The Impact Innovator | Issue 263
Toyota Motor Corp?7203.T?said on Wednesday it will invest $2.1 billion more in its new U.S. battery plant in North Carolina, as the Japanese automaker deepens efforts to tap rising demand for electric vehicles.?The automaker also said its first U.S.-made battery electric sports utility vehicles (SUVs) will be assembled at the company's Kentucky plant from 2025.?The new SUVs, with three rows of seats, will be powered by batteries from the North Carolina plant once it begins production in 2025. Toyota's latest investment in the battery plant brings the?total?to $5.9 billion. The facility, its planned hub for developing and producing lithium-ion batteries, will have six battery production lines - four for hybrid electric vehicles and two for battery electric vehicles. Seeking to solidify its foothold in the EV sector, Toyota has said it will introduce 10 new battery-powered vehicles, targeting sales of 1.5 million EVs a year by 2026.
Boeing is partnering with Equatic, a Los Angeles-based startup that removes carbon from the ocean, in a first-of-its-kind deal to buy a massive amount of carbon credits and green hydrogen that’s likely worth at least $50 million.??Under the five-year arrangement, Equatic will remove 62,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide for the aerospace giant and supply it with 2,100 metric tons of “green” hydrogen generated as a byproduct of its technology. Equatic declined to provide a value for the agreement, though it’s more than double the size of a 25,000-ton CO2 elimination contract competitor?Climeworks just announced with JP Morgan Chase. Climeworks values that deal—which doesn’t include hydrogen fuel—at more than $20 million. (The financial company is also contracting with startup Charm Industrial to put captured carbon underground as “bio-oil” made with agricultural scraps.)
The cost of corporate carbon offsetting could double by the end of the decade, according to a new analysis by Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC).?Carbon offsetting, along with emerging carbon capture and storage technologies, are being widely relied on to meet net-zero CO2 targets.?Although many businesses have made some commitment to reaching net-zero by 2050, many are relying on carbon offsetting rather than directly reducing their own emissions.?The PwC report estimates that in 2022, FTSE 350 companies publicly reported purchases of voluntary carbon offsets totalling ￡38m. Based on current pricing models, PwC has calculated that by 2030, this same volume of offsets would cost companies more than ￡135m. This is then expected to continue to rise until 2050, when the cost of the same volume of offsets may peak at ￡365m. The report also identifies that 80 per cent of the volume of offsets reported to have been purchased in 2022 were classed as avoidance offsets, derived from projects such as avoided deforestation.
CleanJoule, a Salt Lake City-based developer of sustainable aviation fuels developed from agricultural residues and other waste biomass, raised $50 million from an investor group that included three airlines.?This reflects a growing aerospace sector belief that sustainable aviation fuels could become competitive with crude oil-based fuels, or at least part of a standard blend, in terms of both cost and performance.?Plus government incentives in the U.S. and Europe.?Indigo Partners led the round, and was joined by Temasek's GenZero and existing backer Cleanhill Partners. Also participating were Frontier Airlines, Wizz Air and Volaris — a consortium that also agreed to buy up to 90 million gallons of CleanJoule SAF.
CUR8?is a U.K.-based climate tech startup that is building a market-making platform for carbon removals. Their idea is to provide high-quality portfolios of carbon removals, effectively allowing customers to make bets on a wide variety of these products.?It’s now raised $6.5 million (￡5.3 million) in pre-seed funding led by GV (Google Ventures). Also participating was CapitalT.?The company has a pretty crack team. It was founded in 2022 by serial fintech entrepreneur?Marta Krupinska?(co-founder of Azimo, and former Google for Startups U.K. lead), climate scientist?Dr. Gabrielle Walker?(founder of nonprofit Rethinking Removals) and Mark Stevenson (a former advisor to U.K. Ministry of Defense). How does it work? CUR8 buys carbon removal credits from suppliers it has vetted, and builds these carbon removals portfolios, combining different strategies and methods. For example, these include direct air capture (1pointfive), enhanced rock weathering (UNDO) and durable soil carbon (Loam Bio
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Measurabl, which helps companies in the real estate industry measure their environmental, social and governance impacts, raised $93 million in an oversubscribed Series D funding round.?Energy Impact Partners?and?Sway Ventures?co-led the round for San Diego-based Measurabl.?Moderne Ventures,?WVV,?Suffolk Construction,?Broadscale,?Camber Creek,?Salesforce Ventures,?Building Ventures,?Constellation Technology Ventures,?Concrete Ventures,?RET Ventures,?Colliers?and?Lincoln Property Co.?also participated.??Measurabl has now raised $172.6 million total,?per Crunchbase.? The startup was co-founded in 2013 by CTO?Lance Onken?and CEO?Matt Ellis, the former director of sustainability at commercial real estate brokerage giant?CBRE.?
