Agtech company Pivot Bio nails down $100 million more in funding, while AI developer Hypergiant spins up COVID-19 emissions modeling tool.
Agtech startup Pivot Bio snags $100 million amid busy April for climate tech
Heather Clancy
Thu, 04/30/2020 – 04:31
Even in the old normal, the healthy $100 million investment disclosed this morning by agtech startup Pivot Bio — which hopes to disrupt the $65 billion global market for synthetic nitrogen fertilizer — would be impressive. Given the current economic climate, it’s another sign that interest in climate tech is prevailing during the coronavirus crisis.
The Series C round was co-led by return backers Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the fund most visibly associated with billionaire Bill Gates, and Singapore-based investment firm Temasek; it brings the company’s total backing to $186 million. The infusion will support the company’s strategy to scale its microbe-fueled approach for boosting crop yields beyond its initial sales to corn farmers into other cereal crops, such as wheat, as well as into international markets, starting with Argentina and Canada.
Pivot Bio’s microbial nitrogen technology uses a biological approach to “reawaken and rediscover” microbes in soil, so that farmers don’t have to apply as much synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. “The microbes in the soil can already do this; we just have to figure out how to wake them up,” Pivot Bio CEO Karsten Temme told GreenBiz.
The microbes in the soil can already do this; we just have to figure out how to wake them up.
Interest for its initial product, Proven, was “far beyond” the company’s expectations fueled by farmers’ growing interest in improving resilience for agricultural land while reducing the environmental of crop production, Temme said. The technology sold out for both seasons it has been available and is available on “hundreds of thousands” of acres of U.S. corn crops.
The company already claims some pretty impressive benefits for Proven: It can provide a “5.8 bushels per acre advantage” compared to fields using just synthetic fertilizer, while simultaneously reducing carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions, as well as runoff of water-borne nitrates. The Berkeley, California-based company employs about 100 people in labs in locations including Boston, St. Louis and Hayward, California.
Beyond the Pivot Bio deal, I’m aware of at least four other appreciable funding rounds (near $10 million or above) disclosed in the second half of April. Here’s a quick rundown:
- It’s on a methane mission: Kairos Aerospace, a five-year-old company that offers aerial monitoring of leaks by the oil and gas industry, closed a $9 million Series C round led by investors including OGCI Climate Investments (the fund financed by lots of oil and gas insiders).
- Super support for superfoods: Danone Manifesto Ventures just doled out $10 million to Laird Superfoods, the plant-based foods company co-founded by surfer Laird Hamilton.
- More energy-efficient HVAC: Breakthrough Energy Ventures (the firm backed by a number of prominent CEOs including Bill Gates) led a $20 million Series B funding round for enVerid Systems, which is pitching technology to “clean a building’s indoor at a molecular level.” The company says it eliminates between 30 to 50 percent of wasted energy consumption related to this sort of equipment.
- You’ll get a charge out of this: FreeWire Technologies, which creates equipment that makes it easier to deploy EV charging stations without having to upgrade the grid, last week disclosed a $25 million Series B round. Two big corporate VC funds were involved: existing investor BP Ventures and new backer ABB Technology Ventures.
Ambition, innovation and passion
What drives climate tech entrepreneurs? Several weeks ago, while I was reporting last week’s feature on climate tech, I interviewed the CEO of Hypergiant Industries, the artificial intelligence company behind the Eos Bioreactor, a system that uses algae to sequester carbon dioxide. Hypergiant was planning a big splash for the technology during March, as part of its campaign to encourage commercialization.
“This device is one of our first efforts focused on fixing the planet we are on,” said Hypergiant CEO Ban Lamm when his two-year-old company first started chatting about the bioreactor last fall, in the press release for its launch. “We hope to inspire and collaborate with others on a similar mission.”
Hypergiant isn’t your typical climate tech startup — much of its AI consulting is focused on aerospace, healthcare and defense applications for Fortune 500 companies and government agencies. It’s backed by organizations including Perot Jain and Sumito.
