Cleantech Group

Nice to see these kinds of startup-to-startup collaborations in ag robotics - a space that's set to grow massively in importance over the near term 🦾🤖🔽 Fieldwork Robotics 🇬🇧 and Burro 🇺🇸 have partnered to develop a version of the former's raspberry-picking robot that can be mounted on the latter's autonomous base unit. Why is this important? On top of the not-insignificant initial costs of adopting any single robotics solution, farmers are also faced with a plethora of different options fulfilling different use cases, most of them lacking interoperability - meaning that costs continue to mount. Interoperability enables more efficient and cost-effective automation for farmers. Fieldwork's Fieldworker 1, running on Burro’s base, has completed field trials at Driscoll's berry grower PLACE UK Ltd and will be involved in further trials with Australia's Costa Food Group, another berry grower, next year. "A collaboration with an excellent partner like Burro serves to significantly strengthen our first-mover advantage," David Fulton, Fieldwork Robotics CEO, said in a statement. "Our combined expertise in robotics and automation facilitated an interactive and highly effective partnership," added Burro CEO Charlie Andersen. "We’re excited to see where our partnership takes us next, and our customers are hugely excited about their solution to autonomous harvesting." The partnership has also developed compatibility for Fieldworker 1 with bases from third-party companies too, such as OxDrive. #agtech #agritech #agrifood #agrifoodtech #cleantech #climatetech #robotics #automation #farmtech Image: Fieldworker 1 mounted on Burro. Credit: Fieldwork Robotics / Burro

Discover the #cleantech investment highlights in Arianna Bernas' latest Recent Deals, showcasing: 🌾 Agriculture & Food: Agri Lab Leverage raised $1.7M to scale its proprietary process, transforming agricultural co-products into ingredients like antioxidants, acidifiers, and dietary fibers. Investors include FOODARA and TimeToAct Capital. ⚡ Energy & Power: Tokamak Energy raised $125M to accelerate fusion energy development, advancing fusion neutron sources and plant designs. Investors include British Patient Capital and FURUKAWA ELECTRIC GROUP. 🔬 Materials & Chemicals: Cradle raised $73M to expand its AI-powered platform for optimizing protein development, driving innovation across agri-food, healthcare, and chemical industries. 🌍 Resources & Environmental Management: Predium closed a $13.7M Series A round to scale its ESG platform for real estate, delivering AI-driven sustainability metrics and risk assessments. 🛰️ Transportation & Logistics: The Exploration Company raised $160M in Series B funding to develop Nyx, a reusable and refillable spacecraft, setting a new standard for modular orbital vehicles. ♻️ Waste & Recycling: Epic Cleantec raised $12M to expand its OneWater system, recycling up to 95% of building wastewater for non-potable applications like irrigation and cooling. Discover more about the innovators driving change: https://hubs.li/Q02-cch80 #Sustainability #Innovation #Climatetech #CleanEnergy #CircularEconomy

🌍 Stronger Together: Toward a UK-EU Clean Growth Taskforce? 🌍 Today, Cleantech for Europe partnered with Cleantech for UK, Baringa and Breakthrough Energy , to host a unique roundtable connecting policy and business leaders in both Brussels and London, to explore opportunities for closer collaboration between the UK and EU on scaling clean technologies. With new political cycles starting on both sides and high urgency to build back Europe’s competitiveness, now is the time to make joint progress on deploying critical clean technologies such as offshore #wind and #grid technologies. The event opened with a call to action from Breakthrough Energy’s VP Europe Ann Mettler, who stressed that competitiveness in clean technologies can be the glue that reconnects the UK and EU.  MEP Thomas Pellerin-Carlin highlighted how the EU and UK have shared incentives for resetting relations in an unstable geopolitical environment.   Sue Harrison from the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero shared the history of collaboration on electricity markets and opportunities for the future.   Former Minister of Economy of Luxembourg and MEP Claude Turmes shared his experience working with his UK counterparts to set renewables target that made the UK a frontrunner in offshore wind.    Highlights included insights from Cleantech Group’s new report, ‘Stronger Together: Opportunities for UK-EU Collaboration in Clean Technologies.’ The report [linked in the comments below] underlines the immense potential for collaboration in achieving shared climate goals and creating economic prosperity.  Baringa also presented its upcoming report on the potential for EU – UK increased cooperation in offshore wind. The discussion, led by Philipp Offenberg and Jon Fuller, featured  EU and UK experts Giles Dickson (CEO WindEurope) Tim Pick MBE of Offshore Wind Growth Partnership , Clara Semal National Grid, Christopher Burghardt  Xlinks Gmbh, Miranda Dawkins, Sonya Twohig, Secretary-General, ENTSO-E, and more. As Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pave the way for renewed UK-EU cooperation, this event marked a first step in building a joint cleantech agenda. Watch this space! #Cleantech #EnergyTransition #StrongerTogether   Mike Boots Vladimir Parail Cliff Bleeker Sarah Soliman Miranda Dawkins Daisy Cummins Loran de Hollander Yvette Go Adela Putinelu Clara Semal Bernard De Clercq Elia Group Michiel Dorresteijn Duncan Burt Reactive Technologies Limited Stuart Borland HM Treasury

