Meet the start-ups turning climate solutions into reality

Straits Times

19-06-2025

(From left) Ms Heng Li Lang, head of Climate and Liveability at Temasek Foundation, Krosslinker chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder Gayathri Natarajan, Ayrton Energy co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) Brandy Kinkead, Krosslinker co-founder, CTO and engineering director Mahesh Sachithanadam, and Temasek Foundation executive director and CEO Ng Boon Heong. Each start-up won $1 million in catalytic funding as winners of The Liveability Challenge 2025. PHOTO: TEMASEK FOUNDATION
BRANDED CONTENT From passive cooling paint to accessible hydrogen storage: Meet the start-ups turning climate solutions into reality The winners of The Liveability Challenge are turning climate science into real-world solutions – making buildings cooler, energy cleaner, and our net-zero future closer
As temperatures soar and carbon emissions grow, two innovative start-ups have emerged with groundbreaking solutions to help combat global warming.
Krosslinker and Ayrton Energy – the winners of this year's edition of The Liveability Challenge (TLC) – are tackling climate change with technologies that transform how we cool our buildings and power our industries respectively.
Through TLC, each start-up secured $1 million in catalytic funding to scale their innovations: Krosslinker's aerogel-based paint that provides passive cooling to keep buildings cooler and Ayrton Energy's system that makes it easier and more affordable to store and transport hydrogen, a zero-emission fuel crucial for industry decarbonisation.
The eighth edition of TLC, which is presented by Temasek Foundation and organised by Eco-Business, attracted over 1,200 submissions from 100 countries – a record that signals the growing global momentum behind climate tech innovation.
In addition to the grand prize, both start-ups received further funding from TLC's strategic partners to support their scale-up efforts. Krosslinker received $100,000 from the Octave Well-being Economy Fund, while Ayrton Energy secured a total of $200,000 – with $100,000 each from TRIREC and Valuence Ventures.
'At Temasek Foundation, we believe in the urgency of supporting bold and deep-tech innovative solutions that can drive real progress in decarbonising our planet, and keeping our environment cool even with rising temperatures,' says Ms Heng Li Lang, head of Climate and Liveability at Temasek Foundation.
'Our catalytic funding shows our commitment to helping innovators turn promising ideas into working prototypes that can scale.'
Here's how these two climate innovations are accelerating the world's journey towards a net-zero future by 2050.
Helping to cool the planet
Real-world testing in Abu Dhabi showed Krosslinker's paint reduced surface temperatures by 30 deg C in extreme desert heat. PHOTOS: KROSSLINKER
In cities like Singapore, rising temperatures have driven up air-conditioning use – which, ironically, adds to global warming. According to the National Environment Agency, air-conditioning accounts for a significant share of carbon emissions from homes and offices.
Krosslinker, a Singapore-based start-up, aims to tackle this with its aerogel-based paint that passively cools buildings. Made from a special formula of advanced materials, the paint reflects heat, insulates and emits infrared radiation to lower surface temperatures – reducing the ambient indoor temperature and easing the load on air-conditioners.
'We're expecting the surface temperature to drop by at least 10 deg C, which could lower indoor temperatures by more than 5 deg C,' says Dr Gayathri Natarajan, co-founder of Krosslinker. 'That means air-conditioners won't have to work as hard, leading to significant savings on electricity – around 10 per cent in energy use.'
The impact goes beyond homes and offices. Industrial buildings like data centres and storage facilities stand to benefit significantly from reduced cooling demand and lower emissions.
To make widespread adoption possible, Krosslinker is working to improve both the performance and affordability of its aerogel products. Producing thermal materials is typically energy-intensive and costly – a challenge the start-up is addressing through its proprietary manufacturing technology.
(From left) Temasek Foundation CEO Ng Boon Heong presents the TLC award to Krosslinker co-founders Gayathri Natarajan and Mahesh Sachithanadam. PHOTO: TEMASEK FOUNDATION
'Cooling is not a luxury, it's a necessity. Yet over one billion people do not have access to affordable cooling,' notes Dr Gayathri.
'We need to create a solution that is not just technically-savvy, but also accessible to anybody. We don't want aerogel to stay in labs or to be locked in patents; we want them on rooftops and shipping containers, doing real work.'
Beyond paint, the company is developing aerogel-based coatings and panels for pipelines, storage tanks, refrigerated trucks and battery protection in electric vehicles. It is also setting up a dedicated production facility in Singapore to scale up output.
Support from platforms like TLC is crucial, says Dr Gayathri, as deep-tech start-ups often face high uncertainty.
'If technology pioneers do not have platforms and policies to support them, these solutions would die at a very early stage,' she says.
New way to store and transport hydrogen
Ayrton Energy staff being briefed on hydrogen storage in liquid form at room temperature. PHOTO: AYRTON ENERGY
Hydrogen is a clean, abundant fuel with vast potential to replace traditional, emission-heavy energy sources. But despite its promise, the high cost and complexity of transporting and storing hydrogen have held it back from mainstream use.
Canada-based start-up Ayrton Energy is tackling this problem head-on. The company has developed a chemical process that binds hydrogen with a carrier oil, forming a stable liquid that can be stored and transported like diesel – safely, at room temperature and pressure, using existing infrastructure.
'It's very safe and can be handled like diesel. So it can be stored in standard tanks, trucks, pipelines and rail cars. You can store it for a long duration, or take it for a long distance,' says Ms Natasha Kostenuk, one of the two co-founders.
While the use of liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHC) is not new, Ayrton's method is more efficient and cheaper than current LOHC systems, which typically require high pressures and complex equipment. Ayrton's process fits into a shipping container-sized unit that can produce and store up to 3 tonnes of hydrogen daily – a fraction of the footprint of chemical plants usually needed for traditional methods.
(From left) Ayrton Energy co-founders Natasha Kostenuk and Brandy Kinkead. PHOTO: AYRTON ENERGY
'That dramatically reduces the adoption costs for the industry,' says Ms Kostenuk. 'If we can decouple the production of hydrogen from end-use, it will drive the cost of hydrogen down and increase energy security for regions that don't currently have the ability to make their own energy or are relying on imports of oil and gas.'
Ayrton's journey began when Ms Kostenuk and co-founder Dr Brandy Kinkead set out to build hydrogen generators but ran into storage issues.
'Everywhere we looked, we couldn't find a good answer for storage,' recalls Ms Kostenuk. 'Then we came up with our own solution.'
The TLC catalytic funding will help Ayrton scale up starting in Canada and the US. From transporting 0.3kg to 30kg of hydrogen per day, Ayrton now aims to reach 1 to 3 tonnes per day to serve commercial users like refuelling stations.
'Hydrogen is going to be a big part of the energy space,' says Ms Kostenuk. 'We envision helping energy security and decarbonisation, and leave the planet better for our children.'
Driving global climate tech innovation
Beyond The Liveability Challenge (TLC), Temasek Foundation has spearheaded global platforms – including the Climate Impact Innovations Challenge in Indonesia, Net Zero Challenge in Vietnam and Green Future Innovation Challenge in China – to crowdsource for disruptive solutions to tackle urgent sustainability challenges.
Since 2018, this network of global challenges has crowdsourced more than 6,600 submissions from over 100 countries, through a network of more than 200 partners. Twenty-one solutions were supported with $15 million in funding to help them scale up and commercialise their innovations to make a long-lasting global impact, attracting close to $600 million of further investments.
Read more about Temasek Foundation and The Liveability Challenge.
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