Cleantech Group

🚦Green Hydrogen: Progress slows as challenges mount… The green hydrogen boom has hit a slowdown, with fewer projects reaching final investment decision than expected. Less than 7% of the announced electrolytic capacity had passed the FID stage globally, while other key projects are being delayed or canceled. In spite of regulatory hurdles, growing project costs, long-term offtake agreements and slow grid connections as major obstacles, how can projects progress and what to expect from new hydrogen use cases? Learn more about the challenges facing the industry in Selene Law's perspective: https://hubs.ly/Q02SWFXF0 Ammobia, ITM Power, Hydrogen Council, HyEnergy, Hy Stor Energy, Leader Associates #GreenHydrogen #RenewableEnergy #cleantech

If you're able to make it to the Oeiras Bluetech Ocean Forum, please let Cleantech Group's Amelie Desrochers know if you'd like to meet. Amelie will be speaking on the panel, "AI in Ports, Shipping and Shipbuilding Case Studies." Be part of the movement shaping the future of our oceans and energy systems.

Plastic production will double by 2050, and so will plastic-related emissions — how are recycling technologies stepping up to solve the issue?🧪🫧♻️ While some countries with comprehensive waste infrastructure have achieved recycling rates over 50%, the global nature of plastic waste cannot be mitigated by these outliers or by mechanical recycling alone. Mechanical recycling works for PET and HDPE but struggles with other plastics, producing lower-value, contaminated recyclate. Advanced recycling methods like pyrolysis and depolymerization have expanded in the last five years, with pyrolysis converting mixed waste into fuel and depolymerization excelling in PET recycling. However, the newest method, solvent dissolution, is more efficient and capable of handling a wider range of plastics. Two primary pathways in solvent dissolution have emerged, classified by what the solvent targets: delamination and selective dissolution. The method provides environmental benefits without compromising output volume, offering an estimated 50% and 26% improvement compared to pyrolysis and depolymerization, respectively. While solvent dissolution is not a magic bullet, it substantially improves plastic’s recyclability and environmental impact. Learn more about the promise of solvent dissolution and emerging innovators in the space in Parker J. Bovée's latest perspective: https://hubs.li/Q02SL5-V0 Polystyvert, PureCycle Technologies, APK AG, Worn Again Technologies

Mining is environmentally disruptive, here are some innovators looking to reduce the industry's pollution, erosion, and ecosystem impacts: Genomines: Genetically engineer plants to absorb nickel from soil or mining tailings not viable for traditional extraction methods while improving soil health. Maverick BioMetals: Utilize a unique enzyme and "in-situ" lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earth element extraction technology. Technology injects an enzyme formulation into a mineral rich deposit, dissolves target metals, and recovers them without the need for open-pit mining. RemePhy: Engineering metal-hyperaccumulating plants to remediate soils while recycling valuable rare earth metals. Impossible Metals Inc.: Underwater robotics company turning to the ocean for seafloor deposits of manganese and iron oxides, cobalt, nickel, and copper. The company uses robotics to extract nodules, circular masses of manganese and iron oxides formulated over millions of years. Significant media attention around potential marine ecosystem disruption has forced the company to reduce direct contact with seafloors and conduct thorough environmental impact assessments. A company to watch for sure!

Here are last week's top climatetech fundings, as curated by Cleantech Group 👇 👀 (Find out more about our research and consulting capabilities: i3connect.com) 🌾 Agriculture & Food entosystem 🇨🇦, producer of animal feed and biofertilizers from insects fed on agrifood waste streams, raised $58M growth equity funding from Idealist Capital, Fondaction, and Sanimax. It will use the funds to increase production capacity at its existing facility and construct a second commercial-scale plant. 💡 Energy & Power: Submer 🇪🇸, developers of a liquid immersion cooling solution for data centers, raised $55.5M in growth equity funding from M&G Investments, Mundi Ventures, Planet First Partners, and Norrsken VC. The funding will be used to explore new business opportunities and boost customer acquisition. 🧪 Materials & Chemicals: BIOVOX GmbH 🇩🇪, developer of sustainable bioplastics for medical applications, raised $2.46M in Seed funding from HTGF | High-Tech Gründerfonds, bmh, Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund, Business Angels FrankfurtRheinMain e.V. and others. The funds will accelerate development and production of its solutions. 🌲 Resources & Environmental Management: Enlaye 🇺🇸, developer of a risk lifecycle management platform for the built environment, raised $1.7M in a Seed round from Glasswing Ventures and Hannah Grey VC. The company intends to use the funds to expand operations and business reach. 🚚 Transport & Logistics: Nevoya 🇺🇸, developer of zero emissions trucking technology, raised $3M in Seed funding from RedBlue Capital, Third Sphere, Necessary Ventures, CIRI Ventures, and Never Lift. The funding will allow the company to scale its engineering, product, and operations teams. ♻️ Waste & Recycling Ascend Elements 🇺🇸, developer of hydrometallurgy battery recycling solutions, received a $125M grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to rapidly scale its battery recycling facilities and begin graphite recovery operations. #cleantech #climatetech #greeneconomy #greentech #decarbonization #emissionsreduction #netzero #innovation #startups #venturecapital Image credit: Submer

