Many things that we do on this planet eventually generate the greenhouse gases that constitute the growing carbon footprint that can no longer be ignored. As governments are actively seeking ways to introduce effective measures against the threatening pace of climate change, the investors’ interest in the cleantech sector increases.
The rise of green tech has inspired many entrepreneurs and scientists to step forward with innovative solutions that have the potential of reversing the damage that humanity has made to Planet Earth. As the goal of reaching “Net Zero” by 2050 still remains miraculous, technology seems to be our main hope for positive change.
What Can Be Done to Reduce Carbon Footprint?
✅ Develop green air travel technologies
Aviation accounts for up to 2-3% of carbon dioxide emissions. It’s much less than the amount coming from electricity or agriculture, yet these figures are much more significant than they may seem: thanks to the pandemic, the overall amount of emissions in 2020 dropped by a few hundred million tons. As since then we’ve got back to full-scale traveling, it’s pointless to hope for a reduction in air travel in the near future – so the only way to deal with it is to make it more sustainable.
It’s highly unlikely that we will have access to zero-emissions air travel in the near future, but the foundation for developing such options has been set. In the future, we are likely to see more aviation companies switching to sustainable biofuel, an increasingly growing number of eclectic jets, and possibly hydrogen-powered planes.
Startups to watch:
Sylphaero
Country: France
Founding year: 2020
What they do: The company focuses on facilitating the adoption of alternative engines in aviation by developing electric batteries, propulsion systems, solar cells, and the actual engines that efficiently convert electricity into heat.
Tessomo Technologies
Country: Ireland
Founding year: 2018
What they do: While biofuel may seem like a great alternative to traditional fossil fuels, its production may easily result in an uncompensated amount of CO2 – thus completely neutralizing the positive effect of its adoption. To fight this problem, Tessomo Technologies have introduced a solution for transforming recycled waste into liquid fuel.
ZeroAvia
Country: Britain / USA
Founding year: 2017
What they do: This startup has already raised $140 for developing alternative flying technologies based on renewable hydrogen-powered aviation. Although its first test flights will reportedly be hybrid, the company’s vision is to make completely emission-free flights possible in the foreseeable future.
✅ Electric transport development
It’s probably needless to say that cars and other vehicles moving off fossil fuel energy cause enormous damage to our climate. Although many car manufacturers have already introduced various electric alternatives to traditional means of transport, a large number of issues in this field still remain unsolvable.
How do we make electric cars more affordable for the population? How long will it take to build the outstanding charging infrastructure in every location? Finally, how do we make the electric vehicle manufacturing process less harmful? These tech ventures might offer us some answers.
Startups to watch:
Hylico
Country: France
Founding year: 2021
What they do: The company offers commercial carbon-negative electric vehicles. Hylico trucks are due to be released in 2023 with a promise to run on hydrogen produced via biomass thermolysis – a process of transforming waste from the wood industry into organic charcoal fertilizer.
Nowos
Country: Netherlands
Founding year: 2019
What they do: Nowos helps cut the need for battery manufacturing by bringing new energy to the existing batteries. The startup specializes in repairing, refurbishing, and recycling lithium batteries in order to make the electric vehicle industry more sustainable.
VinFast
Country: Vietnam
Founding year: 2017
What they do: The company focuses on manufacturing all-electric sport-utility vehicles with a special subscription scheme for battery maintenance. The consumers signing up for the subscription are eligible for free battery maintenance and replacement as its capacity drops over time.
✅ Reduce animal product consumption
Meat production is by far one of the most environmentally harmful industries. It’s one of the major causes of deforestation, loss of biodiversity, excessive water usage – and greenhouse gas emissions. Animals – particularly cows and sheep – create enormous amounts of methane as they digest food and produce manure. Overall, the meat and dairy industry is responsible for about 14,5% of global greenhouse emissions.
While simply lowering the consumption of meat is already a significant step towards more sustainable agricultural practices, what would make a real difference at this point is a synergy of different technologies offering animal product alternatives.
Startups to watch:
Air Protein
Country: USA
Founding year: 2019
What they do: This startup strives to become a carbon-negative company by transforming captured CO2 into alternative meat. The technology is based on the findings made by NASA scientists, who discovered that a certain type of microbes can convert carbon dioxide combined with water and energy into highly nutritious protein.
vly
Country: Germany
Founding year: 2019
What they do: As it’s become clear that soy products can be just as harmful to the environment as meat, green tech enthusiasts have been on the lookout for better alternatives – and this German startup seems to have found one. Vly produces vegan milk made from yellow spit peas – a great source of natural protein with a much lower carbon footprint.
Jiminy’s
Country: USA
Founding year: 2016
What they do: A large percentage of our meat consumption comes from pet food manufacturing. This company has come up with a creative approach to the problem by replacing the meat protein in dog food with insect protein – or, specifically, crickets. Jiminy’s produces healthy and sustainable nutrition for pets that seems to be appreciated by both the owners and their pets.
✅ Capture CO2 from the atmosphere
One of the ways to reverse greenhouse emissions is to capture carbon dioxide from the air. A huge problem with the current technologies for direct CO2 capturing is, however, that such machines use an unjustifiable amount of global energy supplies. That’s why this topic has been one of the hottest challenges for climate tech ventures – a sustainable and scalable way to collect CO2 is yet to be discovered.
