First of the year

Hi,

Welcome to 2025. Suffice it to say a lot has already been afoot, whether globally or personally for me. So much so that—in particular because of the devastation of the fires still raging in LA and my concern for friends there—I haven’t really firmly found my footing ‘work’-wise this year. Hence why I missed my Thursday send on the 9th and only got this out late this evening, East Coast time at least.

Staying on the LA-beat, there’s so much to say about the devastation in a city I called home for the better part of a decade that I won’t report on it too much in this newsletter. I’ll save that for a send later this month. For now, what I’ll say is this: For one of its first acts, 2025 has already reminded us that resilience & adaptation will be as critical as greenhouse gas emission and other environmental externality mitigation, if not more so, for the foreseeable future. More on that here. 

If you know people who are personally impacted and could use help, feel free to ping me a response here. I’ve been firing off donations while writing this and am happy to continue doing so.

On a brighter note, I backpacked for a week in Patagonia over the new year itself and will send an email on that soon, too, as it also sparked plenty of sustainability musings (as I reckon you can imagine) while offering a welcome and full 5-day phone and laptop respite. I added a nice photo from the trip to the end of this newsletter.

Finally, I’m back in the saddle at home in New York as of four hours ago, so for this coming week and the rest of the year, unless otherwise advertised, we’ll be back to our typical schedule, though I may add a couple extra emails on topics mentioned above. 

With all that said, here’s a bunch of other news and funding info from 2025 so far:

In today’s newsletter:

• Another good newsletter to check out

• One story in a sentence (and a chart)

• Climate tech and energy headlines from the week

• Climate tech fundraising announcements

• An opportunity for startups and a great job opening

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH CLIMATE PROOF

There's no escaping climate risk. From wildfires to hurricanes, natural catastrophes are becoming more common and more devastating as the world heats up. Households, businesses, and entire countries have to adapt to this more dangerous and volatile world. In short, they have to become climate-proof. If you’re looking for more on that beat (obviously also very germane to the entire LA wildfire situation unfolding), subscribe to Climate Proof for news and analysis on adaptation finance, tech, and policy. I recently did!

THIS WEEK IN CLIMATE TECH & ENERGY

One story in a sentence (and a chart)

• The world surpassed 1.5°C of global warming for the first time in 2024, meaning the 1.5°C global warming target (to keep warming at or below that level) set as part of the 2015 Paris Accords is functionally dead less than a decade after being set, though the target is comprised of multi-year averages and a one-year breach isn’t entirely invalidating. Link.

20+ headlines

The good (we all need it right now, I know)

• The DOE and its Loan Programs Office (LPO) are still at it before the coming changing of the guard at the federal administration level in the U.S.:

Hydrostor, a Denver-based long-duration energy storage developer, received a conditional ~$1.8 billion loan guarantee to build a planned 500 MW compressed air energy storage project in Rosamond, California. Link. 

Calumet received a ~$1.4 billion guaranteed loan facility from the LPO to build and expand a sustainable aviation and renewable fuels facility in Montana. The expansion would make Montana Renewables, a subsidiary of Calumet, one of the largest SAF producers globally, increasing annual production capacity to ~300 million gallons of SAF and 330 million gallons of combined SAF and renewable diesel. Montana Renewables aims to have roughly half of the 300-million-gallon annual SAF generation capacity online by 2026 and to increase renewable hydrogen production capacity as well. Link. 

The LPO also made a conditional commitment to provide Arizona Public Service Company, the largest electric utility in Arizona, with a loan guarantee of up to ~$1.8 billion for several new transmission projects, transmission upgrades, and renewable plus grid-integrated energy storage system projects. Link.

• Brimstone, a startup focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from cement production, is building a first-of-its-kind plant with a $189 million DOE grant. It will also make alumina, the core material for smelting aluminum, another core commodity that’s usually quite emissions-intensive to produce. Like many things, China also dominates the aluminum market, so onshoring some of that wouldn’t hurt either. Alumina is also needed to make concrete, not just aluminum. Link.

