EC Food Climate and Sustainability

Bendy batteries could power new categories, and Anthro Energy thinks its cracked the code • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 19, 2022Posted in Batteries, Climate, EC Food Climate and Sustainability, Hardware, wearablesNo Comments

Battery technology has made significant strides in recent years, but there’s one place they haven’t changed much — they’re still as stiff as a board. The era of inflexible portable power may be coming to an end, though, if Anthro Energy can bring its bendy batteries to market. It’s getting some help with that courtesy of an oversubscribed $7.2 million seed round, which the company is announcing today, ZebethMedia exclusively learned. The round was led by Union Square Ventures and Energy Revolution Ventures with participation from Voyager Ventures, Emerson Collective, Nor’easter Ventures, Ultratech Capital Partners and the Stanford President’s Venture Fund. Anthro was founded by chemists David Mackanic and Joe Papp, who saw an opening for a flexible polymer that could not only give batteries new properties but also offer a quicker way to market than the frequently cited automotive route. “Batteries are faced with this kind of really severe innovator’s dilemma, where to get into something like an auto, it takes a ton of validation, a ton of technology development and a ton of time,” Mackanic said. “And so I realized if I want to make a difference in the battery space, I’ve got to think differently about the problems I’m solving, I’ve got to think differently about how we’re bringing this to market.”

Sila’s Gene Berdichevsky on the ‘5-year roller coaster’ facing battery companies • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 17, 2022Posted in Batteries, Climate, EC Food Climate and Sustainability, EC Founder Interview, gene berdichevsky, Sila, TransportationNo Comments

As hundreds of thousands of EVs come to market over the next few years, demand for critical battery materials like lithium, graphite, nickel, and cobalt has never been higher. Automakers are scrambling to ensure their own supply of key raw materials and, in the process, reduce their reliance on China, the dominant force in the industry. The result? The price of raw materials has skyrocketed, and it might not come back down to earth for some time. Battery chemistry company Sila says it has a solution to relieve at least one of the current bottlenecks — replacing the graphite in a battery cell’s anode with silicon, which can be made anywhere. The startup finds itself in a perfect storm of product-market fit and is steadily advancing on its path to produce battery cells for automakers on U.S. soil. “I didn’t think the U.S. was gonna pass legislation that is an order of magnitude bigger than anything Europe’s ever done for climate. But it’s very American to wait for a while and then come in big.” Sila CEO Gene Berdichevsky In the year since we last interviewed Sila’s co-founder and CEO, Gene Berdichevsky, Sila announced that its silicon anode material will appear in the Mercedes electric G-Class in 2025. In addition, Sila purchased a facility in Washington that will produce automotive-scale quantities of Sila’s battery technology starting in 2024. In that time, the Inflation Reduction Act became the law of the land. The IRA will provide tax incentives for EVs that are manufactured in the U.S. and that are built with critical materials manufactured in the U.S., which has become a massive tailwind for battery startups like Sila. We sat down again with Berdichevsky to talk about how the IRA will affect the battery industry, when material supply constraints will ease, and why battery recycling will become the next big industry. The following interview, part of an ongoing series with founders who are building transportation companies, has been edited for length and clarity. ZebethMedia: Your new factory will produce 10 gigawatt hours of capacity annually. When you announced the buy, you told me that scaling from 10 GWh to 150 GWh would require another $2 billion. Are you currently doing another round? Gene Berdichevsky: That’s still true. We haven’t announced a fundraise for that yet, but when we’re ready we’ll need a combination of equity and debt. There’s no reason to raise $2 billion of equity once you have a proven factory and customers and all the rest. Part of that could be leveraging the Department of Energy loan guarantee, as well, which is the same program that funded Tesla, Ford, GM and others to build EVs over the last decade.

