The Impact Innovator | Issue 282
In this week's The Impact Innovator edition:
At One Ventures has closed a new $375 million fund it will use to invest in startups working to improve planetary health, with an eye towards overlooked founders and solutions. The firm, which is led by Tom Chi, a founding member of moonshot factory Google X, is focused on four, often interconnected areas: air, water, soil and biodiversity. An intergovernmental organization established by the United Nations estimates that about 1 million species are currently threatened with extinction, and air, water and soil pollution are key drivers of this biodiversity loss. A large number of venture capital funds investing in climate tech are looking for companies that can cut carbon emissions. Chi, a managing partner for At One, said that leaves a lane open to back startups tackling other problems.
Unique among most venture firms, 40% of At One’s startups are run by underrepresented founders, such as women or people of color. Chi said that this outcome wasn’t intentional. It came out of the firm’s focus on the underlying fundamentals of companies, which include working on breakthrough technology that’s cheaper and better than competitors’ and provides benefits to the natural world as well. Among At One’s investments is battery recycling firm Ascend Elements. The startup recently won a number of major contracts and raised a massive $542 million series D round. Other portfolio companies include Dalan Animal Health, which developed a USDA-approved vaccine for honeybees, and Colossal Biosciences, the startup attempting to resurrect the woolly mammoth and dodo bird.
The Ernst & Young (EY) organization and Microsoft have released a free online program, the Green Skills Passport, which allows learners aged 16 and over to develop skills for sustainability jobs and the growing green economy. The new program includes a 10-hour virtual course in which participants may learn about key topics including sustainability, entrepreneurship, and employment skills for various green jobs. The Green Skills Passport is also meant to provide non-governmental organizations with an avenue for empowering underserved communities with employable skills.
EY and Microsoft have already implemented successful Green Skills Passport pilot programs in the United States, India, and Bangladesh, where more than 1,400 course completions and certificates have been awarded. Out of all of the participants, 61% plan to apply for green jobs, and 43% plan to enroll in a university degree for sustainability or take more sustainability-related classes, according to the program. The International Labor Organization forecasts that 24 million new green jobs will be created by 2030, and a goal of the Green Skills Passport is to help learners find their place in this growing market. The new learning platform follows establishment of the EY-Microsoft partnership in 2022, initially created to increase social equity in the digital economy. The partnership has already implemented a number of programs toward this goal, all of which may also contribute to skills development in the green economy.
Green power leader Kenya is planning to develop a gigawatt-scale wind farm that would be the largest in Africa. The Egyptian government in August designated land for a 3GW onshore wind project that will be delivered by an international consortium featuring French multinational Engie. UAE green energy developer Masdar and partners have meanwhile cemented plans for a behemoth 10GW onshore wind farm in Egypt that would be one of the biggest in the world. The country’s state-run Kenya Electricity Generating Co confirmed to Bloomberg last week that it is seeking debt financing to cover 75% of the project costs. It did not confirm what those costs would be and said that estimates would be available once it has the necessary approvals and “confirms the capacity for each phase.”
The project will reportedly be based near the 310MW Lake Turkana Wind Power Project – currently the largest wind farm in Africa – in remote northern Kenya. It is expected to connect to the Kenyan grid in 2028. The French Development Agency (Agence Française de Développement) separately confirmed to Bloomberg that it is “taking a close interest” in the project. If realised, the project would further bolster Kenya’s reputation as a green power leader globally. Around 92% of its electricity supply, and 74% of its overall energy use, is powered by renewables. While this would be the largest wind farm in Africa if it went online today, it could well be topped by several far larger Egyptian projects by the time it reaches fruition.
Electric Hydrogen, a Natick, MA-based manufacturer of electrolyzers for critical industries to produce the lowest cost green hydrogen, raised $380M in Series C funding. The round was led by Fortescue, Fifth Wall and Energy Impact Partners and included new investors bp Ventures, Oman Investment Authority, Temasek, Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund, the United Airlines Sustainable Flight Fund, New Legacy, Kajima Ventures and Fatima Holdings USA. Existing strategic investors Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Equinor Ventures, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Rio Tinto continued their participation, as did previous financial investors Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Capricorn Partners, Prelude Ventures, and S2G Ventures.