• Methane emissions from oil and gas operations in the Permian Basin actually fell by 25%+ in 2023 as operators increasingly leverage more sophisticated methane monitoring technologies to identify leaks in infrastructure and companies reduce routine flaring and venting as well. That dramatic of a methane emissions reduction is very powerful, btw, equivalent to emissions reductions from all new EVs on the road in the U.S. for the same year. Link. Link.

• India added 24.5 GW of solar in 2024, its highest annual addition to date. That said, India alone still accounts for more than 10% of global coal usage, making it the world’s second-largest coal consumer. But we’ll take the solar progress! Link.

• European power sector emissions fell 13% in 2024, as reported by S&P Global, though some of that drop is likely due to declining economic activity and industrial woes in prominent EU bloc member countries, such as in Germany. Link.

• Utility-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) deployment in the U.S. has doubled over the past two years. More BESS capacity was added last year in the U.S. than new wind was, though the two are certainly not an apples-to-apples comparison. I say that more to underscore wind’s ongoing woes; solar and storage are bearing the brunt of new clean energy additions in the U.S. Link. Link.

• Congestion pricing finally went into effect in Manhattan, and the early read and analysis suggest that, surprise!, it’s actually working rather well, whether measured by congestion or everyday New Yorkers’ experience of traffic (see the 2nd link for the latter). Link. Link.

• New York State also has a new ‘Climate superfund’ to invest in adaptation and resilience measures. The legislation is designed to require fossil fuel companies to fund projects that mitigate emissions and other environmental externalities, which, alongside other funding sources, aims to collect $75 billion over 25 years. Link. Link.

• Nearly 90% of new light-duty car sales in Norway in 2024 were fully electric, as the country has led the world in supportive federal policy and subsidy allocation for transport electrification. Link.

• California and New York both banned the sale of PFAS, or “forever chemical” clothing. Few major clothing sellers and manufacturers have yet to achieve compliance. Link (paywall). Link. Link.

• In carbon removal, InPlanet and Isometric announced what they claim to be the first-ever verified Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) carbon removal credits. InPlanet was the project developer, and Isometrics acted as the verifier. ERW has gotten a lot of investment but, like many carbon removal pathways, is and probably always will be challenging to measure, quantify, and verify from an impact perspective. Hopefully, the impact is real and durable, and carbon market investors and credit buyers will like what they see here. Link.

• In (perhaps and certainly at least close to) a final act of conservation and environmental efforts, the Biden Admin protected 625+ million acres of public lands and federal waters from oil and gas drilling. However, Trump’s Admin may well try to reverse some of these and other protective efforts to unfetter even more oil and gas production. Link. Link.

The inbetweens

• Ukraine cut off a key natural gas pipeline that was still pumping Russian gas through to the rest of Europe, even as Ukraine and Russia remained mired in a long-running war. While sensical from a geopolitical position for Ukraine and a blow to Russia’s economy, this is also a blow to other European countries’ energy stability and economic positioning, as many countries, ranging from Germany to Austria, Moldova, and beyond (just for a few examples) still use a lot of Russian gas, even as they too fund Ukraine’s war effort and support Ukraine’s geopolitical position. And while gas may not be flowing in pipelines through Ukraine anymore, European countries still import Russian liquefied natural gas via maritime transportation. Pipe-based gas transit through Ukraine previously represented about 5% of total gas imports to Europe and 30% of Russian gas exports to the rest of Europe, which have diminished but continued throughout the entire Russian and Ukrainian conflict. Link. Link. Link. Link. Link.

• The U.S. Treasury Department (finally) released guidance on significant tax credits for hydrogen production from the Inflation Reduction Act that had been awaited for some time. The credits are $3 per kilogram of clean or cleaner hydrogen produced, though there are a lot of intricacies as to what production methods can qualify for the credits (and a lot of competing interests with respect to the rules, as you can imagine). Frankly, I’m not the expert on these intricacies, and these tax credits may not survive Trump’s Admin either, but you can read more on the dynamics here to the right. Link.

