Here’s What Partnerships for Climate Action Look Like

Dear Friends of Greentown,

Collaboration takes many forms at Greentown, from entrepreneurs sharing advice with their fellow founders, to corporates serving as pilot sites for startups, to investors connecting with our member community, to resource providers donating equipment for startups.

Today, we’d like to spotlight a handful of recent collaborations. Please join us in celebrating the startups, corporates, and other ecosystem leaders who are taking climate action together!

• Heartland Industries—a startup that produces carbon-negative materials to replace and augment plastic additives such as talc, calcium carbonate, fiberglass, and carbon black—and Greentown partner BASF worked together during Go Move 2022, a startup-corporate partnerships accelerator focused on decarbonizing the automotive industry’s life-cycle impact. This month, BASF’s business incubation and investment arm, Chemovator, announced an investment in Heartland Industries.
• Greentown Houston recently hosted a ribbon cutting for a brand new resource for our startups—Emerson’s DeltaV Automation Platform. Automation plays a key role in enabling a startup's journey to standardization and scalability, and we’re thrilled to provide our members access to these two units—generously donated by Greentown partners Emerson and Puffer! This equipment will allow members to prototype, accelerate their technologies into pilot scale and beyond, optimize processes for high-quality products, and implement smart foundations for accessing contextualized data.
• Go Make 2023 wrapped up this spring, featuring collaborations between Shell and six startups developing innovations for carbon utilization, storage, and traceability. Read about the progress they made together.
• Applications are open for Year 4 of the Carbon to Value Initiative—run by the Urban Future Lab at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Greentown, and Fraunhofer USA and designed to catalyze a thriving carbontech ecosystem. For this year’s accelerator cohort, we’re looking for startups at TRL 4-7 that are developing carbontech solutions across carbon conversion to added-value products, carbon capture, and carbon sequestration and removal. Startups will collaborate closely with the initiative’s Carbontech Leadership Council throughout the accelerator. Read the full request for applications and apply by June 21!

As always, thank you for your commitment to climate action. We hope to see you at an event soon!

Warmly,

The Greentown Team

Member Milestones

What does climate action look like? Climatetech startups receiving funding, winning awards, deploying their tech around the world, and more! Read a roundup of our members’ recent milestones here and check out some highlights below:

• Sublime Systems, a startup decarbonizing the cement-making process, deployed its cement in its first commercial construction project, which will be Boston’s largest net-zero-carbon office building. 
• Aeromine Technologies raised a $9M Series A for its bladeless wind turbine system, which captures wind traveling up and over a building’s roof and converts it into renewable energy.
• Active Surfaces, a Go Build 2023 participant and ACCEL Year 1 alum that’s commercializing ultra-thin-film solar technology, raised a $5.6M oversubscribed pre-seed funding round.
• Element Resources and Greentown partner Rio Tinto signed a surface lease agreement for the development of a green-hydrogen production facility, powered by an off-grid-solar electricity-generation facility. 
• Moonshot Compost, which collects food waste with a focus on data management, surpassed 1 million pounds of food waste diverted from landfills in its composting project with Rice University. 
• REON Technology, which uses new and second-life EV batteries to provide affordable energy storage solutions, successfully powered eight hours of off-grid clean energy for Boston’s AANHPI festival.  
• Haffner Energy, a startup developing technology for the next generation of clean fuels and renewable gasses, announced its new Sustainable Aviation Fuel project, Paris-Vatry SAF, which aims to decarbonize air transport. 

Read + Watch

MicroAvionics is developing a “levitating” device that not only flies in the mesosphere—a layer of the atmosphere that's too high for planes and too low for satellites—but is driven by sunlight rather than fuel. This isn’t typical solar power, however; MicroAvionics’ tech doesn’t involve batteries, a power supply, or moving parts, running solely on the sun. In addition to gathering critical atmospheric and climate data, the startup’s sustainable platform can replace highly fuel-consuming hardware. Learn more.

ACCEL Year 2 participant Cellsense is tackling the design industry’s reliance on petroleum products by creating sustainable bio-embellishments using algae and regenerated cellulose. Watch a pitch from Cellsense’s CEO, Aradhita Parasrampuria .

Mark Your Calendar for These Upcoming Events

May 23: Additive Manufacturing and Sustainability Panel [Greentown Boston]

Women in 3D Printing (Wi3DP) and Greentown are hosting a conversation featuring experiences in startup culture, stories of being a woman in tech, and companies that are leading in sustainable innovation.

May 30: Startup Showcase: Circular Economy in the Buildings Sector [Greentown Boston]

Join us to celebrate the culmination of Go Build 2023, a Greentown Go startup-corporate partnerships accelerator program with Saint-Gobain focused on advancing circularity and decarbonization in the built environment.

June 6: EnergyBar: Pride Month Celebration [Greentown Boston]

In collaboration with Out in Climate, we’re inviting entrepreneurs, investors, corporate leaders, students, and other climate champions to celebrate and support LGBTQIA+ professionals in the climate sector at this networking event, sponsored by Saint-Gobain.

Aug. 15: EnergyBar: Summer Rooftop Party [Greentown Boston]

At this rooftop edition of Greentown Boston’s signature networking event—hosted in collaboration with MassMutual Ventures—we’re inviting entrepreneurs, investors, students, and friends of climatetech to attend, meet colleagues, and expand the growing regional climatetech ecosystem.

Aug. 22: Transition On Tap [Greentown Houston]

Join our summer Transition On Tap, Greentown Houston’s signature networking event devoted to fostering conversations and connections among the climate and energy transition ecosystem in Houston and beyond.

Oct. 22 and 24: Climatetech Summit [Greentown Houston + Greentown Boston]

Join us on Oct. 22 at Greentown Houston, Oct. 24 at Greentown Boston, and both days via livestream for the ultimate celebration of climate-focused entrepreneurship and innovation, replete with startup pitches, networking opportunities, and industry insights. This event sells out every year, so get your ticket now!

Latest News from TEX-E

Climatetech internships are critical, both to provide students a pathway into the industry and to support the small teams at early-stage startups. And to promote equity, these internships must be paid opportunities.

To meet this important industry need, the Texas Exchange for Energy and Climate Entrepreneurship (TEX-E)—powered by Greentown and MIT’s Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship—developed the TEX-E Internship Program, which provides paid student internships with Greentown Houston startups. We’re thrilled to announce the first round of internships, which will kick off this summer:

• Ramona Mahmoudkhani from the University of Texas at Austin will join Biosfera, which converts waste carbon dioxide from industrial processes into valuable products such as rubber, plastics, and solvents.
• Isaiah Jamail from University of Houston will intern with CalWave, a startup providing reliable, cost-effective ocean wave technologies for sustainable energy access.
• Justin Xia from Rice University will join the team at Capwell, which is capturing and destroying methane leaked by end-of-life oil and gas wells.
• Diego Rico from Rice University will complete an internship with Corrolytics, a startup providing a better way for corrosion engineers and pipeline operators to determine when microbial growth within industrial assets will lead to corrosion.

We’re excited to see these students engage with our startup members!

In other TEX-E news, the program just kicked off its 2024-2025 fellowship with 87 fellows from the participating TEX-E universities. Learn more.

Greentown is Hiring!

• Vice President of Philanthropy (Somerville, MA or Houston, TX)
• Staff Accountant (Somerville, MA or Houston, TX)

Thank You to Our Partners 🌍