Here are last week's top climatetech fundings as reported by Cleantech Group 👇 👀 (Find out more about our research & consulting services: i3connect.com) 🌾 Agriculture & Food Cradle 🇳🇱, provider of an AI-powered platform for developing novel proteins used in industries such as agrifood, healthcare, and chemicals, raised $73M in Series B funding from IVP, Index Ventures, and Kindred Capital VC. Cradle will use the funds to expand its wet lab, improve its foundational models, grow its engineering team, and scale its operations. 💡 Energy & Power: HyperHeat 🇩🇪, developer of technology that produces zero-carbon industrial heat from renewable energy, raised $3.6M in Seed funding from investors including Amadeus Capital Partners APEX Technology Fund, Finindus, Possible Ventures, E44 Ventures, and Breakthrough Energy . The funding will be used for product development and testing, strengthening the team, increasing R&D to achieve production readiness, and collaborating with pilot customers. 🧪 Materials & Chemicals: LACTIPS 🇫🇷, producer of water soluble and biodegradable thermoplastic pellets based on milk protein, raised over $16.8M from SPI Fund, funds managed by SWEN Capital Partners and GO CAPITAL, Bpifrance, BNP Paribas Développement, and others. Funding will be used for growth into Europe, the Americas, and Japan, for R&D, and scale-up of production capacity. 🌲 Resources & Environmental Management: darwin 🇫🇷, developer of AI solution that embeds biodiversity loss calculations into ESG platforms, raised $1.58M in Seed funding from Asterion Ventures and other undisclosed angel investors. The funding willl be used to expand technology offerings, strengthen R&D team, and roll out product in France and Europe. 🚚 Transport & Logistics: Class8 🇨🇦, povider of an AI-enabled logistics optimization platform, raised $22M in Series A funding from Xplorer Capital, Inspired Capital, Commerce Ventures, and BCF Ventures. ♻️ Waste & Recycling Advanced Recycling Technologies (ART) 🇺🇸, provider of distributed metals recovery systems, raised an undisclosed amount in growth funding from Ember. #cleantech #climatetech #greeneconomy #greentech #decarbonization #emissionsreduction #netzero #innovation #startups #venturecapital Image: Dishwasher tablets packaged in Lactips' biodegradable, milk-based bioplastic. Credit: Lactips

International Energy Agency (IEA)’s analysis of global electronic waste (e-waste) market dynamics: • Since 2010, global e-waste generation has risen five times faster than collection and recycling efforts, resulting in a decreasing share of recycled e-waste. • In 2022 alone, metals contained in e-waste valued at around USD 90 billion, with only USD 28 billion recovered and turned into valuable materials. • Of the 193 countries assessed in IEA’s report below, only 80 had e-waste regulations as of June 2023, suggesting ample scope for strengthening policy actions. Stricter regulations and penalties for illegal dumping, enhanced traceability, and improvement in pretreatment processes can significantly boost critical mineral recovery from e-waste. • Increasing use of permanent magnets in EVs pose an interesting new materials challenge for recyclers. It will be crucial to incentivize recyclers through policy to improve current magnet recycling rates. • Mining generates around 100 billion tonnes of waste every year, in addition to the sizeable amount already existing in active, inactive and closed tailings. The accumulated waste volume is set to increase by almost 90% over 2020 levels by 2030. Much of this waste can be reprocessed to extract lower-grade minerals while reducing its impact on water quality upon release.