• Microsoft plans to spend a whopping $80 billion on AI data centers this year, nearly a 50% increase year-over-year. Suffice it to say that it’ll also require a lot more power, water, and much more! Add it to the evolving AI and energy demand increase story we’ve been tracking for a while now (see the second link for a deeper dive.) Link. Link.

The bad

• 2024 was officially the hottest year since the Industrial Revolution and since global temperature evaluation and study began, as the world surpassed the 1.5°C warming threshold for the first time. That doesn’t mean that limiting global warming to less than 1.5°C is completely ‘lost,’ as one year of a breached warming threshold doesn’t cement longer-running, multi-year averages on which most targets are actually focused. But functionally, the 1.5°C target is dead, though what ultimately matters most is every incremental bit of warming. 1.5°C is just a number, and every bit of warming—not to mention every other climactic and environmental externality subsumed within the broad scope of “climate change” on the whole—is what really counts. Link.

• The Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles will become some of the U.S. and world’s costliest and most devastating natural disasters in history when the dust finally settles (the fires are very much still ongoing). Here is a bunch of reading on the fires, whether with respect to deadliness, damage, possible causes, the invariable insurance fallout, or more philosophical musings that I’ve read, appreciated, and aggregated so far: Link. Link. Link. Link. Link. Link. Link. Link. Link. Link. Link. Link. Link. Link. Link.

• In addition to the cataclysmic damages caused by the Eaton and Palisades fires in Los Angeles to start 2025, Munich Re, a major reinsurance company, released its annual report on catastrophe losses related to weather events for 2024. The tally came out to a staggering $298 billion. Attribution of what damages are “caused” or at least exacerbated by climate change is perniciously tricky, as building more infrastructure in disaster-prone areas itself is a more proximate cause of escalating damages. Other reinsurers are more circumspect in their attribution analyses, for instance, Swiss Re has noted “To date, growth in natural catastrophe-related property losses has been mostly driven by rising exposures due to economic growth, accumulation of asset values, urbanisation and rising populations, often in regions susceptible to severe weather events…” Still, and again, climate change certainly ain’t helping. Link. Link.

• Volocopter BK, a German electric aircraft developer, reportedly began bankruptcy proceedings recently. The company had raised over $600 million. German air taxi startup Lilium, which had also raised boatloads of cash, also filed for insolvency late last year. Lilium may yet be saved in some capacity with new investment, as is, of course, also still true for Volocopter but remains a TBD. Link. Link.

• Another massive business isn’t making good on its emissions reduction goals. This time, it’s Walmart, which announced its emissions rose close to 4% in 2023 and that it’s unlikely to make good on 2025 and 2030 emissions reduction targets. This follows a pattern of many other of the world’s largest businesses missing targets and walking back commitments in recent months (see Google, for instance, in the second link here to the right). Link. Link.

• In a similar vein, the Net Zero Banking Alliance is falling apart. JPMorgan joined six other big-time banks in the U.S. last week in bailing on the alliance. The group was formed in 2021 as members committed to cutting emissions across their lending and investment portfolios. None of the banks have made any new or other commitments to cut lending and financing for oil and gas exploration and extraction or accelerate investing in energy transition and other climate mitigation or adaptation efforts. BlackRock also withdrew from the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative (similar to the banking alliance). Link. Link.

• While China leads global EV sales and clean energy deployment by a significant margin, it is unlikely to meet its own self-set emissions reduction targets for its steel industry that will come due at the end of this new year. Specifically, China had set a target of getting 15% of its total steel industry to use electric arc furnaces by year’s end, but that target is more or less entirely out of reach for now. At present, China produces more than half of the world’s steel, and most of its production capacity still leverages blast furnaces fired predominantly with coal, contributing to the fact that China alone also consumes more than half of the world’s coal in any given year. Link. Link. Link.

• Tesla EV sales actually fell slightly for the first time in the company’s history in 2024. Competition from Chinese automakers especially is cutting into Tesla’s market abroad, as I and others have covered extensively, while some other U.S. startups and legacy auto manufacturers are making incursions domestically as well. That said, Tesla’s battery energy storage business is still growing strongly. Link. Link.

