Climate

The era of oil-driven foreign policy is over. Welcome to decarbonization diplomacy • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 20, 2022Posted in Climate, diplomacy, EC Food Climate and Sustainability, energy transition, Government & Policy, renewable energyNo Comments

For much of the 20th century, oil dominated foreign policy. Countries spent the better part of the century scrambling to secure supply. Sometimes it happened through negotiations and diplomacy. All too often it resulted in the overthrow of governments or outright invasions. But with fossil fuels on the wane, we’re starting to get a glimpse of foreign relations in the 21st century, and it seems like investment will be the defining characteristic. Decarbonization diplomacy is looking a lot less violent than what preceded it. It took a while to get to this point — probably too long — but the dam appears to be breaking.

Service 1st Financial sells ‘home comfort as a service,’ gets $20 million in funding from Series B, debt • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 17, 2022Posted in Climate, EC Food Climate and Sustainability, heat pumps, hvac, leasing, StartupsNo Comments

Let’s face it: Most people aren’t early adopters, especially when it comes to their homes. Take the kitchen, for example, where many people still buy gas cooktops despite induction’s superiority. It’s not because everyone’s busy charring peppers over an open flame — it’s because they’re slow to adopt changes. When it comes to heating and cooling, that’s a problem for the climate. Together, they account for about half of all energy use in U.S. homes. Heating is a particular challenge since only 40% of homes use electricity; the rest burn natural gas, propane or some other fossil fuel. When the old furnace is dying, its replacement is usually more of the same. To reduce reliance on fossil fuels, switching to electric heat pumps is going to be key. “If your trusted contractor — who you call to come into your home to help figure out what to do with your system — doesn’t offer a heat pump, you’re just not going to buy one, right?” said Anuj Khanna, founder and CEO of Service 1st Financial. That gap between what contractors offer and what’s needed to electrify households is part of the reason Khanna founded Service 1st Financial, which offers what he calls “home comfort as a service.” The company is announcing a $5.85 million Series B today that includes a $15 million subordinated debt facility, ZebethMedia has exclusively learned. Khanna said he expects the Series B to close “before year end.” The equity investment was co-led by S2G Ventures, which also led the subordinated debt facility. Other investors were not disclosed.

Korean VC Sopoong closes $8M fund for startups focused on environmental impact • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 17, 2022Posted in Asia, Climate, climate tech, social impact, Sopoong Ventures, south korea, Startups, VentureNo Comments

Two years ago, South Korea unveiled a plan to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. Getting there will be another story. Although Korean manufacturers say they are trying to change their ways, the country’s GDP is linked to some uniquely pollutive industries, including petrochemical producers, automakers and shipbuilders. Though some businesses may never be truly sustainable, a venture firm in Seoul argues that emerging climate-tech startups will help big manufacturers do better overall. Sopoong, a social impact-focused VC, intends to support environmentally minded tech founders in South Korea and Southeast Asia, while building a bridge between Korean conglomerates and startups in the sector. Sopoong has closed on around $8 million (10.3 billion won) for its latest, sixth fund, bringing the firm’s total assets under management to approximately $22 million (28 billion won). I spoke with Sopoong chief executive Max Sang-Yeop Han, a serial entrepreneur who joined Sopoong in 2016 and acquired the firm in 2019, to learn about the VC’s plans. “It is a significant signal for large South Korean corporates participating as limited partners of environmental and climate tech-focused venture capitals like us,” Han said. “Participating LPs [Korean conglomerates] are passionate about climate technology and want to take part to address the climate and environment issue as they agree that the climate crisis is one of the urgent problems.” Korean petroleum refining company GS Holdings and chemical company Isu participated in Sopoong’s climate-focused fund as limited partners as of April, Han said, adding that they will be more like strategic partners to Sopoong. Non-profit organizations such as Asan Nanum Foundation, established by Hyundai Group, and D.Camp, as well as startup founders and executives, including the co-founder and former CEO of Krafton, Gang-Seok Kim, also joined Sopoong’s climate fund, Han continued. The early-stage VC had already set up five social impact funds and backed 81 startups since 2020, after Han acquired the firm in December 2019. Sopoong was launched in 2008 by Jaewoong Lee, who co-founded South Korea’s largest internet portal operator Daum Communication, which merged with Kakao in 2014. Now, the VC firm wants to zero in on the climate crisis and other environmental issues through its sixth fund, but other tech sectors like SaaS and IT will still be on its radar, according to Han. “Two-thirds of the fund will be invested in the environment and climate tech, including renewable energy, agri-tech, and food tech, and the rest will go to the information technology industry investment,” Han said. Its sweet spot is early-stage ventures from seed to series A stages across South Korea and Southeast Asia. Its average check size is $150,000, but the firm can go up to $600,000, Han told ZebethMedia. The sixth fund has already invested in 16 startups, including MetaTexture, a plant-based food startup; Selex, a Vietnam-based electric scooter and battery-swapping technology startup; Myorange, a platform for managing charitable donations; and Function 12, an automation tool that helps users complete coding and design files. Nine of the 16 portfolio companies are participating in Sopoong’s first accelerator program, which launched in June and runs for six months. Sopoong invests up to $350,000 into each startup via the accelerator program and offers mentorship, co-working space, administrative support and networking opportunities with experts. On top of the accelerator, the firm also launched a six-month fellowship program to foster climate tech entrepreneurship. So far, Sopoong says it has selected 13 individuals with master’s or doctoral degrees in environment-related majors, offering them $1,700 in grants per month and other support, including the accelerator program. If participating fellows succeed in founding a startup, Sopoong could make a seed investment, Han said.

