July Week 4, 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
1. Klimate
Founded:
2020 – Copenhagen, Denmark
Founders:
Simon Bager, Katja Grothe-Eberhardt and Erik Wihlborg
Elevator Pitch:
On a mission to scale the carbon removal industry by connecting projects and buyers with efficient financing.
Problem they solve:
We need urgent action. Reducing is no longer enough.
The most important action for responsible companies is to reduce their emissions as fast as possible. However, there is growing consensus, that it will no longer be enough to stay within the goals set forward in The Paris agreement.
Stop wasting good money on bad offsets
Companies have limited capabilities to when it comes to sourcing and analysing solutions for offsetting emissions. Even with the best intentions, companies end up investing in solutions that have limited impact on climate change and put them at risk of greenwashing.
The technologies that can help us reverse climate change are underdeveloped
The solutions are out there, but they are currently underdeveloped and need early adopters in order to scale up capacity and reduce cost. Without responsible companies willing to take action, technologies will not be scaled in time to reverse climate change.
Impact:
We empower responsible companies to achieve Net Zero and accelerate Carbon Removal Technologies
Responsible companies need to stop wasting good money on bad offsets. We provide access to high-quality, innovative, and verifiable carbon removal solutions aligned with science.
We strategically finance projects based on environmental responsibility as well as social and economic development.
Our core purpose is to scale and accelerate the development of carbon removal methods and technologies needed to reverse climate change.
Stage:
Seed
Interested in Klimate?
To learn more about their technology or get in touch, see here
Agriculture, Forestry and Land Use
2. natcap
Founded:
2018 – London, UK
Founders: Kathy Willis
Elevator Pitch:
The nature platform for enterprise & finance. We are a nature intelligence platform and we build products to help corporates manage nature risk, set nature targets, and meet emerging reporting requirements – analogous to how software platforms have improved carbon accounting & climate risk.
Problem they solve:
Nature-related risks and opportunities. Corporates need to manage nature risk, set nature targets, and meet emerging reporting requirements.
Impact:
What we take: We ingest world leading satellite, drone, and field data, alongside automated collection of any asset and management level data you can provide.
What we do: Our nature engine overlays these data sources, leveraging our proprietary geospatial models, to measure location specific and management sensitive impacts and dependencies on nature.
What you get: A prioritised view of your impacts and dependencies on nature at the site level, and aggregated to loan book or portfolio.
Unlike the existing fragmented landscape of tools, we provide an integrated tech solution to ensure you are getting the intelligence most relevant to your business.
Stage:
Seed
Interested in natcap?
If you are interested in learning more, see here.
Agriculture, Forestry and Land Use
3. VFlowTech
Founded:
2018 – Singapore
Founders:
Avishek Kumar
Elevator Pitch:
VFlowTech is a Singapore-based energy storage solutions provider manufacturing low-cost and efficient modular vanadium redox flow batteries.
Problem they solve:
Energy storage solutions are critical to unlocking the potential of renewables. However, most battery solutions today are unsafe and not economically scalable for large-scale storage due to their performance degradation and short lifespan. Currently, lithium-ion, lead-acid, NiMH, and super capacitors are the most used products for energy storage solutions. However, they continue to face a myriad of challenges today. No single technology can meet all the demands for high energy and high power storage. Fire and explosion risk. Uses toxic heavy metals. Cannot be recycled. Performance of these degrade over time.
Impact:
To cater to the demands of the market for now and the future, VFlowTech has invested heavily in reinventing and developing PowerCube as energy storage of choice across a wide array of applications. From reliability to scalability to cost, VFlowTech’s PowerCube checks all the boxes and outperforms many of the solutions available today. While no single technology can meet all the demands for energy and energy storage, VFlowTech’s PowerCube provides reliable, affordable and safe energy storage for high power and high energy applications.
Stage:
Series A
Want to learn more about VFlowTech?
To learn more about their technology or get in touch see here.
Cross-cutting enablers
4. Waterplan
Founded:
2020 – San Francisco Bay Area, USA
Leadership:
Matías Comercio, José Ignacio S. Galindo and Nicolas Wertheimer
Elevator Pitch:
Waterplan is the world’s leading all-in-one climate platform to Measure, Respond and Report your increasingly changing water risk.
Problem they solve:
The UN predicts a 40% global deficit in water supply by 2030 and the cost of inaction on water security is 5X the cost of response. The time has come to take action and we have created the first SaaS platform to do so, revolutionizing water stewardship.
Impact:
Waterplan allows you to assess your vulnerability & reach net-zero water targets faster by continuously monitoring watersheds using remote sensing technologies and publicly available data.
We are currently providing water resilience planning to numerous companies and organizations including Coca-Cola, Colgate, ABInBev, AWS, Meta, McCain, Diageo, Kurita, Omya, the Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable (BIER), and The Nature Conservancy.
Water is the new carbon, incorporate Waterplan and adapt to the ever-increasing challenges of climate change.
Stage:
Series A
Interested in Waterplan?
To learn more about this company, see here
Waste (water & landfills)
5. Yangi
Founded:
2022 – Varberg, Hallands län, Sweden
Founder:
Anna Altner
Elevator Pitch:
Say hello to Yangi, the caring paper packaging system that closes the loop.
Problem they solve:
Polluting nature of plastics, and limitations of current recycling systems.
Impact:
Yangi is a manufacturing technology for dry formed cellulose-based packaging. With over 10 years of R&D work behind us, and by combining two technology platforms it is possible to go from paper pulp into ready-made packaging in one machine line, using minimal amounts of water.
With its high performance, low cost and environmental impact Yangi can replace rigid plastic packaging without compromising quality or economy.
• Recyclable material that is compatible with existing recycling systems
• Renewable raw materials from sustainable forests
• 75% Lower CO2 emission than plastic.
• 75% Lower energy and water consumption compared to wet molding
• 30% Lower cost than existing bio-based solutions
• Efficient production with low cycle times
Stage:
Seed
Interested in Yangi?
If you are interested in learning more, 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 400+ climate tech startups to watch we have featured.