• In contrast to the EU, U.S. power sector emissions barely fell at all (down about ~20 basis points) in 2024 as electricity demand growth outpaced cleaner energy additions. Overall, U.S. power grids saw more gas-fired power generation growth year-over-year than they did solar growth. Link. Link.

CURATED DEALS

Larger funding rounds

• KoBold Metals, based out of Berkeley, CA, raised $537 million in Series C funding to use AI to identify copper and other metal deposits. Durable Capital Partners and T. Rowe Price led. Link.

• Inari, based out of Cambridge, MA, raised $144 million in equity funding for its seed breeding and gene editing business. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Hanwha Impact, NGS Super, The State of Michigan’s Retirement System, and Flagship Pioneering invested. Link.

• XOCEAN, based out of Dublin, raised ~$118.7 million in equity funding to startup provide ocean seabed and environmental condition data using unmanned surface vessels. S2G, Climate Investment, Morgan Stanley, and CC Industries invested. Link.

• InoBat, based out of Bratislava, Slovakia, raised ~$103 million in equity funding to make batteries for automotive and other transport applications. Amara Raja, Rio Tinto, SIH, and others invested. Link.

Medium-sized funding rounds

• Phoenix Tailings, based out of Woburn, MA, raised $43.8 million in Series B funding to recycle rare earths from mining waste. BMW i Ventures, Yamaha Motor Ventures, and others invested. Link.

• Gridware, based out of San Francisco, raised $26.4 million in Series A funding for its grid monitoring platform that combines software and hardware monitoring technologies and sensors to help utilities detect equipment failures. Sequoia Capital led. Link.

• Parsyl, based out of Denver, raised $20 million in Series C funding for its supply chain insurance business focused on supply chains for perishable goods. The Lightsmith Group led. Link.

• Fermata, based out of Tel Aviv, raised $10 million in Series A funding for its computer vision startup and autonomous crop management system that can help detect diseases and pests in agricultural settings. Raw Ventures led. Link.

Smaller funding rounds

• Biosphere, based out of San Francisco, raised $8.8 million in seed funding to make advanced UV-sterilized bioreactors to make biomanufacturing more efficient and cost-effective Lowercarbon Capital and VXI Capital led. Link.

• Karman Industries, based out of Long Beach, CA, raised an additional $7.5 million in equity funding following a $4 million pre-seed in Q3 2024 to make electric heat pumps for industrial heat applications. Riot Ventures, Space VC, Wonder Ventures, and 8090 Industries invested. Link.

• Advanced Ionics, based out of Milwaukee, WI, raised $6.7 million in equity funding to make electrolyzers. JERA, Lummus Venture Capital, the Argosy Foundation, and existing investors, like BP Ventures, participated. Link.

• Alta Resource, based out of Boulder, CO, raised $5.1 million in seed funding to separate rare earths from e-waste with biotechnology. DCVC led. Link.

• Arborea, based out of the U.K. and Portugal, raised ~$5.1 million in equity funding for its cultivated protein startup. Indico Capital Partners led. Link.

• Altilium, based out of Plymouth, U.K., raised $5 million in equity funding for its EV battery recycling business from Marubeni as part of an ongoing Series B fundraising round. Link.

• Tangible, based out of San Francisco, raised $3 million in equity funding to make software for construction decarbonization and emissions quantification. Prologis Ventures and Pi Labs led. Link.

• Starpower, based out of… no idea, to be honest, raised $2.5 million in seed funding ($4 million total raised so far) to build a DePIN energy network to aggregate battery energy storage capacity to meet growing compute electricity demand. Framework Ventures led. Link.

• Moonrider, based out of Bangalore, India, raised $2.2 million in seed funding to make electric tractors. Advantedge Founders and Micelio Technology Fund led. Link.

• Flint, based out of Singapore, raised $2 million in seed funding to make cellulose-based paper batteries. Hatcher+ and angel investors led. Link.