Service 1st Financial sells “home comfort-as-a-service,” gets $20 million in funding from Series B, debt • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in Climate, EC Food Climate and Sustainability, heat pumps, hvac, leasing, StartupsNo Comments

Let’s face it, most people aren’t early adopters, especially when it comes to their homes. Take the kitchen, for example, where many people still buy gas cooktops despite induction’s superiority. It’s not because everyone’s busy charring peppers over an open flame — it’s because they’re slow to adopt changes. When it comes to heating and cooling, that’s a problem for the climate. Together, they account for about half of all energy use in U.S. homes. Heating is a particular challenge since only 40% of homes use electricity; the rest burn natural gas, propane, or some other fossil fuel. When the old furnace is dying, its replacement is usually more of the same. To reduce reliance on fossil fuels, switching to electric heat pumps is going to be key. “If your trusted contractor — who you call to come into your home to help figure out what to do with your system — doesn’t offer a heat pump, you’re just not going to buy one, right?” Anuj Khanna, founder and CEO of Service 1st Financial. That gap between what contractors offer and what’s needed to electrify households is part of the reason Khanna founded Service 1st Financial, which offers what he calls “home comfort as a service.” The company is announcing a $5.85 million Series B today that includes a $15 million subordinated debt facility, ZebethMedia has exclusively learned. Khanna said he expects the Series B to close “before year end.” The equity investment was co-led by S2G Ventures, which also led the subordinated debt facility. Other investors were not disclosed. The company offers leases that allow homeowners to pay for their HVAC systems over time while coupling them with maintenance plans for the life of the contract, which typically lasts 10 years, at which point the homeowners can opt for a new system. “The home comfort industry is this old-school, slow-to-change industry that’s still just selling product,” Khanna said. He said that’s at odds with broader market trends that suggest people are now comfortable buying services instead of products. HVAC contractors do offer annual service plans, but typically just cover basic maintenance, which Khanna said is the market’s attempt to boost customer retention. “They hope that you stay on that plan long enough that they eventually get the next replacement sale,” he said. “The problem is it doesn’t actually serve the intended purpose. And it’s not a great customer experience because every time a contractor is generally in that home, they’re then trying to sell something else to the customer. And that’s not what customers want — they want their system maintained so it never breaks.” Khanna was inspired to found Service 1st Financial after leaving his last job at a private equity firm. There, he led an investment into a large home services company owned at the time by Lennox, the HVAC systems manufacturer. He said during his time on that investment, there was “no discussion whatsoever at the contractor and consumer level going on about sustainability.” Once the company was turned around, the PE firm sold it to Enercare, a Canadian company. In Canada, a leasing model is more common, Khanna said, and Enercare used the purchase to bring that business model to the U.S. “I was kind of sitting on the sidelines doing some other things in my career, and I said, ‘You know, there’s a massive opportunity here.’ Consumer purchasing behavior is changing,” Khanna said. He founded Service 1st Financial in 2019 with his own money and an investment from Thayer Street Partners. Today, the company has customers in 25 states. Khanna said that his company’s portfolio is about 32% heat pumps, which is about double the national average of about 15% of all homes, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The Inflation Reduction Act, which offers tax credits for heat pumps, is expected to supercharge the market. Khanna said lease originations are already up 80% year over year, and growth could hit 400% next year. In addition to expanding geographically, he said the funding round would also go toward building a learning management system to help train HVAC contractors. More partnerships could be on the table, too. This summer, the company announced a partnership with HVAC manufacturer Fujitsu, and it has another in the wings. Service 1st holds its lease contracts in a special purpose vehicle, Khanna said, which is also the recipient of the subordinated debt facility. The SPV also has a debt facility with Forbright Bank, a lender that focuses on decarbonization. The debt subordinated facility allows the startup to “use our equity for extremely high ROI initiatives at the parent to continue to grow and scale the business,” Khanna said. He added that S2G was interested in the subordinated debt facility because of Service 1st Financial’s lessee’s “extremely low default rates and very strong credit quality.” Khanna said that his company has been approached by utilities interested in having Service 1st Financial run their energy efficient programs, moving them away from selling discounted items and toward a service-based model. “Their focus is on electrified heat pumps. Can we incentivize the purchase of electrified heat pumps through a service-based model that can allow homeowners to replace those systems every 10 years or so?” he said. It’s a very different model than U.S. utilities are used to, but they’re finally interested in testing something new. “I think this is where the Inflation Reduction Act is causing some organizations that typically take a long time to make decisions to move very quickly,” Khanna said.

