Latest news with #climate tech
Bloomberg
14 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Zero: US Immigration Crackdown Is Bad for Climate Tech
Everywhere you look, it seems like bad news for climate tech. Investments are down, the US government has cut incentives and startups are running out of cash. But venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is still bullish, even though the One Big Beautiful Bill has cut an estimated $500 billion in green spending. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi speaks with Khosla to find out when we can expect to see fusion, whether he's reconsidering investing in the US and why he still thinks the best clean tech is yet to come.
Geek Wire
2 days ago
- Business
- Geek Wire
Aquagga takes top prize at PNW Climate Week event for its battle against ‘forever chemicals'
Sustainability: News about the rapidly growing climate tech sector and other areas of innovation to protect our planet. SEE MORE Aquagga CEO Dhileep Sivam makes his winning pitch at a PNW Climate Week contest held in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Brent Roraback) Six early-stage climate and deep-tech startups faced off at a pitch contest and happy hour in Seattle as part of PNW Climate Week. Entrepreneurs, investors and climate tech enthusiasts packed the Thursday evening event at Stoup Brewing on Capitol Hill. The competing companies are tackling a variety of sustainability challenges, including solar panel recycling, deployment of residential heat pumps and AI-assisted ocean floor surveys. The panel of judges and the crowd both crowned Aquagga as the winner, awarding the startup $1,500 in prize money. The company is developing portable, modular units for destroying PFAS 'forever chemicals' that for years have been used in food packaging, carpets and fabrics, water-repellent clothing and non-stick pans. The chemicals are used to repel water, stains and grease, but they escape from products and contaminate drinking water across the U.S. and are even detected in breast milk. In his presentation, CEO Dhileep Sivam showcased how his startup's technology directly addresses customer pain points. Aquagga eliminates all forms of PFAS while treating wastewater contaminated with additional pollutants, offering a cost-effective onsite alternative to expensive transportation and incineration processes. The crowd and judges consider the top pitch at a PNW Climate Week event at Stoup Brewing. (GeekWire Photo / Brent Roraback) 'We're building something that's going to be really attractive for our customers,' Sivam said. The CEO noted that Aquagga, which launched in 2019, is scaling operations for bigger cleanup projects. The company has secured new contracts with 3M and landed a three-year Colorado deal to process unwanted firefighting foam containing PFAS. The contest's judges were Rodrigo Prudencio, managing partner at Propeller VC; Gabriel Scheer, senior director of innovation for the investment nonprofit Elemental Impact; Dana Robinson, a member of the climate-focused, angel investment group E8; and Alex Young, senior associate at Energy Impact Partners. The event was hosted by E8 and Gliding Ant Ventures, an organization supporting startups pursuing low-carbon technologies. PNW Climate Week is a 10-day regional conference focused on the clean-energy transition with events held in Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue, Portland, Vancouver, B.C., and Bellingham. It runs until Friday. Read on to learn more about the startups, and find more of GeekWire's sustainability tech coverage here. The CEO of startups competing in a PNW Climate Week pitch contest from left: Heather Alvis of Electra; Dhileep Sivam of Aquagga; Alexander Gutierrez of L5 Automation; Jason Puracal of ZILA BioWorks; Victoria Price-Doucet of StrateSea; and Robert Benjamin of Aris Hydronics. On the right are Virginia Emery and Jared Silvia of Gliding Ant Ventures and co-hosts of the event. (GeekWire Photo / Brent Roraback) Business: Building devices that destroy costly, hard-to-treat PFAS chemicals. HQ: Tacoma, Wash. Leadership: CEO Sivam has held leadership roles at Intellectual Ventures and Breakthrough Energy, and served as entrepreneur-in-residence at the University of Washington's Clean Energy Institute. Business: Providing sustainable heating and cooling systems and water heaters in residential settings. The startup designs, sells and installs the systems and provides follow-up data and support. HQ: Milwaukie, Ore. Leadership: Robert Benjamin, founder and CEO, has been a startup advisor, a director and founder in marketing and film production, and studied mechanical engineering. Business: Offering solar panel recycling that includes partnerships with collection centers, transportation to certified recyclers, repurposing with nonprofits where possible, and tracking. HQ: Bellingham, Wash. Leadership: Heather Alvis, founder and CEO, was an operations specialist at Renew Solar, a California company offering solar panel recycling, and held leadership roles overseeing software engineers and business operations at multiple companies. Business: Developing agricultural robots as a service that can provide crop data from in the field and harvest produce, beginning with strawberries. HQ: Los Angeles area Leadership: Alexander Gutierrez, founder and CEO, co-founded the space robotics company Astrobotic Technology and was a research engineer at Lockheed Martin for nine years with a focus on robotics and process automation. Business: Engineering technology using AI to analyze vast quantities of undersea videos collected for offshore construction of wind power and laying cables, and naval surveys for detecting mines and other anomalies. HQ: Portland, Ore. Leadership: Victoria Price-Doucet, co-founder and CEO, was director of data and AI for Slalom; a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and private companies; and global supply chain director with Nike. Business: Developing plant-based resins and epoxies to replace high-carbon alternatives with an initial focus on equipment for skiing and snowboarding. HQ: Renton, Wash. Leadership: Jason Puracal, co-founder and CEO, was a leader in real estate and sustainable infrastructure in Nicaragua, and executive director of the East Shore Unitarian Church in Bellevue, Wash.
