January Week 3, 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,
Cross-cutting enablers
Founded:
2022 – Berlin, Germany
Founders:
Alexandre Peschel and Mattes Groeger
Elevator Pitch:
Atem provides a suite of products to make decarbonization effortless, offering tools for companies working with carbon credits at scale with its API-first approach to empower your carbon operations, automate processes and scale impact.
Problem they solve:
Atem unifies otherwise fragmented and complicated carbon markets behind one, easy-to-use carbon API and web interface.
Impact:
Atem envisions a future on a thriving planet: Humanity in sync with nature in a balanced ecosystem. To help reach net-zero asap, we establish an efficient carbon market.
To get there, we need permissionless (open, transparent systems for everyone to participate in) and automated transacting for market participants (instant, low-cost exchange of offsets and funds).
Stage:
Pre-seed
Interested in Atem?
To learn more about their technology or get in touch, see here.
GHG Capture, Use, and Storage
Founded:
Brooklyn, NY, USA
Founder:
Ryan McIntosh
Elevator Pitch:
We enable the capture of carbon emissions in urban environments before they have a chance to enter the atmosphere and wreak havoc.
Problem they solve:
Our unique carbon capture systems piggyback on top of existing infrastructure and operations across several novel use cases
Impact:
Piggybacking on existing infrastructure is a way to reduce costs and enable carbon capture in cities where ~70% of emissions happen.
Stage:
Pre-seed
Interested in Cedar Carbon?
If you are interested in learning more, see here.
Founded:
2020 – Stockholm, Sweden
Founders:
Cozette Wachtmeister, Anders Ekwall, Linus Liedholm and Micael Soderman
Elevator Pitch:
We reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere FAST through validated and innovative projects.
Problem they solve:
Carbon removal is the process of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and locking it away for decades, centuries or longer. This could slow, limit or even reverse climate change.
Impact:
In addition to calculating emissions, we are Sweden’s first platform that connects companies with innovative, fast and validated ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Stage:
Seed
Interested in Removement?
To learn more about this company, see here.
Founded:
2022 – San, Francisco
Founders:
Mary Yap and Chris Reinhard
Elevator Pitch:
We remove atmospheric carbon for a fraction of the cost while increasing crop yields.
Problem they solve:
Silicate minerals in crushed basalt permanently remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through a natural process called “enhanced rock weathering.”
Impact:
With 3 tons of basalt application you can capture up to 1 ton of CO2. Our software optimizes both for crop yield and carbon capture — making your land as productive as possible while you earn revenue from carbon removal.
Stage:
Seed
Interested in Lithos Carbon?
If you are interested in learning more, see here.
Location:
2021 – Berlin, Germany
Founders:
Silvain Toromanoff and René Haas
Elevator Pitch:
NeoCarbon reverses climate change by dramatically cutting costs of Direct Air Capture leveraging cooling towers around Europe.
Problem They Solve:
According to the IPCC, the UN expert panel on climate change, we will have to remove over 10 billion tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere annually. This is due to the fact that some industries will not be able to cut their emissions completely, for example agriculture and aviation.
Direct Air Capture – or capturing CO₂ directly from the air – is the only technology that enables this to be achieved on an industrial scale. However, today, Direct Air Capture systems are too expensive and time consuming to build, preventing humanity from reaching this goal on time.
Impact:
NeoCarbon uses existing infrastructure in the form of cooling towers to perform DAC at up to 10x lower costs and time, which makes DAC mass-market ready.
Indeed, millions of existing cooling towers around Europe continuously circulate massive amounts of air to remove heat from industrial plants and buildings. By efficiently retrofitting those towers, we remove the carbon dioxide from all this air at very low additional cost. Several billion tons of CO₂ could be captured this way annually, a huge share of humanity’s long-term needs.
Stage:
Pre-seed
Want to learn more about NeoCarbon?
To learn more about their technology or get in touch see here.
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.