NexWafe, a German startup that designs, develops, and pilots a proprietary process to produce ultra-thin, high efficiency, monocrystalline green solar wafers to make photovoltaics more sustainable and efficient.??In a recent development, NexWafe has scored €30 million in funding from its current group of investors, including Reliance New Energy Limited, Aramco Ventures (which invested in?Amogy?and?ANYbotics), and ATHOS Venture GmbH, as well as new investors, including the Honorable Malcolm Turnbull AC and Keshik Capital, led by Alex Turnbull. The company anticipates to raise an additional round of funding in the second half of this year.?NexWafe plans to deploy the funds to accelerate the construction of its first commercial-scale facility in Bitterfeld to fabricate its green solar wafers.?In addition to this investment, NexWafe has agreed to work with Aramco Ventures on a future green solar wafer manufacturing facility in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The collaborative agreement saw participation from the firm’s $1.5 billion Sustainability fund.
After a rocky start to a week of negotiations, around 170 countries agreed to develop a first draft by November of what could become the first?global treaty to curb plastic pollution?by the end of next year.?Country delegations, NGOs and industry representatives gathered in Paris this week for the second round of UN talks toward a?legally binding pact to halt the explosion of plastic waste, which is projected to almost triple by 2060, with around half ending up in landfill and less than a fifth recycled, according to a 2022 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report. Though the first half of the five-day negotiations was spent arguing over procedural issues, delegations split into two groups to discuss the range of control measures that can be taken to stop plastic pollution as well as whether countries should develop national plans or set global targets to tackle the problem.
Qantas hosted its first Investor Strategy Day in four years, with the annual event suspended during the pandemic years. As well as?presenting its operational and financial plans, Qantas?announced it will establish the world's largest aviation climate fund.?The?Qantas Group?is establishing the AU$400 million ($260 million) climate fund to provide direct investments in sustainability projects and technologies. The initiative is an essential part of the airline's pathway to net zero emissions by 2050 and fuelling the sustainable aviation push in this part of the world.?Last year?Qantas and Airbus joined forces in an AU$290 million ($189 million) partnership?to accelerate the production of a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) industry in Australia, with that investment now a foundation for the new fund. Today the airline announced it was injecting another AU$110 million into the Qantas Climate Fund, topping up the funds to AU$400 million.? Qantas' latest investment will fund other green projects, including offshore?SAF?investments, operational efficiency technologies and high-integrity carbon offsets.
The fresh, doughy aroma around the conical fermentation tanks at Austin Beerworks is a sign that trillions of yeast cells are turning the sugary, hoppy liquid inside into beer.?But there’s another byproduct: carbon dioxide.?Fermentation releases CO2 as the yeast breaks down sugar to create alcohol. At most wineries and breweries, it is released into the atmosphere. But a growing number of craft breweries are starting to collect that gas, not only reducing CO2 emissions — even if by tiny amounts — but also reusing it to give beer its characteristic white foam.?Until recently, Clinton Mack, Austin Beerworks’s cellar manager, had to truck in carbon dioxide in tanks 10,000 pounds at a time. But now, he’s using techniques developed by NASA to capture the naturally produced CO2 and dissolve the molecules into his brews.?The machine that enables Mack to capture CO2 from Austin Beerworks’ tanks is the size of a large, double-door refrigerator. Nicknamed CiCi — short for “carbon capture” — it takes in CO2 that flows from the fermenters through pipes that snake around the brewery, filters it to more than 99 percent purity, and condenses it into liquid. The machine then stores the resulting condensed gas for use elsewhere, including to carbonate beer. Mack said installing the technology, made by Austin-based Earthly Labs, was a no-brainer. The average batch releases about one-third of a pound of CO2 per gallon of beer, which adds up to about 210,800 pounds a year from a brewery like Austin Beerworks.
Most wound dressings simply cover the injury and perhaps also kill harmful bacteria. The PAINT system goes much further, as it incorporates a pen that could one day allow doctors to paint a gelatinous healing ink right into wounds.?Its name an acronym for "portable bioactive ink for tissue healing," the PAINT technology is being developed by scientists from China's Nanjing University.?The system is centered around a 3D-printing pen which contains a sodium alginate gel and particles known as extracellular vesicles (EVs). The latter are naturally produced by white blood cells, and play a large role in the reduction of inflammation and formation of new blood vessels at injury sites.
The gel and the EVs mix with one another at the tip of the pen, forming a sturdy viscous ink which is extruded into cuts of any shape or size. In tests performed on human?epithelial?cells, application of that ink shifted those cells into the proliferated phase of the healing process, wherein new blood vessels formed and inflammatory substances were reduced. Additionally, the PAINT system was found to boost collagen fiber production when tested on injured mice. Large wounds on a treated group of the animals were almost completely healed after 12 days, whereas wounds on an untreated control group were "not nearly as far along in the healing process" at that time.