Consequently, the other focus for climate tech startups is the actual utilization of the captured gas. Turns out there are many ways to put CO2 into sustainable production, with more and more creative approaches coming up as the technology evolves.
Startups to watch:
Carbon Infinity
Country: United Kingdom
Founding year: 2019
What they do: This startup is determined to introduce a modular technology that would make capturing CO2 easier and more cost-effective, making carbon removal a largely scalable technology. The vision of the company is to de-fossilize the economy by extracting and storing large amounts of greenhouse gas for industrial use.
SeeO2
Country: Canada
Founding year: 2019
What they do: This startup has focused its solutions on converting the captured carbon dioxide into sustainable fuels and chemicals for industrial use. SeeO2 is currently developing reversible solid oxide fuel cells that would make it possible to convert water into hydrogen and carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide.
Aether Diamonds
Country: USA
Founding year: 2019
What they do: The company claims to have produced the world’s first diamonds made from air. Aether Diamonds offers sustainable jewelry featuring precious stones that were created in the lab setting using captured CO2. While their mined analogs cause irreparable damage to our planet because of the harmful extraction process, the lab-manufactured diamonds contribute to reducing global warming without compromising their beauty.
✅ Maximise the potential of alternative energy resources
It’s not all about wind turbines and solar energy panels – there’s much more to alternative energy resources that are yet to be discovered and scaled. Various ways of extracting clean fuels and sustainable electricity from repurposed waste processed CO2, and other non-traditional sources provide an array of different niches for startups to take over.
While many of the existing technologies for alternative energy extraction are still relatively hard to scale, the growing number of such solutions gives hope for the massive adoption of these technologies in the future.
Startups to watch:
EH Group
Country: Switzerland
Founding year: 2017
What they do: EH Group explores the green fuel cell technology that transforms the chemical energy of hydrogen cells into sustainable electricity. The company focuses on making compact solutions suitable for mobile and automotive applications that are sensitive to the weight and volume of the devices’ details.
Carbo Culture
Country: Finland
Founding year: 2016
What they do: Carbo Culture has introduced a technology for converting waste biomass into carbon-negative charcoal. The startup prevents the release of CO2 from decomposing plants into the atmosphere by transforming them into biochar and generating usable heat.
Liquid Wind
Country: Sweden
Founding year: 2017
What they do: The company produces a special type of alternative fuel – eMethanol, a liquid fuel made from carbon dioxide and renewable electricity. The company is currently developing its first commercial-scale eMethanol facility in Sweden.
✅ Make green technologies more accessible to consumers
Many eco-friendly technologies are targeting the problems caused by various industrial processes. Meanwhile, we shouldn’t underestimate the input of each household into climate change. It isn’t fair, however, to expect people to invest in solutions that cost far more than their traditional alternatives.
Consumer-friendly technologies for utilizing natural clean energy resources, home-based recycling activities and other things that make our everyday life greener are on the rise – and so are their cost-effective variations.
Startups to watch:
Elfrosun Technologies
Country: India
Founding year: 2018
What they do: Elfrosun Technologies is making solar panels for households more affordable for the population – which especially makes sense considering that the company is heavily focused on its home market, India. Elfrosun raises awareness about the benefits of solar power to gain more recognition and generate interest in the technology.
Aeroshield
Country: USA
Founding year: 2019
What they do: How often do we think about the role of windows in climate change? Yet apparently the way we regulate the temperature in our homes can be transformed by the right technology that will help us preserve the thermal comfort in our homes. This startup develops affordable energy-efficient windows for every household.
Sensorflow
Country: Singapore
Founding year: 2016
What they do: Is it possible to make our leisure travels more environmentally friendly? Yes – and Sensorflow does its best to help. The company provides smart solutions for hotel management and maintenance, saving up to 30% of each facility’s energy costs while reducing the carbon footprint of each hotel room and its inhabitants.
Raising awareness and providing simple instruments for calculating the carbon footprint
It’s hard to be conscious about your carbon footprint when you don’t have a clear idea of how exactly your actions contribute to generating CO2 – and this equally applies to businesses and individuals.
Software solutions and apps that help us track our CO2 input, just as reliable sources of information that help us find out how to be more environmentally conscious, play an important role in making our future a better place.
Startups to watch:
Sync Energy AI
Country: USA
Founding year: 2016
What they do: The startup offers an AI-based predictive software platform for insurance and energy professionals. Sync Energy provides a powerful tool for recreating complex simulations for planning electrical utilities in various conditions, including natural disasters.
Evocco
Country: Ireland
Founding year: 2017
What they do: Evocco is a smart app for helping consumers make the most our of their environmentally-friendly grocery shopping. The tool helps you find the most nutritious food for your everyday cooking with the lowest potential carbon footprint.
Plan A
Country: Germany
Founding year: 2019
What they do: Plan A is one of the many startups that strive to facilitate carbon accounting for businesses. Yet it’s one of the few ones that have created a genuinely convenient platform for measuring, monitoring, and reducing carbon emissions along with providing quality ESG reporting.
Also published here.