Markets already understand that it’s too damn expensive to keep powering our economy by digging up and burning old dinosaur bones. In most places today, solar and wind are cheaper and scale faster. What you might not know yet is that technologies that grow chemicals in bioreactors or boost crop yields are already outperforming 100-year-old industrial processes that are dirty and dangerous. We see this happening in protein, transportation, chemicals, building materials, and even mining too. This radical shift isn’t just because of some warm and fuzzies. These are real businesses, with insane growth, and some posting nine-figure revenue run rates. In simple terms, cutting gigatons of CO2, mass market adoption, and generating piles of money will go hand-in-hand.
READ MOREOur phones have been blowing up the last 36 hours with countless versions of the same question: Were the midterms good for Lowercarbon? Politically speaking, Texas turning 17 out of 17 statewide races blue on the same night that Kansas chose a governor with a (D) next to her name and Mississippi elected a Democratic
READ MOREA wildfire races toward a cedar-shingled home on a California hillside, burning through dry brush and spewing embers onto its roof. Moments later, a magnitude 6.0 earthquake rocks its foundations. Just as the tremors subside, a once-in-a-century flood sweeps through whatever is left. Then a mouse cursor moves across the wreckage. The simulation is complete.
READ MOREAn 11 p.m. sunset glances off melting glaciers on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, and two moose hunters are chatting with a handful of tech guys from the Lower 48. The hunters had driven over on their gun-mounted ATVs with the unbothered air of men accustomed to battling megafauna. They were eager to learn more about Rainmaker’s
READ MOREWe reached out cold to Joey, the founder of Longview Restoration. What else are a couple of investors to do after catching a viral post on LinkedIn about realizing $3m in revenue six months after formation? When we met, he started by laying out all the reasons we shouldn’t invest. First, we needed to believe
READ MOREYesterday, 25,000 pounds of carbon fiber, batteries, and one brave pilot flew without burning a drop of jet fuel. X1, Heart Aerospace’s demonstration electric aircraft, departed from New York’s Plattsburgh International Airport just before 6:00 AM, climbed 1,100 feet in near silence, banked a loop, and landed 8 minutes later beneath a red sunrise. The
READ MOREWalk into the Senra factory in Redondo Beach, and you’ll find former baristas and Uber drivers assembling wire harnesses for leading A&D companies. Eight weeks ago, some of them had never touched a soldering iron. Now they’re assembling one of the most critical building blocks of the electrified economy. At a time when AI is
READ MOREEvery so often, a cold email that lands in our inbox makes a splash. Now, before a phalanx of bankers smashes the send button about a waste-2-value deal code-named Project Phoenix that ‘might be up our alley,’ here are a few tips about getting a screen-addicted VC’s attention. If you don’t have a warm introduction,
READ MORESomewhere in Mumbai right now, a two-person crew is bolting solar panels to a concrete rooftop while the homeowner watches from the shade with a cup of tea. Tomorrow the team will do it again, three houses down. Then again, the day after. This is what India’s booming electric economy looks like up close. Odds
READ MORELast year, heat pumps outsold gas boilers in Germany. That one stat tells the story: the freight train of European electrification is gaining steam. The tech works. The savings pile up. And a growing number of people want the peace of mind that comes from knowing their home heating comes from clean, local electricity instead
READ MOREIn the dark hours of a frosty November night, at an undisclosed location in Pennsylvania, a solar panel array hummed to life. Three miles overhead, a small propellor plane held the cells in the crosshairs of an invisible ray of near-infrared light. The panels drank it in, converting the beam into electricity as if it
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