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Dear Friends of Greentown Labs,
Did this week’s IPCC report stop you in your tracks? Us too. It spurred a range of emotions across our team—fear, frustration, anxiety, and an ever-growing commitment to the work we do every day supporting climatetech entrepreneurs. We’re grateful for our startups’ efforts to develop and deploy solutions to the climate crisis, and we’re honored to be part of their journey.
As United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in releasing the report, we must “massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. In short, our world needs climate action on all fronts—everything, everywhere, all at once.”
We need to transform how we power our world, how we produce food, how we travel, how we build, how we manufacture, and so much more—all with an eye toward equity and climate justice. It’s an enormous challenge, but now is not the moment to be intimidated. It’s time for all of us to roll up our sleeves and collaborate on the biggest opportunity we’ll ever have to make the world a better place.
“We have never been better equipped to solve the climate challenge—but we must move into warp speed climate action now,” Guterres said. We at Greentown couldn’t agree more; every day, we see startups developing solutions that can slash emissions, promote environmental justice, and help communities prepare for the impacts of climate change.
Our entrepreneurs are working to decarbonize the five key greenhouse-gas-emitting sectors and build resilient communities. While each of our 200+ startups have their own innovation, let’s take a look at just one from each sector to give a brief glimpse into why there’s so much hope.
- Agriculture: Lignium Energy converts excess manure—a major climate and logistical problem on farms—into odorless combustion pellets that can be used as inexpensive, climate-friendly fuel and offer a new revenue source to farmers.
- Buildings: AeroShield manufactures a porous glass material that is 50 percent more insulating than traditional windows, significantly increasing buildings’ energy efficiency.
- Electricity: Form Energy is developing, manufacturing, and commercializing a new class of cost-effective, multi-day energy storage systems that will enable a reliable and fully renewable electric grid year-round.
- Manufacturing: Sublime Systems pioneers an electrochemical process for cement-making that is on track to reduce over 90 percent of cement’s CO2 emissions—a massive climate impact, given that cement’s responsible for eight percent of global CO2 emissions.
- Transportation: Ivys Energy Solutions is enabling e-mobility for fleet applications via hydrogen-dispensing and battery-charging solutions.
- Resiliency + Adaptation: COI Energy’s digital energy-management platform eliminates energy waste in buildings and repurposes that waste for good, donating a portion of monetary energy savings to NGOs that provide assistance with energy efficiency, weatherization, renewable energy access, and utility bills for communities in need.
But here’s the rub: these startups need your help. We’ll only get these critical climate solutions deployed at the pace necessary to tackle climate change through collaboration among entrepreneurs, investors, corporate leaders, policymakers, and other climate champions who are ready to put their skills to work on climate. And yes, that means you!
The work we do today, tomorrow, and in the coming months will have an incredible impact on our planet’s future, and each of us can play a role in building a decarbonized, resilient world. We need everyone who isn’t already working in climate to get involved, and those who are already in the industry to double down on their commitment.
Here’s how you can support our startups as they scale their technologies:
- Investors: get connected with our world-changing entrepreneurs.
- Corporates: explore partnering with Greentown and our startups.
- Industry experts: mentor a startup.
- Job seekers: work at one of our startups—there’s a place for you, no matter your background or skill set.
- Other climate champions: attend an event so you can learn about more ways to engage with our member companies and the climatetech ecosystem.
We thank you for your dedicated climate action, and look forward to working together on this challenge and opportunity of a lifetime.
Onward,
The Greentown Labs Team
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