Climate

This Detroit startup is turning to utilities to make home efficiency upgrades cheaper

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Ask any homeowner: renovation projects are no fun at all. From finding a contractor to determining a fair price, the process is rife with uncertainty.  Plenty of startups have popped up to help homeowners tackle electrification projects, including installing solar panels and replacing gas furnaces with heat pumps. But they still struggle with the cost […]

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SOSV bets plasma will change everything from semiconductors to spacecraft

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Sometimes a tool — like a hammer — comes along and everything starts looking like a nail. But other times, new tools end up being more than a simple blunt-force object. The investors at SOSV are betting that plasma will become a nuanced implement capable of everything from enabling fusion power to changing the way

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Mission Barns is betting that animal-free pork fat will make artificial meat delicious

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An old colleague always had a curious request at lunchtime. For health reasons, he was vegetarian, but he still missed the taste of ground beef. So he’d ask the chef in the cafeteria for a veggie burger that was cooked next to the beef patties. The grease that seeped over made the plant substitute taste

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NetZeroNitrogen wants bacteria to replace synthetic fertilizer on farm fields

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Synthetic fertilizer is a modern wonder, helping to feed billions of people, but it’s not without its costs. Fertilizer runoff from farm fields has led to dead zones in oceans around the world, where low oxygen levels have starved normally teeming coastal waters of life itself. Eliminating synthetic fertilizers is a tall order, but one

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Three things veteran planetary health investors look for in a startup

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Ask any founder or investor: fundraising is never easy. And in a market with this level of uncertainty, the difficulties are compounded. “Everyone has to go through fundraising, and it’s a relatively challenging market right now,” Kyle Teamey, managing partner at RA Capital Planetary Health, told TechCrunch. “That’s good for a bit of empathy.” Teamey

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GM teams up with Redwood Materials to power data centers with EV batteries

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GM is sending new and old EV batteries to recycler Redwood Materials, which then repurposes the packs for stationary energy storage storage, the two companies announced today. Second-life batteries from GM have already made their way through Redwood’s process and into a 12 megawatt microgrid at the company’s Sparks, Nevada, headquarters. Electricity from that installation

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Meet the cement transport ship that makes cement ingredients while sailing

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Shipping has a pollution problem, but one company has a solution that does more than just eliminate a boat’s carbon dioxide. London-based Seabound has developed a carbon capture system that transforms CO2 from the engine into limestone, a key ingredient in cement. Fittingly, the company has installed it aboard the UBC Cork, a cement carrier

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Google inks $3B deal to buy hydropower from Brookfield

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As it races to build ever larger data centers, Google on Tuesday said it has agreed to pay more than $3 billion to source carbon-free hydropower from Brookfield Asset Management’s company, Brookfield Renewable Energy Partners. The first contracts under the deal include 20-year power purchase agreements, the companies said, altogether amounting to $3 billion, for

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