Climate

Tesla’s profitable Supercharger network is in limbo after Musk axed the entire team

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At the start of the year, Tesla’s Supercharger team was tasked with the impossible. “We were on an exponential path,” a former team member told TechCrunch, adding that the new targets were “super-duper crazy.” Despite the bottlenecks that such expectations can create, “every time they upped the metric, we met it.” Then, one day in […]

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Mycocycle uses mushrooms to upcycle old tires and construction waste

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Usually, when something starts to rot, it gets pitched in the trash. But Joanne Rodriguez wants to turn the concept of rot on its head by growing fungus on trash to turn it into something better. “We train mushrooms to eat trash and create renewable, bio-based raw materials,” she told TechCrunch. Rodriguez is the founder

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After a $20M Series A funding, Germany’s Insempra plans eco-friendly lipid production

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Lipids are fatty, waxy or oily compounds that, for instance, typically come in the form of fats and oils. As a result they are heavily used in the production of beauty products, as well as in fashion, and food industries. Right now, most lipids come from environmentally problematic petrochemicals. But new processes mean its possible

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Electricity Maps calculates the carbon intensity of electricity consumption to optimize usage at scale

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If you’re an electricity nerd, chances are you’ve already spent quite a few hours looking at Electricity Maps and its mesmerizing export flow animations. This open-source data visualization project has been around since 2016. But companies like Google and Samsung are increasingly relying on this rich data set to hit their sustainability goals and empower

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Walmart heir Lukas Walton’s Builders Vision puts S2G on a path to independence

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S2G Ventures is graduating today, so to speak. The climate tech investment firm has been living under Builders Vision, an umbrella organization for Walmart heir Lukas Walton’s philanthropic and investment activities, for the past three years. Walton was S2G’s sole limited partner. Now, the organization is bringing others on board. Walton started S2G in 2014

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Productive solar technologies draw investors as global off-grid solar sector funding slumps

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Productive Use of Renewable Energy (PURE) technologies, especially those in the solar irrigation and cold chain segment, saw increased investor interest last year, despite a 43% funding slump recorded in the global off-grid solar sector. The global association for the off-grid solar energy industry, GOGLA, says PURE technologies raised $65 million in 2023, double the

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The ‘valley of death’ for climate lies between early-stage funding and scaling up

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Jonathan Strimling faced a dilemma. His company had spent nine years working on chemical processes that could turn old cardboard boxes into high-quality building insulation. The good news was the team had finally cracked it: CleanFiber’s technology pumped out insulation — really good insulation. It had fewer contaminants and produced less dust than other cellulose

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Bringing down skyscrapers’ sky-high carbon footprint with Joselyn Lai from Bedrock

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Keeping homes and offices at just the right temperature requires a lot of energy. Buildings generate about a third of the carbon pollution in the U.S., most of which comes from heating and cooling. Bedrock Energy, co-founded by Joselyn Lai, thinks it has found at least a partial solution. The startup seeks to decarbonize climate

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