February Week 1, 2023: In this monthly series, we highlight 5 climate tech startups to watch by featuring the incredible startups, companies, or projects that are leading the fight against the climate crisis.
Each month, we add these startups to our running list, which we have categorized based on fuel emission sector data from the most detailed, recent data SBC could identify from the World Resource Institute in 2016.
This initiative from Startup Basecamp aims to support founders by giving them access to networking and exposure opportunities that help them to scale and finance their climate tech solutions.
Do not hesitate to join our collective movement by requesting your membership.
With care,
Guillaume and the SBC TEAM,
Energy use in Industry and Buildings
Founded:
2020 – Bakersfield, CA, USA
Founders:
Kemp Gregory, Walker Colt, and Stefan Streckfus
Elevator Pitch:
Renewell is creating the nation’s lowest cost, highest GHG-abating, and most flexible energy storage network by re-purposing oil & gas infrastructure.
Problem they solve:
Renewell has created low-cost, flexible energy storage by cleaning up idle oil & gas wells that account for 2.6 million and emit 6,900,000 metric tons CO2e / yr (the equivalent of 150,000 cars/yr).
Impact:
Renewell converts the millions of stranded inactive oil and gas wells, along with their supporting infrastructure, into the lowest-cost, highest GHG-abating, most flexible energy storage device in the world. By converting ⅓ of all inactive wells in the US, Renewell can create 78,000 MWh of storage (10% of the needed capacity to reach ~80% renewable market share) and abate 2.3MMTCO2e of leaked methane annually (equivalent to removing 500k ICE cars/year).
Renewell retrofits grid-connected inactive wells with a proprietary weight-based energy storage device with an intelligent controls platform that integrates with existing SCADA networks or uses cellular data for remote monitoring/control. This zero-self-discharge, distributed energy storage network can be coordinated to operate simultaneously, sequentially, or anywhere between to generate both short (2-8 hours) and long duration (weeks-months) power, providing first-of-its-kind flexibility and resilience.
Stage:
Seed
Interested in Renewell Energy?
To learn more about their technology or get in touch, see here.
Industry
Founded:
2020 – Leonding, Austria
Founder:
Franz Haller
Elevator Pitch:
Our AI designs and optimizes concrete mixtures for your special use cases. Through our discoveries you can develop better mixtures – fast and simple.
Problem they solve:
We combine mathematical optimization, physical models and AI in a software tool that is able to propose new and promising concrete mix designs with a single click . This makes innovation cycles shorter, cheaper and reduces the number of laboratory experiments significantly.
Impact:
We reduce the time and cost for developing new concrete mixtures. Our new optimization approach results in better reproducible concrete mixtures of higher quality , whose properties have a high stability. Given the specific use case, the tool automatically suggests new and better mix designs through self-adaptive algorithms.
Stage:
Seed
Interested in Mixteresting?
If you are interested in learning more, see here.
Founded:
2019 – Oakland, CA, USA
Founders:
Aaron Fitzgerald and Kristian Gubsch
Elevator Pitch:
Mars Materials (Mars) aims to sequester captured carbon dioxide into everyday products such as affordable carbon fiber, an advanced material used in hundreds of products — from textiles to electronics.
Problem they solve:
We’re currently commercializing technology developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) that produces low-cost, low-carbon acrylonitrile (ACN) using captured-CO₂ and bio-based feedstocks.
ACN is a commodity scale material that’s a building block to carbon fiber, which is used in hundreds of products today. Using ACN as a precursor for carbon fiber will allow Mars to actualize our vision of decarbonizing carbon-intensive industries such as steel and aluminum production.
Impact:
Mars’ mission is to reverse humanity’s industrial waste carbon footprint. Changing how humanity creates and uses these advanced materials can turn carbon-intensive materials into carbon sinks.
Stage:
Pre-Seed
Interested in Mars Materials?
To learn more about this company, see here.
Cross-cutting enablers
Founded:
2022 – Berlin, Germany
Founders:
Christian-Hauke Poensgen and Till Tornieporth
Elevator Pitch:
Maya Climate provides direct access to upfront financing for your natural capital project pipeline.
Problem they solve:
Our technology platform connects project developers with institutional investors on a single platform that digitizes project origination, risk assessment and due diligence.
Impact:
Maya is accelerating investments in Nature-based Solutions to unlock high integrity restoration & conservation projects for environmental markets!
Stage:
Pre-seed
Interested in Maya Climate?
If you are interested in learning more, see here.
GHG Capture, Use, and Storage
Location:
2022 – Dublin, Ireland
Founder:
Maurice Bryson
Elevator Pitch:
We harness the power of enhanced weathering to deliver permanent, scalable and verifiable carbon removal and storage.
Problem They Solve:
Our process sequesters carbon in the geosphere. By mineralising carbon, as opposed to storing it in trees or soils, Silicate can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it for millennia.
Impact:
Our mission is to help arrest climate change by permanently removing 1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2040.
Stage:
Pre-seed
Want to learn more about Silicate?
To learn more about their technology or get in touch see here.
Do you know of other startups we should include in our Startups to Watch Series? Submit to our list!
How do these startups fit in with all the others we have looked at?
Check out our running list of the 350+ climate tech startups to watch we have featured.