Bloomberg
4 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Can Fried Chicken Help Save the World?
Hi, it's Kate Krader, your friendly London-based food editor, but I'm coming in hot from the West Coast of the US this week, on the occasion of the second annual Bloomberg Green Seattle. The event is simultaneously sobering and hopeful about the possibilities of saving the world at this late-in-the-game moment. Food was of course a big topic here: It's many people's 'gateway drug' to sustainability, as one clever attendee told me. And I would say that only one thing outshone this subject at the three-day event—which featured topics as diverse as whether we will ever see EV-style planes and what's in store for climate tech investments as covered by Khosla Ventures LLC Founder Vinod Khosla—and that was the one, the only Jane Fonda.
Geek Wire
6 days ago
- Business
- Geek Wire
‘Invest now': Climate tech advocates push for creative funding as markets decline
Sustainability: News about the rapidly growing climate tech sector and other areas of innovation to protect our planet. SEE MORE Panel at the PNW Climate Week event titled 'Climate Capital Gap' from the left: moderator and GeekWire reporter Lisa Stiffler; Gabriel Scheer, senior director of innovation for Elemental Impact; Bina Shukla, E8 board member; and Eli Lieberman, executive director of the Washington State Green Bank. (E8 Photo) With climate tech investments declining and reduced federal funding from the Trump administration, champions of the sector are calling for creative strategies and widespread participation to bolster financial resources. 'When the markets are down, you buy. So if you have funds, this is the time to join in,' said Bina Shukla, a board member with the Seattle-area, climate investment group E8. 'Invest, invest, invest now.' Climate tech has historically been a challenging sector for attracting funding. It often moves more slowly and involves capital-intensive hardware prototyping compared to software. Clean energy projects may require permitting and regulatory oversight. Scaling takes time and investors need to be patient for their returns. Investments in the sector dropped 19% worldwide from the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2024 — though U.S. investments alone rose by about the same percentage during that time. Investments in early-stage companies declined the most, according to Sightline Climate. Shukla spoke Thursday on a panel that was part of the annual PNW Climate Week, a 10-day regional conference focused on the clean-energy transition with events held in Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue, Portland, Vancouver, B.C., and Bellingham. She was joined by Gabriel Scheer, senior director of innovation for the investment nonprofit Elemental Impact, and Eli Lieberman, executive director of the recently launched Washington State Green Bank. I moderated the discussion. Here were their thoughts on innovative funding models: Recycling philanthropic dollars: A strategy being employed by the angel investment nonprofit E8 is to offer alternative ways of supporting climate startups, including its philanthropic impact fund, Decarbon8-US. Contributions are tax-deductible and any returns generated by investments are recycled back into the fund to support other startups. 'There are a lot of ways to support the community,' Shukla said. 'For $25 you can be part of that fund.' Spreading risks: Elemental created a program called D-SAFE (Development Simple Agreement for Future Equity), which allows the organization to spread investment risk across multiple capital projects within a single company. If a project succeeds, the company can repay Elemental with interest, allowing the funds to be reinvested elsewhere. If a project fails, the investment converts into an equity stake in the parent company, derisking early-stage, first-of-a-kind (or maybe even 10th-of-a-kind) deployments. 'It's been great,' Scheer said. 'We've had a number of companies who have used that now, and it's been a really good innovation.' Green banks: Lieberman is running Washington's first green bank, which uses public and private capital to fund clean energy and sustainability projects. The institution is structured to take higher risks and produce lower profits to get climate friendly technologies on the ground and in communities. 'Green banks traditionally exist more on the 'market pull' side, so later in the commercialization stage and in project finance,' Lieberman said. 'They'll look at their given geographic region that they operate in, and try to analyze what are the market gaps in project finance, and then what are the tools that the green bank could use to try to steer in private sector investment.' All three agreed that despite lower levels of investing globally and a retraction of federal support, there was plenty that companies, investors, elected officials, philanthropists and others could do to continue stoking the movement to expand clean energy innovation and deployment. 'This is our opportunity,' Scheer said. 'This is the time when left-leaning states, left-leaning cities, places with money — all of that is here — could do a whole bunch of really cool stuff.'
