Climate Change: 7 Innovative Start-ups

Seven Climate Change related startups are doing amazing work to avert climate disaster and create long-term economic value. They are using technology, ingenuity, and invention to decarbonize the world and bring emissions to zero. Who are they, what is driving them and what are they trying to accomplish?

The drivers of innovation

Money is pouring in from public and private sources to drive the new carbon economy – often referred to as the fourth industrial revolution.  For example, recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science Act and 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act have fueled more than 80 billion dollars of spending for climate related projects.  When you couple this with corporate and government commitments to decarbonize and new regulations to deploy technology, there is plenty of opportunity to drive innovation in the years to come.

Areas of innovation

There are three primary areas where much of the innovation is focused.  First area is to scale up technologies that are already available.  That would mean deploying available solar, wind and batteries technologies for wider applications in energy generation, storage, and transportation.  Second area is to deploy available technologies in new ways.  And the third is to invent wholly new processes and business models for infrastructure, food, materials, and carbon removal. 

Climate change start-ups involved in carbon removal

Charm has developed a process to put hundreds of gigatons of CO2 into the ground permanently.  It uses plants to capture CO₂ from the atmosphere and then converts resulting biomass into a carbon-rich liquid that can be pumped deep underground.  This process removes CO₂ permanently from the atmosphere.

Heirloom is another start-up that is trying to remove 1 billion tons of CO2 by 2035.  It uses a natural process called carbon mineralization to engineer direct air capture.  Their process will help minerals absorb CO2 from the ambient air in days, rather than years. 

Overstory provides real-time vegetation intelligence to prevent wildfires and power outages.  It does this by applying artificial intelligence to satellite imagery.  Overstory provides tree-level data on existing trees, their health, height and proximity to line to improve risk management and disaster mitigation.

Remora captures at least 80% of semi-truck’s carbon emissions directly from the exhaust pipe.  The company sells captured CO2 to end users who can store it away permanently. 

Seabound is focused on capturing up to 95% of CO2 emissions from ships.  It does this by trapping emissions from ship’s exhaust and then selling captured CO2 for permanent removal. 

Swift Solar is developing more efficient and more affordable solar products.  It does that by using raw materials that are abundant in nature and are available in high volumes. 

Twelve is transforming the production of critical chemicals without using oil or generating CO2 emissions.  It does this by replicating photosynthesis at scale by using water and renewable energy as inputs. 

These companies and many more point to a bright and carbon free future for all of us. 

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Title image: KevinMShea, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons