lnkd.in/dYcXpBjb

Earlier this week we successfully closed our first investment round. Proud? No! Excited? Yes! I still very well remember how more than 10 years ago we were students starting a journey because we wanted to create more environmentally sustainable energy storage technology, as we saw that the energy transition would need vast quantities of it because of the utter focus on wind & solar. I cherish moments along the entire route. From those early morning and late night meetings with Jiajun Cen, PhD Edoardo Brian Cometti & Ulrich Starke. How on a Monday morning at 7:00 Edoardo & me assembled a membrane stack for the prototype. The great internship & master thesis at Fujifilm with wonderful housemates. But then we also got to know David Vermaas & Jan Post with whom we later started the company. Starting with just small funds from the TU Delft we managed to get things going. I remember the extremely cold hands when conducting tests in unheated rooms and heating my hands at the faculty with hot cappuccino's, but fortunately that later - via a dirty garage box - to our first office in Leiderdorp. So many people contributed throughout those years, interns, but also various colleagues whom sometimes had to quit for very understandable reasons. I cherish the hilarious moments where we for example checked max. pressure drop of pumps via a long tube to the roof of the office, to the wonderful moments working very closely for weeks with colleagues for weeks on an Italian island getting our pilot up and running. Overall, the past ten years have been an extremely wild ride for myself. Sometimes those moments were great, but sometimes also extremely challenging. Where amazing new people entered my life, to amazing people that I had to say goodbye too. Various times over the past decade people were wondering if I made the right choice pursuing what I do, but as my mom always said, as long as you keep working hard enough in what you believe in, you will open doors. Sometimes a door will close, but another door will open. Looking at her picture now makes me realise how little I care about money. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited that this investment got in, it allows to do many things, from developing our technology to making it market-ready, making the team much better. But it's just money. I'm not on this planet to make money, I'm not pursuing what I do to make money. I do what I do because I don't understand the way our world functions today, and I think I see we're running into a wall. Or better, driving with 300km/hr into a wall. We have surpassed the 1.5C degree warming threshold (+1.52C compared to pre-industrial), sea level rise is accelerating (>10mm/yr MSL at US East Coast). Oceans are becoming more and more deoxygenated & acidified, biodiversity is collapsing, heat waves, droughts and floods are becoming more prevalent. I'm just saying. No time to celebrate, time to start doing something. And hopefully that will be in time.

Last week was an exciting one for the #cleantech community! Members of Cleantech for Eurpope’s investor coalition are leading the charge towards a net zero economy: 🤝 World Fund just announced that they successfully closed their first fund at €300 million. This is the largest first-time fund in the history of European climate venture capital, bringing together European Investment Fund (EIF), KfW Capital , VP Capital, the Environment Agency's pension fund Erste Group and Wiltshire Pension Fund - representing both highly renowned LPs as well as LPs for whom it's new to invest in first-time VC funds. 📈 2150 led a £22 million investment round into British Mission Zero Technologies, a Direct Air Capture innovator alongside fellow coalition members Breakthrough Energy Ventures and World Fund, as well as Siemens Financial Services and Fortescue. Congratulations to everyone involved! Europe needs to urgently ramp up its cleantech investments. A thriving cleantech sector will fuel economic growth, attract investments, and ensure long-term prosperity for Europe. https://lnkd.in/eAVpmn-a

10 Urgent Areas of ClimateTech Ripe for Investment in Latin America 🌎 Heat waves, droughts, extreme weather, and biodiversity loss are just a few of the devastating effects of climate change being felt across Latin America. As the region looks to adaptation and mitigation technologies to minimise the impact, investors see an opportunity to invest in these scalable solutions and their founders. Here at ClimateHack, we spoke to investors funding the climate finance gap in Latin America to hear which technologies startups should be working on and where they’ll invest next across: ⚒️ Mining  ⚡ Energy 💨 Carbon 🧪 Plasma 🌾 AgriFood 🚛 Transport ➿ Circularity 💦 WaterTech 🦜 Biodiversity 🔨 Climate Tools 🌟 With insights from Matías Peire @ GRIDX Ruben Altman @ Antom.la Guilherme Penna @ Silence Gabriel Estrada Escalante @ Dalus Capital Juan Pablo Garavaglia @ ARCHECompany Laura Estankona Pérez @ Rumbo Ventures Margarita de la Peña Virgós @ Zacua Ventures  Luis Gerardo Carvajal Fernandez @ Siemens Energy Andres Baehr and Gabriel Guardado Zambrano @ Savia Ventures Hear what they have to say: https://lnkd.in/eb3hkqSq

If you haven't read this new RMI report, The Cleantech Revolution, definitely download and read it. It's terrific. Plus, you can ask your questions to the authors at this upcoming webinar: https://lnkd.in/ewSzqFUJ

Every sector of the global economy needs to radically transform and decarbonize to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030. In our March Monthly Investor Circle, we were joined by a venture with a USD100m Energy Tech Fund which invests globally in companies to catalyze and scale technology solutions advancing the energy transition. In order to reduce GHG emissions, they shared how their investment strategy focuses on Electrification & Energy Storage, Transport & Mobility, and Carbon Removal & Utilization, which are responsible for 80% of total global emissions. Graph source: The World Bank #climatetech #sustainablefinance #impactinvesting #energytransition #climatechange #venturecapital #energytech Audacy Ventures

Thank you Sustainable Finance Initiative for the opportunity to share our work with your members. As #energy is an essential input to all types of processes and services, by focusing on technology that improves how this energy is generated (or regenerated), transmitted, consumed, or stored (#energytech), we believe this is where Audacy Ventures can make the biggest impact. This is particularly so given there is a significant funding gap for scale-up capital even for companies with high TRL's (technology readiness levels), especially if the funding need is relatively small and below the minimum investment sizes of many fund houses that just grew perpetually larger over time. It is almost as if they are being penalised for needing less capital to scale, a lot of the technology development work had been done already, and they are not a software company. We see huge opportunities in this space #energytransitiontechnologies that are both impactful and commercially sustainable. Please get in touch to find out more. #climatetech #AudacyVentures #venturecapital Li Tan Toby Chan Billy Wang Dr. Frederik Hetsch (Ph.D.) Leo Chan James Inge Philip C.