Led by Raffi Garabedian, Chief Executive Officer, and Dave Eaglesham, Chief Technology Officer, Electric Hydrogen manufactures, delivers and commissions electrolyzers for critical industries to produce the lowest cost green hydrogen. The company’s complete 100MW solution includes all system components required to turn water and electricity into green hydrogen, including power conversion, gas processing, water treatment and thermal management. The company is currently installing manufacturing equipment in its 1.2GW factory in Devens, Massachusetts. The factory will begin producing commercial electrolyzer systems in early 2024, with deliveries later in the year including the first customer-sited electrolyzer plant to be installed in Texas for New Fortress Energy. Electric Hydrogen has more than 5 gigawatts (GW) of its electrolysis systems reserved by customers and anticipates strong ongoing demand. EH2 has a team of nearly 300 people with offices in San Carlos, CA, and San Jose, CA and Natick, and Devens, MA. The company was founded in 2020 and has raised more than $600M from financial and strategic investors.
REGENT Craft, an American startup developing a new generation of ground effect vehicles, has announced assorted developments that it expects to bring it closer to its first crewed test flights, which are expected to take place during 2024. Ground-effect vehicles make use of the aerodynamic benefits provided by the so-called ‘wing-in-ground’ effect in order to achieve very high speeds when flying just a few meters above a body of water. REGENT Craft has been working on one such vehicle, which it calls ‘Seaglider’ and expects to deploy on inter-city coastal passenger-carrying routes. On October 5, 2023, REGENT Craft announced the closure of a $60 million Series A funding round that will enable it to move forward with a full-scale prototype test program, with testing of a small-scale prototype having already started in 2022.
The new funding round brings the total raised to date by REGENT to $90 million. It has been co-led by 8090 Industries, a VC firm focusing on aerospace, defense and sustainability projects, and Founders Fund, which is linked to Peter Thiel. According to REGENT’s announcement, existing investors are also co-investing in this round. These include companies such as Lockheed Martin, Yamato Holdings and the Japan Airlines Innovation Fund. It is with the Japanese Airline that REGENT Craft has just signed an agreement to make Japan one of the first places in the world that could see Seaglider service. The two companies will collaborate in assessing opportunities for Seaglider deployments in the Japanese islands, together with the roll-out of the related infrastructure and the study of the relevant regulatory regime.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Natural disasters have a way of making people pay attention. Take, for example, California’s recent, catastrophic wildfire seasons, which broke records for how many acres they burned, how much property they destroyed and how many lives they took. That, plus the way they turned the sky a shade of apocalyptic orange, grabbed people by the lapels and didn’t let go. The ordeal inspired more than a few people to search for solutions. Vibrant Planet was one that grew out of California’s wildfires. TechCrunch covered the company’s seed round, and now the startup is back with fresh funding.
Vibrant Planet has raised a $15 million Series A funding round led by the Ecosystem Integrity Fund, with participation from Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund, Citi Ventures, Day One Ventures, SIG Climate, Globivest, Coefficient LP and other investors. That comes on top of the $17 million in pre-seed and seed funding the company announced in June 2022 as well as some government grants, bringing the total raised to $34 million.
Amperon Holdings, a Houston-based energy analytics startup, has successfully secured $20m in Series B funding. The company, founded in 2018, employs artificial intelligence (AI) to forecast energy usage and supply within energy markets. This recent investment will play a pivotal role in expanding Amperon’s capabilities, ultimately enabling more comprehensive grid data utilisation and advancing electricity forecasting innovation. Amperon’s core mission is to empower businesses in navigating the complexities of the energy landscape while accelerating grid decarbonisation. The company specialises in building AI-driven electricity analytics tailored for energy market participants, providing them with tools for informed decision-making, optimising energy utilisation, and enhancing grid sustainability.
With this substantial injection of capital, Amperon intends to evolve from an electricity demand forecasting platform into a holistic data analytics solution. This expansion will equip grid operators with the necessary data insights to seamlessly incorporate intermittent renewable energy sources like wind and solar into the power grid supply, thereby ensuring grid stability. Furthermore, it will address the challenges posed by demand unpredictability, exacerbated by climate change and extreme weather events. The significance of robust energy data analytics extends to aiding grid customers in their efforts to measure and reduce their carbon footprints. This includes the assessment of energy usage, which falls under Scope 2 emissions.
Indonesia aims to unveil its $20 billion energy transition investment plan next month, an official said on Friday, days before the United Nations COP28 climate summit as Jakarta tries to resolve issues on funding and energy mix for the initiative. Officials had initially planned to launch the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) project in the middle of August, but this was delayed due to problems ranging from differences on funding details to the extent of Indonesia's reliance on coal for electricity. The new target is for JETP plans to be released for public feedback on Nov. 1, with an official launch set for around Nov. 20, Paul Butarbutar, deputy secretary of Indonesia's JETP office, told reporters.