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Amogy raises $80M to power ships and data centers with ammonia
From tariffs to the recent reconciliation bill, climate tech startups have been grappling with a rapidly changing landscape. Brooklyn-based startup Amogy has managed to avoid turbulence induced by U.S. politics by keeping its sights on more promising foreign markets. Amogy's ammonia-to-power tech and its focus on Asian markets, including Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, has helped it land a fresh $23 million in funding. The round, which brings its most recent fundraise to $80 million, increases the company's valuation to $700 million, co-founder and CEO Seonghoon Woo told TechCrunch. The round was led by the Korea Development Bank and KDB Silicon Valley LLC with participation from BonAngels Venture Partners, JB Investment, and Pathway Investment. Amogy is based primarily in the U.S. But the startup has found demand for its core technology in Japan and South Korea, countries looking for new ways to expand power generation. 'They don't have as high quality solar, wind, and geothermal resources, and they are not really in the best position to build a nuclear power either,' Woo said. Ammonia is most widely used as a component of plant fertilizers; it can also serve as what experts call a hydrogen carrier. Normally, hydrogen is difficult to transport — it's flammable and prone to leaking — but a hydrogen carrier like ammonia makes it easier. In an effort to reduce their carbon pollution, Asian countries have started burning ammonia in existing fossil fuel power plants. Typically, operators will replace some percentage of coal with ammonia. Shipping companies have started doing the same, replacing diesel with the compound. Ammonia has found fertile ground in that industry because the International Maritime Organization, which regulates maritime shipping, is going to begin levying a carbon tax starting in 2027. But in any place where ammonia is burned — whether that's a power plant or a ocean-going ship — it needs to have at least some fossil fuel combusted alongside it. That makes full decarbonization impossible. Amogy has been developing a way to fully replace fossil fuels using ammonia as a fuel. First, the company cracks three hydrogen atoms off each nitrogen atom. It then sends the hydrogen to a fuel cell, which generates electricity and water vapor, while releasing pure nitrogen to the air. Because there's no combustion, the company's process doesn't release any NOx pollution, which can create smog and cause a host of health problems. The startup previously tested its technology in a tug boat, and it's still on track to deploy a commercial-scale system in a ship by the next couple years. But Amogy is also developing a power plant that will provide power to terrestrial customers, including data centers. The first of its kind will begin generating power in the next couple years, Woo said. The first systems will be on the smaller side, capable of producing 500 kilowatts to one megawatt of electricity, though customers can deploy several in parallel to generate more power. Woo said that Amogy's shift to Japan and South Korea comes at a time when the countries are beginning to develop their ammonia infrastructure. By the end of the decade, coal power plants in both countries are expected to use some amount of ammonia in their operations. Initially, the ammonia will likely come from the U.S. and the Middle East, where hydrogen bound in inexpensive natural gas is used to make the compound. Asian countries are setting standards for how much carbon pollution can result from ammonia production. As a result, it's likely that producers will need to capture at least some of the carbon to be able to sell to those markets. But down the line, Woo said, the hope is to transition to green sources of hydrogen to create ammonia. Asian countries, Woo said, 'see ammonia basically as the next LNG, but without the carbon.'