‘Hybrid meat’? Meatable wants to get lab-grown meat to market faster by combining with plant-based proteins • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in Biotech & Health, Climate, Love Handle, Meatable, SingaporeNo Comments

Alternative meat, seafood, and dairy products are all the rage in startup land, with countless companies raising bucketloads of cash and showcasing their first products throughout 2022. There are two broad categories within the meat-substitute space specifically: plant-based foods that strive to mimic the texture, look, and feel of real meat, and “lab-grown” cultivated meat that’s created from animal cells in a test tube. While each is effectively trying to solve similar problems, vis-à-vis saving the planet by weaning humans off their animal protein dependency, they each have their respective pros and cons. For starters, plant-based meat alternatives are already widely available to buy globally, whereas lab-grown meat is still in its relative infancy, with Singapore currently the only market in the world where cultured meat is permitted to be sold. The Asian city-state has emerged as a center of gravity of sorts for the burgeoning fake meat movement — just this week, Australia’s Vow announced a $49.2 million round of funding to bring its cultured meat product to Singaporean restaurants by the end of this year. It’s against that backdrop that Meatable, a VC-backed Dutch company that recently debuted its first product lineup in the form of synthetic sausages, today announced a partnership with Singaporean food startup Love Handle to create what it touts as “the world’s first hybrid meat innovation center.” This builds on Meatable’s recent expansion into the Singaporean market where it partnered with Esco Aster to develop cultivated pork products, with plans afoot to invest some $60 million in the next five years in the broader Singaporean market. Meatable’s fake sausages look like the real deal It’s (not) alive… The phrase “hybrid meat” in the context of a lab-grown meat company could perhaps stir some dystopian vision straight from the pages of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but when you learn that Love Handle is in fact a “plant-based butcher,” one can start to relax a little — Meatable isn’t stitching together components from different animals. The two companies are teaming up to blend the best of both their respective worlds — cultured meat and plant-based protein alternatives. What Meatable and Love Handle are striving for here isn’t entirely novel — others are working toward a similar end, and we’re seeing similar moves elsewhere to reduce animal consumption through products that mesh real meat with plant-based alternatives. The idea there is that while a burger might still contain real beef, it contains less of it, which can only be better for the environment (and people’s health). But what is the motivation, exactly, from a company such as Meatable which operates entirely off the back of its “fake real-meat” foundations? It all boils down to costs, and getting things to market more quickly. Cultivated meat is expensive to develop in a lab setting, and critics argue that there is little to suggest it will be affordable enough to scale at any meaningful level in the near future. On top of that, there are significant regulatory barriers (even in Singapore where it is approved for consumption), not to mention the mental barriers associated with eating meat grown in a lab. So by meshing cultured and plant-based meat alternatives, this could essentially lower all the barriers to entry. “We’ve decided to start launching with hybrid products in Singapore to help customers become acquainted with cultivated meat faster,” Meatable’s chief commercial officer Caroline Wilschut explained to ZebethMedia. “We know that the idea of consuming cultivated meat still requires further education in terms of what it is, how we develop it, and how we can produce it without harming animals, the planet, and people. The faster we launch, the faster we can start that education to build consumer acceptance and begin making an impact with harm-free meat.” Learning from electric cars It’s worth noting that Meatable isn’t going all-in on the hybrid model — it’s still very much continuing its lab-based work to rollout 100% lab-grown meat. But with the new innovation center in Singapore, it’s “seizing an additional opportunity in a supportive regulatory environment,” according to Wilschut. “Meatable continues with the development of full cultivated meat — however, we’ve also determined that hybrid products can be launched faster than entirely cultivated meat,” she said. “Meatable believes that a hybrid product will help gain acceptance amongst customers and maximise its reach within Singapore.” The goal here can perhaps be compared to something like that of a hybrid electric vehicle — it helps bring a nascent technology to the masses more quickly. And while there are a few other players dabbling with hybrids in terms of adding a bit of cultivated meat to a substantively plant-based product, Meatable says that it’s turning the tables on this concept. “In this instance, Meatable and Love Handle are taking a cultivated meat-led approach, which means they are starting with Meatable’s cultivated meat and adding Love Handle’s plant-based protein to develop a hybrid product that — in testing — has emerged as indistinguishable from real meat in taste and texture,” Wilschut said. This gets to the crux of why hybrid products could be a better idea. Purely plant-based meat alternatives typically lack the taste and texture of real meat, so by bringing together two distinct forms of animal-free meat alternatives, this could help everything scale for everyone involved — a win-win for both Meatable and Love Handle. This leads us back to the main thrust of today’s announcement. What, exactly, will the new innovation center in Singapore do? According to Wilschut, the lab is scheduled to open fully in 2023, with both companies co-investing in talent starting with around 10 new hires. It will sport a kitchen and a lab featuring all the machines and materials needed to bring hybrid food products to market, while it will also serve as a commercial front-end for everything going on behind the scenes, with space for consumers to try and buy products directly. “Both companies will invest in the lab, operate the innovation center, and will together hire the talent and resources to