When asked whether the International Partners Group (IPG) - comprising of countries like the United States, Japan, as well as development banks and private lenders - is expected to agree on the investment plan by then, Butarbutar said: "We're going to agree on the content first, but funding, etcetera, are a different matter, a matter for later.". He declined to provide further details. Indonesia has agreed to cap and peak the power sector's carbon emissions at 290 million metric tons by 2030 under the JETP, following the IPG's commitment to provide financial support through a blend of equity investments, grants and concessional loans. Indonesian officials have complained that Western countries are reluctant to finance early retirement of coal-fired power plants, which is needed to make way for renewable power plants.
Sage Geosystems has pioneered a new form of cheap energy storage that uses the Earth as a giant bellows, pumping water into underground fractures, then letting it squirt back up at 70% efficiency – or 200% efficiency if you also harvest heat energy. The "huff & puff" method, as it's known, is adapted here from a similar technique that's used in oil production, where a fluid – often steam – is injected into a shale oil deposit and left there for several hours to heat the oil, reducing its viscosity and making it easier to pump out. Sage, however, uses dense drilling mud, forced at high pressure into rock deep underground at disused oil wells, to push slim fractures apart, then pumps water in, again at high pressure, to keep the fractures "inflated." This is done using excess renewable energy collected during daylight hours, and then a valve is closed to lock the water in. When it's time to recover the energy, it's as simple as opening the valve; the pressure from the earth all around the fracture squeezes it back together and the water is forced back up the pipes, where it can be run through a turbine to harvest electricity. Indeed, the same electric motor and pump that forced it down there in the first place become the turbine and generator that get the energy back out when the system runs in reverse.
This is the "EarthStore" system Sage has now tested using an old oil well in Texas, demonstrating a round trip efficiency of 70-75%, with measured fluid losses of just 1-2% and no detected induced seismic activity. A single well, says Sage, can generate around a 3-megawatt maximum output this way if it's used as a load-following fast release system, or it can release energy in a more measured way to provide 18-odd hours of power through the night when solar isn't generating. But if you've got access to old oil production shafts, fairly deep in the Earth, there's another benefit: heat. A huff & puff system like EarthStore could be profitable enough as a grid-level or local energy storage system, but once you start factoring heat into the equation, it starts looking extremely compelling. The Earth warms up the deeper you go, and it's relatively easy to get deep enough for 180-220 °C (350-430 °F) temperatures. It's not typically cost-effective to harvest that geothermal energy, but the huff & puff energy storage system significantly changes the numbers.
In a recent report from The New York Times by Debra Kamin, seven NASA scientists have shared their optimism regarding NASA's ambitious goal of establishing lunar structures by 2040 as long as they continue to meet their project milestones. NASA's vision for a longer human presence on the Moon significantly departs from the brief Apollo program visits, culminating with Apollo 17 in December 1972. Today, NASA is committed to constructing lunar habitats capable of accommodating astronauts and civilians to create the first lunar subdivision for Americans by 2040. While some in the scientific community view this timeline as ambitious, the seven NASA scientists interviewed for this article believe it is achievable, provided that the agency maintains its current progress. The bold plan is called Project Olympus. It might look too good to be true, but the scientists the Times spoke with said it’s currently on track.
Whether it's part of NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative (LSII) is not sure. LSII works across industry, academia, non-profits, and other government agencies to catalyze technology development that will enable robotic and human exploration of the Moon and future operations on Mars. NASA's plan involves sending a 3-D printer to the Moon and utilizing specialized lunar concrete derived from lunar rock chips, mineral fragments, and dust on the lunar surface to build structures layer by layer. Technological advancements and collaborations with universities and private companies have made this ambitious plan possible.
NASA's director of technology maturation, Niki Werkheiser, expressed, "We're at a pivotal moment, and in some ways, it feels like a dream sequence. In other ways, it feels like it was inevitable that we would get here." She emphasized NASA's openness to partnering with academics and industry leaders, expanding the possibilities for lunar construction. One major challenge in establishing a lunar presence is the abrasive lunar dust, which can be toxic when inhaled. However, this challenge has led to innovative solutions. Raymond Clinton Jr., senior technical adviser at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, proposed using lunar soil as a construction material. He believes that just as homes on Earth can be 3-D printed from local soil, lunar homes can be printed using moon soil, allowing for construction in the harsh lunar environment.