The bioreactor actually started as kind of a pet research and development project and grew into something more as Hypergiant’s team began thinking more deeply about the role of businesses of all sizes in addressing the climate crisis, Lamm told me. That led the company to bring on scientist Bill Nye as an adviser for its climate-related solutions work in June.
The current design for the bioreactor — which measures 3 feet by 3 feet by 7 feet — could find its way into commercial office buildings. Think of it as an air purifier that also happens to sequester the carbon dioxide that normally would be pushed out by a traditional heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system. The newest edition is outdoor-rated, and Hypergiant is talking with city planners about potential applications.
“We don’t have the power to make the General Motors of this world change their emissions, but I can find ways to help them be more efficient,” he said. “If we just play our part, we can make a big difference.”
When I chatted with Lamm several weeks ago, he was optimistic about launching the technology in a bigger way this year even though the pandemic will set those plans back by at least several months.
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 situation also prompted a new project that the startup hopes will stoke more interest in how to emerge from the pandemic with better climate-action strategies in place.
This week, Hypergiant launched a modeling tool called ACES (short for After COVID-19 Emissions Simulator). The mission: help organizations better understand the impact of worldwide shelter-in-place-measures. While many have been cheering the dramatic decrease in emissions, Hypergiant doesn’t want people to be lulled into thinking that it’s time to relax efforts to draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide.
With that in mind, the tool uses information from the Environmental Protection Agency and Energy Information Administration to show things such as: the potential long-term effect of making certain changes (such as telecommuting) more permanent or the effect that using certain technologies (maybe carbon capture devices such as its own bioreactor) could have.
“The website will be continuously improving through new data inputs, including understanding and experimenting with a variety of investments in technology and behavioral changes,” the company notes. “Hypergiant hopes to encourage governments, cities and citizens to consider committing to the maintenance of some quarantine practices once social distancing and shelter-in-places are put at a halt.”
Pull Quote
The microbes in the soil can already do this; we just have to figure out how to wake them up.
Topics
Climate Tech
Featured in featured block (1 article with image touted on the front page or elsewhere)
Off
Duration
0
Pivot Bio’s microbial nitrogen technology decreases the amount of synthetic fertilizer farmers must apply their fields.
Pivot Bio
It’s not just about carbon removal, it’s about creating or preserving economic opportunities in rural communities.
It would be devastating if the COVID-19 crisis killed off climate tech startups. We only have a few months to get it right.
Here’s why a key Sustainable Development Goal is back in style, and why it may be the SDG “for our times.”
Here’s what will help beyond immediate disaster response.
The home textiles company — and other players in the textile recycling space — want to show what’s possible.
With political short-termism aplenty, Canada’s climate leaders are private companies.
Buckle up: this year will be rough, but this road trip still looks promising.
Why the electric vehicle wave is still coming
Katie Fehrenbacher
Wed, 04/29/2020 – 01:45
If you look at the 2020 annual estimates for global electric vehicle sales, it sure seems grim.
Wood Mackenzie predicts that because of the pandemic and resulting economic disruption, sales of EVs around the world will drop by 43 percent this year. Automakers that sell vehicles to consumers tend to be hit hard by macroeconomic trends, and with a dramatic recession emerging, potential buyers are likely to buy fewer cars in general — let alone electric models that are newer to the market.
So we’re looking at an EV industry that could see a contraction by almost half in a crucial year that was formerly expected to be an important breakout year for EVs.
Yeah, that’s not good. But let’s all take a deep breath and look at the bigger picture. The longer-term forecasts are much, much brighter.
Core industry, technology, environmental and policy shifts have been happening over the past decade that will continue to ensure that electric vehicles continue on their trajectory to eventually reach the mainstream car buyer.
Core industry, technology, environmental and policy shifts have been happening over the past decade that will continue to ensure EVs continue on their trajectory to the mainstream.
Here are four trends to remember that will keep EVs moving forward, and ultimately, yes, still, one day dominating transportation:
1. Economics: The price of lithium-ion batteries — which power the bulk of electric vehicles — dropped by 87 percent between 2010 and 2019 and is expected to continue to drop below $100 per kilowatt-hour by 2024, predicts the researchers at Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). These price drops are due to ever-larger factories that benefit from economies of scale, manufacturing efficiencies and innovations, fierce competition in the battery industry and new battery chemistry technologies.