As demands for artificial intelligence and machine learning grow, IT hardware, energy infrastructure, and data center architecture must adapt to keep up with advancements. Data center power consumption globally could double by the end of the decade, yet, air cooling is currently used in 80% of data centers worldwide. ❄️ Promisingly, innovative cooling methods are emerging. Liquid cooling systems technologies can be categorized into direct-to-chip cooling, microchannel cooling, microconvective cooling and two-phase cooling. Driven by the growing energy and subsequent cooling demands, investment activity in liquid cooling innovation has recently surged. Check out Zainab G.'s perspective to see emerging innovators and their technologies explained: https://hubs.li/Q02Z_N2-0 Accelsius, ZutaCore, JETCOOL Technologies Inc., Wiwynn, Entergy

The chemical industry accounts for up to 3% of total global CO2 emissions, yet we continue to rely on chemicals such as ethylene, methanol, and propylene, which are essential for industries ranging from plastics and textiles to energy. How is the chemical sector responding to the increasing pressure to find more sustainable ways to produce these key chemicals? Since biobased alternatives offer only a short-term solution, a promising alternative involves converting CO2 directly into valuable chemicals. Traditional processes combine CO2 with hydrogen to produce syngas, however, these methods face challenges in terms of efficiency and cost. Co-electrolysis, which uses both CO2 and water as feedstocks, expands the potential products from the process, allowing for the direct production of chemicals like methanol and ethylene. CO2 electrolysis and co-electrolysis hold significant potential, and while technologies remain in the various stages of development, the future scalability of CO2 electrolysis will depend on cost barriers, feedstock limitations, and global policy support. Find out about the potential of CO2 electrolysis and standout innovators of the industry in Ian Hayton’s latest perspective: https://hubs.li/Q02ZYWTj0 Dioxycle, Oxylum, OCOchem, Fairbrics, Twelve, AIR COMPANY

Incredible graph detailing global fiber production by type. Especially worrisome for the state of textile recycling as current approaches fall flat on recycling mixed fibers back into pure, high quality fiber. While the obvious takeaway is that synthetic fibers should be priority number one, I think a more nuanced insight is that any textile recycling process incapable of handling mixed fibers needs to be seriously evaluated for replacement. The fiber production market is highly diverse and is complicated further with manufacturer/consumer preferences for multi-fiber blends; recycling processes used must match this dynamic market place with pragmatic, multi-fiber recycling processes. Sourced from Textile Exchange's 2023 overview here: https://lnkd.in/gfK34B3S Date partners included below in visual.

It was a unique experience to be in Chantilly, France, earlier this month, taking part in a week's worth of intimate, frank discussions on the direction of European cleantech innovation while the U.S. election unfolded in the background. The core takeaway: economic results will be the language of winning arguments for development, and adoption, of technology for sustainability. Shifting policy environments are going to put the onus on innovators to prove out project economics and job creation cases. Some conversations that stood out: - Simon Bennett (International Energy Agency (IEA)) and I hosted a discussion on the potential of advanced AI to start moving the needle in cleantech innovation. While we've AI start playing a role in the energy sector, there is massive optimization potential in cleantech manufacturing, especially where tools can be accessible to manufacturing and process engineers - still a largely unrealized opportunity. - Growing a cleantech company, especially a hardware or deep tech company, in these next few years will require airtight operations and risk control. We got some great perspectives from Vaitea Cowan, Craig Douglas (World Fund), and Tim Charters (Chubb) on how to spot risk gaps from the earliest stages (team risk, product-market fit risks) out through the large-scale (supply chain risk, manufacturing risk) stages of growth. - In political circles, it feels a foregone conclusion that the separation between Western countries and China will look more like a divorce over the coming years. Nevertheless, it is naive to assume that China's capabilities in cleantech, and ability to compete in global markets, will recede. Faidon (Phaedon) Papadimoulis (International Energy Agency (IEA)) gave us a grounded view of China's capabilities in cleantech manufacturing, and its stunning growth in recent years. Yufan Guan (NIO Capital) reinforced this point, giving concrete cases of China's manufacturing base and its ability to leverage this advantage to launch companies in cutting-edge fields like new battery chemistries and nuclear fusion. Chivas Lam shed light on the less understood area of waste-to-value, where new national resource efficiency priorities in China are opening up demand for global technology in everything from industrial circularity to water treatment. More than ever, the challenge of launching and sustaining cleantech innovation is put into focus, as policy headwinds are visible on the horizon. What makes this phase of cleantech evolution different is the sheer amount of training data that is available from the first-of-a-kind pilot and commercial facilities wave that has occurred in recent years. Harnessing those learnings for a strengthened economic argument will be the key to cutting through the noise into adoption. Onward! Cleantech Group

💡How can we integrate renewables and optimize resource efficiency in order to decarbonize data centers? As energy demands from technology providers grow, renewable solutions will be required to meet demands and provide reliable, carbon-free power. Will #geothermal and #nuclear step up, and how much potential do novel liquid cooling solutions hold? Be sure to join our upcoming webinar next Tuesday, December 3, to learn how start-ups can tackle the #decarbonization of data centers: https://hubs.li/Q02ZH3r70