Top climate tech deals net nearly $4B in Q3, outpacing other industries • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 16, 2022Posted in cb insights, Climate, climate tech, EC Food Climate and Sustainability, fundraisingNo Comments

Climate tech wrapped a strong Q3, landing three of the top four equity deals, including the whopping $1 billion Series A raised by fleet charging startup TeraWatt. While the broader market might be cooling, climate tech continues to be a hot ticket, with investment figures for top deals in Q3 outpacing the two previous quarters this year. In total, five climate tech startups made CB Insights’ top 10 equity deals list in Q3, pulling in a combined $3.7 billion. That far exceeds last quarter’s $2.5 billion across eight top startups and Q1’s $1.4 billion across five top startups. Top climate tech investments continued to diversify, too, showing just how deeply it’s becoming embedded into the economy.

Fears of climate tech underinvestment are probably overblown • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 11, 2022Posted in Climate, climate tech, EC Food Climate and Sustainability, investment, VentureNo Comments

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing over whether the world will get its act together enough to prevent catastrophic warming. There’s certainly a case to be made there — we’ve spent the last several decades kicking the can down the road at every opportunity. Well, here we are again, with the can again before us and the end of the road fast approaching. Lucky for me, I tend to be an optimist. I still think we’re in for a world of pain, and we’ll probably have to rely on some exotic technologies like fusion power and direct air capture to pull ourselves back from the brink. But in my opinion, when the chips are down, humanity tends to pull through. If we use computing and software as a guide, we should expect to see a nearly fivefold increase in the capital committed in the next 30 years. That is why I think many of the gloom-and-doom scenarios regarding climate tech investments tend to be overly bearish. Take the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) forecasts, which for years habitually underestimated the growth of solar power. The agency has since added better models to its toolkit, but it and others still make predictions that go on to be proven overly pessimistic. In reality, renewable energy and other climate tech is likely to follow an adoption curve that’s similar to other industries. It might even follow an accelerated version given how broad and deep the impacts and benefits of climate tech are likely to be — and the very real prospect of Armageddon if we do nothing. To see how climate tech stands to outperform today’s forecasts, you only have to look as far back as 1970, when the computing revolution was beginning. Exponential trends The overarching trend of investment in the computing and telecommunications space over 50 years has been exponential. But that simplistic analysis papers over the significant growth that happened in the early years. It also fails to pick up on key technological advances that sparked wider adoption.

Recalled EV? Automakers shouldn’t get to count it toward fleetwide fuel economy • TechCrunch

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 9, 2022Posted in chrysler pacifica, Climate, EC Food Climate and Sustainability, Environmental Protection Agency, National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, RecallsNo Comments

In February, I received a letter from Chrysler saying that our 2017 Pacifica Hybrid was subject to a new recall. Several of the minivans had inexplicably caught fire and, given the evidence, the automaker suspected it might have to do with the high-voltage battery pack. The recall notice told us not to recharge the vehicle or park it near a house or garage — or any other building, for that matter. The fix? The company didn’t have one nor could it tell me when it might. Having covered recalls like this before, I figured we’d be in it for the long haul. And I was right. A few days ago, nearly eight months after the recall first went out, Stellantis, Chrysler’s parent company, said it had a fix. There would be a software update and dealers would inspect and replace any suspect batteries. Troublingly, the automaker still hasn’t found what caused the dozen fires, but it said the fixes would prevent them from happening. Yes, I’m glad that Chrysler and Stellantis have a remedy (which they’re legally obliged to provide) that (I hope) will eliminate a very serious fire risk. Obviously, I’d prefer if the remedy were also accompanied by an explanation for the blazes — I wouldn’t want to learn firsthand if the forthcoming fix doesn’t address the cause. But Stellantis assured me that it has been validated to address the conditions under which fires have occurred. As the energy transition continues, there are going to be bumps in the road, and I understand that it’s impossible to design an entirely problem-free vehicle. But recalls that prevent EVs and plug-in hybrids from charging result in additional pollution. Maybe there should be consequences for that.