Once lithium-ion batteries reach below $100/kWh, all types of electric vehicles will be cheaper than they are now. More important, that will ensure that EVs more effectively will compete with fossil-fuel-powered vehicles. The same type of manufacturing innovation and factory scaling that turned solar panels into one of the cheapest forms of electricity is doing the same thing to batteries for electric vehicles.
Partly because of this economic and tech trend, automakers already have committed $140 billion to electrification initiatives through capital spending on factories. These initiatives have been led by global automakers such as VW Group, Hyundai Kia, Changan, Daimler and Ford. Auto manufacturers are not going to abandon these investments because of the coronavirus.
2. Policies: While EV sales in the U.S. and China are expected to drop this year, sales in Europe could still grow. Why? Many countries in Europe already have enacted strong mandates and incentives, while some European cities have banned fossil fuel-powered vehicles from city centers.
BNEF predicts that Europe’s EV sales could be up by 50 percent this year despite the COVID-19 fallout. Other markets need equally strong policies to maintain EV sale trajectories.
That’s where the potentials of a green stimulus come in. A recent Politico Pro article reported on an Ipsos-Mori poll for 14 G20 countries that found that the majority of respondents agreed that an economic recovery should prioritize climate change. Expect some significant recovery funds in European countries and progressive states such as California for clean economy industries that can create jobs such as solar panel installations, building weatherization and electric vehicle factories and infrastructure.
3. Electric fleets: While consumers might be less eager to buy cars in a recession, many fleets are already moving toward low-carbon and electric formats to meet mandates or corporate sustainability goals. Public and private fleet managers need to replace older vehicles and continue to buy the most efficient and cost-effective vehicles.
Part of the push behind green fleets, again, is strong policies. For example, in California, the Advanced Clean Truck (ACT) rule appears to be continuing to move forward in the face of the pandemic, although a recent hearing was pushed to June. The ACT rule is a world-leading manufacturing (and eventually fleet-purchasing) mandate in California that significantly will boost the amount of zero-emissions trucks on California’s roads. California is also already requiring all of its transit buses to be ZEVs within a little over two decades.
But it’s not just about policies. For many fleets — delivery vehicles, transit buses and school buses — it can be cheaper to operate an electric vehicle than it is to operate a diesel-powered vehicle. Why? Because for specific routes, in targeted regions, electricity is cheaper than diesel. Another checkmark for the economics box.
Electric fleets have such potential staying power that startups are still getting funding in this space. Amply Power, which sells charging solutions to electric fleets, just closed on a $13.2 million funding round, led by George Soros’ fund and power company Siemens. Amply CEO Vic Shao says that while consumer appetite for EVs might be down this year, “the same is not true for fleets.”
4. Clean air: We’ve been in a global transportation experiment since late March. With much of the world’s transportation halted, the air in many cities has been cleaner than it’s been in decades. The big hope is that this moment in history will galvanize all of us to continue to push toward what’s needed to accelerate and scale zero-emission vehicles.
But even without this grand experiment, clean air has emerged as a major driver for ZEVs in the past couple of years. School district transportation leaders such as Tim Shannon, who manages the transportation for Twin Rivers Unified School District in Sacramento, California, points to “clean air for kids” as the No. 1 reason to electrify school buses.
Likewise, protests around shipping distribution centers in Southern California — which have large numbers of idling trucks — have helped shine a spotlight on the need for ZEVs within the context of the ACT rule and around Amazon’s fulfilment centers.
It’s gonna be a rough year, folks, but don’t abandon all hope.
This article is adapted from GreenBiz’s weekly newsletter, Transport Weekly, running Tuesdays. Subscribe here.
Pull Quote
Core industry, technology, environmental and policy shifts have been happening over the past decade that will continue to ensure EVs continue on their trajectory to the mainstream.
Electric Vehicles
Featured Column
Featured in featured block (1 article with image touted on the front page or elsewhere)
Off
Duration
0
EV sales could contract by almost half in a crucial year for adoption, but the long-term forecasts look much brighter.