Let’s cheer to a new era for the Planet

We are in a new era for the planet, and this is exciting. Alas, environmental catastrophes have made the urgency real, people can feel it now - fires, hurricanes, flooding - this makes it close to home, affecting our daily lives. The polar bear who was drowning was cute, but it was not enough for most people. Data continues to show the need to act, and fast - Global ice loss increases at record rate and 2020 was another record year in temperature, another record year in temperature.

Side note: highly recommend the NASA “Images of Change”

Having looked at clean technologies for over a decade, cleantech investing has been tough historically - hard tech, long timelines for technical demonstration and market adoption, and few exits providing returns for investors.

However, it seems awareness and funding are blooming and initiatives mushrooming. At scale. The most visible indeed are Amazon Climate Pledge Fund - $2Bn, Breakthrough Energy Ventures - just raised another $1Bn, Elon Musk call for carbon capture technologies - $100m. Also, very exciting to see exits in the news - already 35+ exits deals since the beginning of the year 2021, according to Pitchbook, e.g. Shell agrees deal to buy electric car-charging company ubitricity. 

A number of exciting technologies and companies are paving the way for an energy revolution. In the materials space, here a few areas that are trending:

• Batteries: a crowded space, but there will not be one solution, more of a portfolio of solutions for the EV sector, stationary storage and consumer electronics. New anodes, notably Si anode, as stated by Elon Musk in the Tesla Battery Day, who acquired a company called Sillion, and Sila Nano that raised $590m at a $3.3Bn post-money valuation; new cathodes, new electrolytes - near-term solutions for Li-ion, such as NOHMs, or long term solid state, such as Solid Power or the highly-talked-about QuantumScape)

• Lightweighting for automotive / aerospace: it seems clear that reducing the weight of a car or plane or satellite through the use of materials that are much lighter and as strong or stronger than metals, can dramatically reduce the fuel consumption, hence carbon emissions. A number of developments in the space foster the use of carbon fiber composites: Vistex - reducing manufacturing waste of composites, Vartega - recycled fibers that aim at lowering the cost of fibers, Arris - new composites for mass-markets, Boston Materials, Weav3D - offering new lattice structures.

• Hydrogen: even though there are still a lot of questions about hydrogen (go cut H2O bonds: water electrolysis is an energy intensive process), there is definitely a lot of hype given the increase of renewable energy and associated decreased cost. New technologies are helping to solve technical challenges: new membranes and their scale-up breakthroughs such as Alchemr enabling an alkaline environment, new reactors such as photocatalytic chemical reactor Syzygy Plasmonics, hydrogen storage tanks, etc. and integrators into large applications, e.g. aviation such as ZeroAvia. 

A lot more areas with high impact on climate exist beyond energy transition - circular economy, agriculture, sustainable home and personal care, carbon capture, greener industrial processes, food, buildings and so many more. Many ideas to share in future articles!