June 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
1. Fervo Energy
Founded:
2017 – Houston, Texas USA
Founders:
Tim Latimer and Jack Norbeck
Elevator Pitch:
Fervo Energy provides 24/7 carbon-free energy from next-gen geothermal power projects.
Problem they solve: Demand for 24/7 carbon-free energy is soaring as its role in addressing climate change becomes more widely recognised.
Power buyers are seeking to bolster reliability, reduce costs, and meet clean energy mandates, corporations are voluntarily establishing 24/7 carbon-free electricity targets, and the federal government is mandating that federal facilities be powered by carbon free power by 2030.
Impact:
Our mission is to leverage innovation in geoscience to accelerate the clean energy transition by providing cost-effective, reliable geothermal energy.
We employ precision directional drilling technology to drill horizontally in geothermal reservoirs. This enables us to drill multiple wells from a single location, dramatically lowering our surface footprint and reducing drilling risks. Horizontal drilling also facilitates greater access to geologies that were previously challenging to reach, increasing the total resource potential for geothermal energy.
Stage:
Series C plus Corporate Round
Interested in Fervo Energy?
To learn more about their technology or get in touch, see here.
Energy use in Industry and Buildings
Founded:
2019 – London, UK
Founders:
Francis Lempp, Nadiur Rahman and Archie Watts-Farmer
Elevator Pitch:
Developing the world’s most efficient, fuel agnostic, net-zero powertrains.
Problem they solve:
Tackling the trillion dollar challenge of decarbonising industry, long-haul transport & off-grid power.
Carnot is targeting the hardest to abate sectors marine, long haul road freight and primary off grid power.
These sectors are facing an unprecedented shift and rapidly looking to innovation to achieve net zero. Carnot offers the most suitable powertrain to decarbonise these markets.
Impact:
Our missions is to reduce global CO2 emissions by 13%, accelerating the world transition to net zero by bringing clean, affordable & scalable power to some of the hardest to decarbonise applications.
At the core of our powertrains is the world’s most efficient engine, operating at 70% thermal efficiency. Using innovative engine design and advanced technical ceramics, we have eliminated the need for any cooling system and maximise the energy extracted from the fuel as useful work as opposed to waste heat. Our powertrains use half as much fuel for the same work compared to diesel which leads to much reduced fuel costs and a 35% reduction in overall cost of ownership. The technology is completely fuel agnostic, meaning these benefits can be applied working with biofuels, e-fuels, hydrogen, ammonia or even fuel blends.
Stage:
Seed
Interested in Carnot Engines?
If you are interested in learning more, see here.
Cross-cutting enablers
3. Cambrium
Founded:
2020 – Berlin, Germany
Founders:
Charlie Cotton and Mitchell Duffy
Elevator Pitch:
Cambrium’s mission is to trigger the next wave of material innovation by harnessing biology’s molecular building blocks.
Problem they solve:
Beneath the surface of the products we use every day lies an uncomfortable truth; almost all of them owe their origins to the oil field, the strip mine or the slaughterhouse.
The materials that we’ve come to rely on are driving us towards ecological crisis. To create new, sustainable products we need new, sustainable materials.
Impact:
Using our molecular design technology, we create novel material building blocks with previously inaccessible functionalities. Our molecules enable innovators to create products that are better for people, and the planet.
NovaColl™ is the first micro-molecular & skin-identical collagen, designed specifically for highly efficacious skin care formulations. Rather than extracting it from animals, we grow our micro-molecular collagen through a precision fermentation process.
Stage:
Seed
Want to learn more about Cambrium?
To learn more about their technology or get in touch see here.
Cross-cutting enablers
4. Krill Design
Founded:
2018 – Milan, Italy
Leadership:
Ivan Calimani, Yack H. Di Maio, and Martina Lamperti
Elevator Pitch:
We create design products in a sustainable and innovative way.
Problem they solve:
We believe that sustainability, love of nature and passion for new technologies allow us to bring about a significant change in the world of design.
Impact:
We transform recycled raw materials such as orange peels, lemon peels and coffee scraps into Rekrill®: an innovative 100% organic and resistant material
We thus create on-demand design objects with 3D printers to give new life to your environments, both at home and in the office.
Stage:
Seed
Interested in Krill Design?
To learn more about this company, see here
GHG Capture, Use, and Storage
5. CUR8
Founded:
2022 – London, UK
Founder:
Marta Krupinska, Mark Stevenson and Gabrielle Walker
Elevator Pitch:
CUR8 is dedicated to building the global market for carbon removals.
Problem they solve:
Even if we do everything else right on reducing emissions, the world still needs to remove up to 220 Gigatonnes of carbon from the atmosphere by 2050.
You can’t reach net zero without removals.
Impact:
We’re not a marketplace. We work with the best nature and technology partners to build removals portfolios of the highest quality, and help get us on the exponential to reach 10 billion tonnes of removals by 2050.
Stage:
Pre-seed
Interested in CUR8?
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.