Extending a belated congratulations to Nicholas Parker and Shivani Chotalia, P.Eng. for hitting the ground running with their inaugural CleanAI Summit last week, with the launch of the CleanAI Initiative. This one was a lot of fun to speak at - nothing quite like the launch of a new community to get great conversations going. A few takeaways from the day's discussions: - While the "sledgehammer" AI of large language models (LLMs) get much of the buzz, the growth opportunity is in the "scalpels" of narrow, industry-focused approaches. A labor shortage, the "Covid hangover" is still persisting in many industries - the new advances in AI are allowing for more tools aimed at supporting efficiency of process engineers, versus the traditional tools that served data scientists & management. - The impending spike in power demand for data centers is well-documented. There are innovation opportunities in sustainability of AI infrastructure (cooling, water use, power-efficient chips) but also in use case efficiency (shifting to small language models, models that can train matching renewables intermittency). - The entire power system stands to become more efficient and resilient, as AI becomes more able to pre-train grids for thousands of scenarios that they may not have experienced yet. Check out the physics-informed digital twin capabilities that Josh Wong is developing at ThinkLabs AI, Inc. - The water system, too, will see many benefits from AI, but given the immediate health implications of changes to the water system, we should adopt a mindset of steady and measurable improvements versus immediate breakthroughs. XPV Water Partners gave a perspective that in water, AI winners will be the "chip-away" solutions that bring better quality data and reliability to systems. - Generally, it was great to see people taking the long view on the benefits and not getting distracted by the short-term trends. Shout out to Djoann Fal and 🌏 The Atlas Capital & Climate Tech Coalition for putting together a portfolio with AI playing a role in everything from fusion microreactor design & testing (Avalanche Energy) to crop genome analysis (Avalo, Inc). Congrats again, and looking forward to seeing the continued progress at the CleanAI Initiative! Cleantech Group

Looking for the latest #cleantech investment deals? Find the innovators worth watching: 🌾 Agriculture & Food: entosystem, producer of animal feed and biofertilizers from insects fed on agri-food waste streams. ⚡ Energy & Power: Submer, liquid immersion cooling solutions for data centers. 🔬 Materials & Chemicals: Anaphite, developer of techniques incorporating graphene into Li-ion batteries to improve battery life and charging times. 🌊 Resources & Environmental Management: an all-in-one platform for ESG metrics from Atlas Metrics. 🚜 Transportation & Logistics: autonomous electric airplanes for various applications, including crop spraying by Pyka. ♻️ Waste and Recycling: Cyclic Materials, a circular supply chain platform that facilitates the recycling of critical metals. See more in Arianna Bernas latest Recent Deals: https://hubs.li/Q02SCvQM0

🚨 Applications are now open for Breakthrough Energy Fellows! 🚨 I have had the pleasure of working with the BE Fellows team this year through the Cleantech Group <> Breakthrough Energy Fellows partnership, helping to explore opportunities to expand their technology and regional presence. I'm continually inspired by their commitment to accelerating early-stage climate tech solutions, especially in emerging regions. BE Fellows is seeking early-stage climatetech innovators working on solutions with the potential to reduce 500M tons of GHG emissions/year. Selected Fellows will receive significant R&D funding, technical and commercialization support, and access to Breakthrough Energy’s global network. 💡 Know someone who should apply? Applications are due by December 2. 👉 Learn more and apply: befellows.smapply.org Taylor Carvalho Karp Meghan Bader #ClimateTech #Cleantech #Sustainability #GHGReduction #Innovation

Only ~0.5% of textiles are made using recycled textile waste. But there is hope! Mechanical recycling really struggles with textiles due to blended/mixed fibers, additives, and colorants. Mixed textile waste is very diverse, featuring synthetic or natural polymers consisting of cotton, nylon, spandex, dyes, and finishes. Traditional “advanced/chemical recycling” approaches for textiles focus on depolymerization techniques targeting polyester from Polyethylene terephthalate (PET). But this isn’t a silver bullet. Retrieving polyester usually requires extensive sorting and separation prior to recycling. Without this, recyclers risk damaging fibers or produce lower value products. PET’s estimated ~50% market share of global fiber production (Textile Exchange) is putting recyclers in a difficult position: Should recyclers use low-purity feedstock to produce lower quality products (insulation, mattress stuffing) or should they invest heavily in modern sortation equipment that could be outdated in just a year or so? Erha Andini, Pooja Bhalode, Evan Gantert , Sunitha Sadula, and Dionisios Vlachos published a paper recently proposing an alternative. The team began with real postconsumer mixed textile waste consisting of polyester, cotton, nylon, and spandex. Using microwave (MW)–assisted glycolysis over a ZnO catalyst, the team degraded polyester and spandex into monomers before producing intact cotton and nylon using 90% formic acid at room temperature. (Visual below) Combining both solvent dissolution and depolymerization is a fascinating approach maximizing material recovery options. The team’s research did find that dyes and finishes led to lower yields, requiring more research. The team also emphasized a need to recover EG solvent and water within the reaction. Another excellent example of academic leadership in the recycling field with support from University of Delaware and Center for Plastics Innovation. Full paper here: https://lnkd.in/gYdByM4M

"Ukraine’s famously fertile black soil can produce enough food to feed a billion people, but interest is shifting toward what’s under that soil: rare and valuable mineral and metal resources — lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and titanium to name only some. The country also holds an estimated 1 trillion cubic metres of untapped natural gas, though pre-war production was stalled at around 21 billion cubic metres annually. “Ukraine has the largest deposits of lithium in Europe," claims Roman Opimakh, General Director of the State Geological Service of Ukraine. "The discovered reserves of lithium, graphite, nickel and iron ore... Will be enough to produce Li-batteries with a total capacity of 1,000 gigawatt hours (GWh) to support the manufacturing of around 20 million electric vehicles or be used to produce other devices.”" Unfortunately, due to the Russian war on the Ukraine, mines have been shut down. LINK: https://lnkd.in/eHDnw9fy