• Ndustrial, based out of Raleigh, NC, raised $1 million in equity funding from Southwire to make energy-efficiency software for industrial applications. Link.

Other funding rounds

• Constellation Energy, a Baltimore-based power generation company with diverse assets ranging from nuclear power plants to renewables and natural gas in the U.S., will acquire Calpine, another diversified U.S. energy company based out of Bethpage, NY, for $16.4 billion in a cash and stock in one of the most significant domestic power and energy acquisitions in two decades. The total deal is valued at about $26.6 billion. The two companies were already #1 and #2 private power generators in the U.S.; now, they’re an even bigger, singular behemoth. Link. Link.

• Equinor, a Stavanger, Norway-based energy company, raised more than $3 billion in debt and project financing to build its offshore wind project, Empire Wind 1, in New York. Funding might balloon past $5 billion once you add in future tax credits (ITCs). The plant, for which Equinor is targeting 810 MW of capacity, is currently slated for commercial operation date by 2027. Link.

• Lilium, an eVTOL manufacturer based out of Gauting, Germany, which had filed for insolvency and laid off 750+ employees last year, was rescued (for now) by a consortium comprised of European and North America investors (dubbed ‘Mobile Uplift Corporation’). The investor consortium will purchase operating assets from various Lilium subsidiaries and aims to rehire a significant number, if not most or all, laid off employees. The financing totals were not disclosed in full (nor were the specific investors), but there’s at least ~$200 million plus at play here. Link. Link. Link.

• Deep Fission, based out of Berkeley, CA, raised an undisclosed amount of equity funding from Endeavour, a data center developer, to make small modular reactors it will install underground. Link.

• Electric Power Engineers, a leading energy and power systems engineering and consulting firm based out of Austin, TX, raised an undisclosed amount of growth equity funding from Berkshire Partners. Link.

• Xnergy Autonomous Power Technologies, based out of Singapore, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Woori Venture Partners to make wireless charging technologies for EVs and industrial electric robots. Link.

• EQT, based out of New York, plans to acquire distributed energy and microgrid developer Scale Microgrids, which is based out of Ridgewood, New Jersey. Specific financing details weren’t disclosed. Link.

New funds

• Unless Ventures, based out of Boulder, CO, raised $90 million plus for a new fund to invest in cleaner manufacturing, shipping, power generation, and other transportation modes. Link (paywall).

• Trucks Venture Capital, based out of San Francisco, raised $70 million for its third fund, out of which it will continue to invest in pre-and seed deals focused on the future of transportation. Link.

OPPORTUNITIES

MIT’s Startup Showcase:

Are you an early-stage energy or climate startup? If so, I highly recommend applying to be part of the startup lineup at the MIT Energy Conference, the largest student-run energy conference in the US. The theme for the 2025 conference is “Breakthrough to Deployment: Driving Climate Innovation to Market.” The conference will take place at the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from March 3rd to 4th, 2025.

A key feature of our conference is the Climate and Energy Tech Showcase, which provides a platform for cutting-edge startups to present their innovations to industry professionals, investors, entrepreneurs, researchers, and students. Key benefits for participants include:

• Exposure to investors and sources of capital

• Opportunities to connect and establish partnerships with industry incumbents

• Access to MIT/Harvard students and local energy professionals looking for jobs

• Promotion of the startups through the event’s media coverage and marketing campaigns

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis with a Jan 31st, 2025, deadline.

JOBS

Mechanical Engineer, Calectra

Calectra is developing a novel thermal storage technology to electrify and decarbonize industrial process heat. The team is also seeking its fourth employee, a Mechanical Engineer, to design, model, and build the technology’s components. Please respond to m me (Nick) and/or apply to get connected if you or someone you know might be a great fit.

In case that email wasn’t enough content for you, here’s another reflection on 2024 I offered in pithy quote form for a piece by Hayden Higgins for The Morning News.

And here’s that pic of me backpacking in Chilean Patagonia I promised (highly recommend):

Otherwise, ciao for now,

– Nick