Deep Tech Climate Startups: Humanity’s Superpower
Deep Tech Climate Startups: Humanity’s Superpower
by Pauliina Meskanen, Founder of Survivaltech.club
Radical decarbonization tools
Deep tech climate startups can radically decarbonize our industries by leveraging two superpowers: 1) science and 2) entrepreneurship.
While science provides impactful breakthroughs, entrepreneurship enables their fast implementation for tackling the climate crisis.
Deep tech climate startups have already developed ways to grow steaks without an animal (Mosa Meat, Aleph Farms), build electric airplanes (Heart Aerospace), invent multi-day energy storage (Antora Energy, Form Energy), and develop plastic-eating enzymes (Epoch BioDesign, Beworm).
There are two areas where I believe deep tech startups can make an outsized climate impact:
#1. Decarbonizing hard-to-abate manufacturing sectors
Concrete, steel, and other manufacturing industries (e.g., plastics and chemicals) form the backbone of our modern society. These industries make up 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions and, unfortunately, are all behind schedule for humankind to reach 50% emissions reductions by 2030 and net zero by 2050. Luckily, we have impactful deep tech climate startups dealing with manufacturing sectors’ emissions.
The following examples illustrate the wide array of science-based solutions frontier startups are bringing from the lab to the market.
Boston Metal and Electra develop ways to electrify steelmaking directly. On the other hand, Ferrum Decarb and H2 Green Steel make low-emission steel by using green hydrogen. H2 Green Steel announced a massive €3.5B debt financing round in October 2022 to build its steel plant in Sweden.
In concrete, an MIT spin-out Sublime Systems makes low-carbon drop-in cement via direct electrification. Neustark recycles concrete and injects removed CO2 in it, while CarbiCrete and Betolar develop cement-free alternatives for concrete.
In chemical manufacturing, Phase Biolabs, a Breakthrough Energy Fellowship company, makes carbon-negative chemicals with microbes. Bloom Biorenewables has developed a novel process to turn wood waste into chemicals.
#2. Building permanent, low-cost carbon removal
Removing carbon from the atmosphere has become necessary, as we have emitted a staggering 1.5 trillion tons of CO2 since the start of the industrial revolution in 1750.
We must build gigaton-scale carbon removal to tackle the climate crisis.
By 2021, only 10 kt of CO2 had been permanently removed from the atmosphere, underlining the urgency for developing and scaling carbon removal.
Many science-based startups are trying to crack the code for permanent, scalable, and low-cost carbon removal with a variety of technological approaches.
Heirloom and Paebbl utilize carbon mineralization, Ucaneo synthetic biology, and Mission Zero Technologies and Holy Grail electrochemical processes. The list could go on!
Growth drivers of deep tech climate startups
We have three good reasons to be excited about the future of deep tech climate startups right now.
Firstly, today’s effective technical tools cut the development time and cost of hardware climate solutions. For example, in synthetic biology, the CRISPR-cas9 gene editing tool makes modifying DNA much faster and simpler than ever before. DNA sequencing technology has developed and driven down the cost. The cost of sequencing the human genome dropped from $100M to $1k between 2000 and 2020.
Likewise, AI and machine learning tools have become powerful and integral parts of conducting science and modeling hardware solutions. For example, Deepmind’s AlphaFold, an advanced AI, published a database of 200M highly accurate protein folding structures, a piece of work that was considered almost impossible a few years before.
Secondly, more funding is available for deep tech climate startups. Energy Impact Partners raised its $485M Frontier fund in November 2022, while Lowercarbon Capital announced the $250M fusion-focused Lowercarbon Q>1 fund just a month before that. And those climate startups ready to scale can turn to Climate Adaptive Infrastructure’s newly announced $1B fund.
Thirdly, a supporting ecosystem for scientist founders and deep tech climate startups is emerging. Programs like Activate and venture studios, such as Deep Science Ventures, Wilbe, and Marble, help scientists turn their research into a company. Fifty Years' Spinout Playbook and the Spinout.fyi’s database on university spinout terms provide helpful information for scientists considering spinning out their research. Bill Gates's Breakthrough Energy Fellowship program supports heavily deep tech climate startups decarbonizing heavy industry and developing carbon removal.
All in all, deep tech climate startups hold significant impact potential to decarbonize hard-to-abate manufacturing sectors and build scalable and permanent carbon removal. The tailwinds for deep tech climate startups are on. Can’t wait to see what 2023 brings!
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This is super interesting, especially steel and cement industries since they contribute significantly to global emissions. While the deep climate tech boom is good news, we need to be cautious not to oversell and ensure the science backing it is sound - I say this as a researcher involved in this area and related climate startups.