Impacked packs up $2.5M to give the packaging industry a greener tint • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Climate, Impacked, packaging, Startups, sustainable packaging, TenOneTen VenturesNo Comments

Packaging is a trillion-dollar-per-year industry that, by and large, has some sustainability challenges. Impacked is a B2B company that’s bringing green tech to the forefront for everything from jars, tubes and pouches to bottles. The company raised a $2.5 million seed funding round led by TenOneTen Ventures, taking its total funding raised to $3.3 million. The new funding will be used to recruit more primary packaging suppliers to Impacked’s marketplace across North America and Europe, and also enhance its existing sustainability scoring system. The company declined to share its valuation or other details about the funding round. “As a former global brand manager at Unilever leading product innovations, sourcing primary packaging was one of the biggest bottlenecks in my product launch process. The buying and selling process is long and inefficient with the industry still dependent on in-person trade shows, word of mouth and analog middlemen to generate new business. This frequently forces brands to overpay, delay product launches or deprioritize sustainability,” says Lisa-Marie Assenza, CEO at Impacked, in an interview with ZebethMedia. “My goal with Impacked is to bring the tradeshow online 365 days per year, providing tools for suppliers to digitize their sales and marketing while instantly allowing brands to search, filter, sample, quote and buy packaging — all in one place.” The founders at Impacked, Natasha Trueman (COO) and Lisa-Marie Assenza (CEO). Image Credits: Impacked. “TenOneTen is the lead investor in this round. We wanted to bring on a strong stable of former operators who have successfully built and scaled companies themselves. David [Waxman] and the entire TenOneTen team have been amazing to work with, understand our mission and our vision, and as former operators have been incredibly helpful in helping us navigate the early stage journey,” said Assenza. “As sustainability regulations continue to change and become more complex for brands to navigate, our goal is to help more brands navigate these challenges by ensuring that every product listed in our marketplace is scored across a standard set of environmental sustainability criteria, empowering brand owners to make better sourcing decisions and ensure accuracy in the claims they make on their packaging.” The company is broadening its appeal and supplier reach, both in terms of product lines, and geographically. Impacked is joining a huge number of companies flowing into this space at the moment, biting off different slices of the market. Some companies, such as Olive, are focusing on reusable packaging, while others are exploring mycelium-based or plant pulp-based solutions. Impacked’s ultimate goal is to “source every primary package on the planet, for the planet,” creating an ecosystem for packaging that will, the company claims, foster greater connectivity and collaboration between brands and suppliers in the packaging industry. “The health of our planet is one of the most important issues of our time, and packaging is clearly a major contributor. In the next 10 years, Impacked will play a key role in surfacing the data and insights brands need to shift to more sustainable packaging, all while driving supplier innovation in packaging materials, design and production practices that do better for our planet,” said Assenza. “I personally have a love/hate relationship with the word ‘sustainable’ — it’s buzzy and the reality is that there is not a single way to be ‘sustainable’. It’s really about taking steps to reduce the beginning-of-life and end-of-life impact of a brand’s packaging. I believe that shifting our industry to more sustainable solutions starts with education. Brands need a better way to objectively assess the environmental impact of any packaging option they are looking at, early in the buying journey. For example, if a brand knew upfront that adding a frosted coating could make an otherwise recyclable 8 oz glass bottle no longer widely recyclable, they might consider a different decoration option to maintain recyclability and accurately claim ‘recyclable’ on-pack.”

WeaveGrid gets $35M Series B to help electrical grid cope with coming wave of EVs • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Climate, EC Enterprise Applications, EC Food Climate and Sustainability, electric vehicles, Enterprise, renewable energy, Startups, utilitiesNo Comments

Today, the electrical grid works because utilities have a time-tested playbook. They may not know exactly when you do your laundry, but they generally know washers and dryers run more in the evenings or on weekends. Air conditioners wind up when temperatures soar, and more lights click on during the dark winter months. But in the coming years, that playbook is going to go out the window. Renewables will reshape the grid, but EVs will present the real challenge. Utilities may know how many solar panels and wind turbines are hooked up, but what about how many EVs get plugged in every night? They might have a rough estimate at best. That’s where WeaveGrid comes in. The company’s enterprise SaaS serves as a platform integrating data from utilities, automakers, and drivers to help utilities manage the load that EVs place on the grid. This data will be increasingly important in the coming decade, when up to half of the U.S.’ 280 million vehicle fleet is predicted to become electrified. WeaveGrid hopes not only to help utilities plan for new generating capacity, it also wants to assist in identifying where they can most effectively upgrade their distribution infrastructure, which is going to need a significant overhaul. The average age of the grid’s power transformers, for example, is 25 years. “If 280 million vehicles all start charging around the same time at night, it’s going to create a lot of pressure on an aging infrastructure that’s really not ready to handle all of these giant batteries charging in a completely erratic manner,” said WeaveGrid CEO Apoorv Bhargava. To help coordinate millions of vehicles charging — and to ensure they’re ready when drivers need them — WeaveGrid’s platform pulls data from utilities, automakers and even smart EV chargers to build a picture of when and where the grid will need the most power. The company is announcing a $35 million Series B led by Salesforce Ventures, with participation from new investors Activate Capital, Emerson Collective, Collaborative Fund, and MCJ Collective. Existing investors Coatue, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Grok Ventures, and The Westly Group also invested in the round. It’s Salesforce Ventures’ first time leading a climate tech investment.

ULUU wants to solve the plastic crisis with seaweed • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Australia, Climate, environment, green tech, plastic alternative, plastics, ULUUNo Comments

ULUU believes the solution to the plastic crisis lies in the world’s oceans. The Australian startup uses seaweed to create a plastic alternative and is planning to launch its first products in the next 12 to 24 months. Today ULUU announced it has raised $8 million AUD (about $5.3 million USD) led by Main Sequence (the deep-tech fund launched by Australia’s national science agency) with participation from Albert Impact Ventures, Mistletoe and Possible Ventures. Other investors through Main Sequence’s social impact community Voice Capital included Melvin Benn, the managing director of Festival Republi, Nathan McLay, Australian independent music company Future Classic, restauranteur Neil Perry AM, model and philanthropist Karlie Kloss and Tame Impala frontman Kevin Parker. ULUU’s compostable polymer, called polhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), is made through a fermentation process that is similar to brewing beer, and enables the company to keep its production process clean. It is made out of seaweed sugars, sea water and salt water microbes and has a durability similar to plastic, but is biodegradable and compostable. ULUU founders Dr. Julia Reisser and Michael Kingsbury Dr. Julia Reisser, who founded ULUU along with Michael Kingsbury, told ZebethMedia that she has a long history with plastics. During her PhD studies, she mapped microplastic pollution within Australian waters and got the idea for ULUU in 2019 while working at Australian businessman Andrew Forrest’s philanthropic organization Minderoo Foundation, analyzing how startups are dealing with plastic pollution. Dr. Reisser researched how startups are created without fossil fuels, but found that alternatives derived from sugar cane or corn (which PHAs can also be created from) have environmental challenges. Kingsbury also worked at Minderoo, where he was introduced to Dr. Reisser while she was looking for someone with a commercial background to help develop ULUU. The startup was launched in 2020 and raised $1.8 million the next year. The latest funding will be used on product development and engineering R&D to scale the production of PHAs. ULUU currently plans to get its pilot plant facility operational in the next 12 months, and start to scale and test products. It can be used in many industries, including fashion, furniture and packaging. ULUU plans to cement partnerships with major consumer brands, and it will pick one or two to work on a pilot project. ULUU will work toward establishing commercial relationships in the fashion sector, with the goal of helping brands develop products that are made with ULUU and are both carbon negative and marine biodegradable. Its investment from industry figures like Kloss and Parker will help them make important connections in the fashion and beauty industry, Kingsbury said. “We’re exploring potential opportunities in sustainable fashion, changing the space one step at a time,” said Kingsbury. “It’s no longer cool to have only the best design and cut when it comes to the clothes we wear—people are starting to care about the materials behind them.” Even though 60% of fibers used in clothes are synthetic, derived from fossil fuels and cause microplastic pollution, Kingsbury noted that many brands are starting to look at more environmentally-friendly alternatives. These include Patagonia, which plans to use only renewable or recycled materials in their products by 2025.

Induction cooking heats up with a $20M cash injection for Impulse • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Climate, funding round, Hardware, impulse, lux capital, StartupsNo Comments

All electric, everywhere, all of the time; that’s one of the many climate mantras. Induction stovetops take a lot of power, however — they can pull 40 amps at 240 volts. That’s the same as an at-home Level 2 EV charger. Needless to say, a lot of older houses aren’t wired to plug in a Tesla in your kitchen, which means it could get expensive to upgrade to an induction range. Impulse to the rescue — the company’s stoves include a battery solution, which means that it doesn’t pull the full 40 amps when it’s operating, and you could find yourself cooking with induction without having to upgrade your panel. Clever! “I’d been thinking about how to supercharge home appliances for a while and the deeper I dug into the space, the clearer it became that there was a larger story bringing together whole-home electrification and added energy storage in alignment with new policy tailwinds and distributed energy resource incentives,” said Sam D’Amico, CEO at Impulse. “Integrating batteries not only unlocks really impressive performance improvements, it also removes a lot of common barriers around power or panel limitations with installing induction stoves while also adding energy storage to the grid.” The company today announced its official launch, and a $20 million Series A funding round led by Lux Capital, and joined by Fifth Wall, Lachy Groom and Construct Capital. This brings their total funding to $25 million (Lux Capital, Construct and Lachy Groom formerly led the company’s $5 million seed round in 2021). “There is an undeniable directional arrow of progress towards the electrification of everything, which will enable new appliances and applications to be created,” commented Josh Wolfe, co-founder and managing partner at Lux Capital, who led the most recent funding round, in an email to ZebethMedia. “What Impulse is building is not only meaningful but a moral imperative, changing the architecture of our daily lives by decreasing our reliance on natural gas and carbon. We’re proud to back the Impulse team and help bring their vision to life.” Originally, the company set out to use batteries to create the perfect electric pizza oven, but as the company explored the market, it realized there were additional opportunities. As the company puts it: What started as a cool idea to make pizza became a mission to reframe the home appliance industry. Impulse realized early on that there was an opportunity to leverage all the amazing tailwinds from the electric vehicle and renewables space (including the policy tailwinds of the Inflation Reduction Act) to launch compelling products. The company identified induction cooking as something that already had a pretty compelling story, and figured out some foundational ways to make cooking using induction tech significantly better. Impulse’s futuristic-looking induction stovetops may bring some interesting new features to a kitchen near you. Image Credits: Impulse. “We’re very aware of the difficulty of building a hardware business, especially given the present economic climate. We credibly believe that this [round of financing] gets us through the major checkpoints required to ship our first hardware product, at the level where we can take orders from paying customers,” says D’Amico. “That paves the way for us to launch preorders in the next year with a credible, realistic delivery date that is not out of line with expectations for high-end home appliances.” The company is positioning itself squarely in the challenge around residential and light industrial decarbonization. “This is going to push us in a fairly fundamental direction — ending fossil fuel use ‘at the edge’ means we have to make everything electric,” D’Amico says as he outlines his vision. “Moving storage to the edge in lieu of fossil fuels enables us to do this without having to rely on extremely difficult changes to the built environment, and without having to massively scale up power distribution infrastructure to deal with new peak loads.” The big play from Impulse is that battery prices are declining, while the act of installing batteries are continuing to be non-trivial in the built environment. A lot of kitchens do have 220V connections, however, and that’s where Impulse is seeing an opportunity. “A key realization is that the spots where we install home appliances are typically wired for electricity and often for 220V connections in newer homes,” comments D’Amico. “At minimum this means we can electrify that previously gas appliance, and moving forward towards newer properties it also means that storage can be put to use for the home as well.”

BasiGo to kick-off EV assembly in Kenya after $6.6M funding • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in BasiGo, Climate, electric vehicles, kenya, TransportationNo Comments

BasiGo will begin assembling electric buses in Kenya from next month, ramping up its production of public transport vehicles (PSVs) as it targets to deliver 100 units by end of next year. The startup plans to deliver 15 of the 100 buses, manufactured using parts from China’s EV maker BYD Automotive, in January next year, having completed its six months pilot programme in the country’s capital, Nairobi. It also plans to expand its charging infrastructure network, with an initial focus on Nairobi, where its clients are mainly operational. The plans come against the backdrop of the new $6.6 million equity funding co-led by Novastar; an Africa-focused VC firm, Mobility54; the corporate venture capital arm of Toyota Tsusho, and Trucks.vc, a Silicon-Valley based vc firm that backs startups in the transport sector. This brings the total amount raised by BasiGo since its launch last year to $10.9 million. “As we prepare to deliver the next batch of e-buses to new, we are deploying the necessary charging infrastructure to support that expanded fleet. Currently, all of our customers are Nairobi public service vehicle operators and we are deploying charging infrastructure within the Nairobi area to support their operations. In the future, when we begin delivering to customers operating routes outside of Nairobi, we will expand the reach of our charging network beyond the city,” BasiGo CEO Jit Bhattacharya, who co-founded the startup with Jonathan Green (CFO), told ZebethMedia. To ensure adoption BasiGo’s Pay-As-You-Drive model makes it possible for bus owners to acquire the electric buses for a similar upfront cost of a diesel one”. The operators then pay a $0.17 subscription fee for every kilometer; a fee that covers the leasing of the e-bus battery, charging services and general vehicle maintenance; “In this respect, a BasiGo electric bus is always a higher return-on-investment for a bus owner compared to diesel buses. BasiGo’s K6 electric bus comes with an eight-year or 600,000-kilometer battery warranty direct from the manufacturer, BYD Automotive,” said Bhattacharya. The buses will come in 25 and 36-seater capacities, with a range of about 250 kilometers, which is enough to cover daily round trips. The buses are also a cheaper and cleaner alternative in Kenya’s public transport industry, currently dominated by fossil-fuel buses. There are about 20,000 diesel and petrol vehicles ferrying commuters across Nairobi, which are great contributors to the air-pollution that kills over 18,000 people every year in Kenya. BasiGo plans to supply over 1,000 mass transit electric buses to transport operators in Kenya over the next five years. “Over 90% of Kenya’s electricity already comes from renewables. Yet Kenya’s transport sector relies entirely on imported petroleum fuels. By electrifying Kenya’s public transport, we can make an immediate dent in climate emissions, clean up the air in our cities, and give bus owners relief from the rising cost of diesel. With this new funding, BasiGo is ready to bring the benefits of state-of-the-art electric transport to all people in Africa,” said Bhattacharya. BasiGo and its main competitor Opibus are the two EV startups in Kenya eyeing the mass transit sector. The launch of their buses follows plans by the government to roll-out Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) network, to be operated by green (electric, hybrid and biodiesel) vehicles, presenting a great business opportunity for EV players in the market.