Building owners are often in the dark about their carbon pollution.
A new algorithm could shed light on itStarting this year, thousands of buildings in New York City will have to start reducing their carbon emissions.
There are plenty of tools out there that can convert an electric bill into estimated carbon emissions, but many are based on rough estimates.
It’s why Nzero, a carbon-tracking startup, developed a new algorithm, giving building owners reports that estimate carbon pollution down to the hour.
From there, the company’s software helps building owners identify upgrades and retrofits that will reduce emissions while also being the most cost effective.
Some call it the “commercial valley of death,” and it’s the point at which many climate tech startups struggle.
Climate nonprofit Prime Coalition is hoping to bridge the valley with a new program, Trellis Climate.
Trellis Climate follows the latter model with a focus on middle stages, where capital has grown scarce.
“There are more and more philanthropists that are really interested in solving the climate problem,” Lara Pierpoint, director of Trellis Climate, told TechCrunch.
“It is the most flexible and potentially risk-forward set of dollars that are out there.”For founders in climate tech, that sort of funding is likely welcome news.
Like many immigrants, the New York City skyline was one of the first sights young brothers Edi and Etrit Demaj took in when they arrived in the U.S. over 20 years ago.
“The first building that we saw was the Empire State Building,” Etrit recalls.
The Demaj family soon settled in Detroit, where the brothers completed their education and started various companies, including their latest, Kode Labs, which integrates and automates various systems in commercial buildings — including the Empire State Building.
When the Demaj brothers founded Kode in 2017, they sought to bring building management into the cloud era.
The brothers liken it to an OS that integrates building systems like a computer OS integrates various circuit boards.
When Josh Silverman started shopping around the idea for his methane-eating microbe startup, Windfall Bio, eight years ago, the market just wasn’t ready.
Menlo Park–based Windfall Bio raised a $28 million Series A round to expand its commercialization efforts.
The round was led by Prelude Ventures with participation from Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Incite Ventures and Positive Ventures, among others, as well as existing investors, including Mayfield.
Windfall works with industries that produce large levels of methane, such as agriculture, oil and gas, and landfills.
The startup supplies methane-eating microbes that absorb methane emissions, turning them into fertilizer.
Fudge’s company, Wase, is offering them an alternative: treat the water on site, and get some free energy to boot.
The UK-based startup says its system is significantly smaller and can squeeze about 30% more methane from the sludge.
“They’re in the soil in the ground, they’re in wastewater sludge, they’re in anaerobic digestion systems, but they don’t have the environment where they can really thrive.”Basically, Wase built a contraption to make these bacteria happy.
Each colony contains a diversity of species and strains, and they evolve over time as they grow accustomed to the particular sludge they’re processing.
Wase is developing a control system that will maintain wastewater flow through the system to keep the bacteria at their best.
Plenty of major corporations have announced net-zero emissions targets.
Those are the companies Greenly has targeted.
It takes that information and, coupled with its own data and algorithms, calculates carbon emissions by category and scope for customers.
It came into the round with an advantage: it’s applying SaaS to climate tech, and SaaS a business model that’s well understood.
But it does suggest that venture investors are warming to climate tech more broadly, proving that there’s a market for businesses focused on sustainability.
That’s one way to think about direct air capture, a technology which uses machines to pull carbon dioxide straight from the atmosphere.
The ability to use heat from geothermal energy, Cyffka said, is helpful.
Geothermal is a really promising pathway for where DAC needs to go.”Along those lines, the company is working with Fervo, pairing its carbon capture system with the geothermal startup’s advanced geothermal project in Utah.
In 2026, AirMyne is planning to deploy its carbon capture technology to a sequestration site in San Joaquin County, California, where it will be injected underground.
Still, the demand for carbon capture is likely to be so large that the market will have space for several different companies.
The goal was straightforward but ambitious: upend the cement industry.
Furno’s smaller kilns fly in the face of trends in the cement industry today, which has been chasing ever larger equipment.
By building smaller kilns, Furno is hoping to lower capital expenditures through mass production and lower operating expenses through energy efficiency.
And because Furno’s kilns are smaller, they could allow cement to be remade right on a construction site.
Already, Furno has captured the attention of ready-mix concrete companies, which have to buy cement from vertically integrated companies.
The SEC voted on Wednesday to require public companies to report a portion of their greenhouse gas emissions and their exposure to risks from climate change.
While the new rules do not apply to privately held companies like startups, they do create opportunities for those focused on the carbon tracking, accounting, and management space.
Some, like Amazon, Vanguard, Ralph Lauren, and Chevron, supported Scope 3 disclosures; already, many public and private companies voluntarily track those emissions.
In recent years, a number of startups have turned to AI to automate and improve Scope 3 estimates.
In adopting the new rules, the SEC is playing catch-up with other large economies, including China and the EU, which both have greenhouse gas reporting requirements.
The bid would help inform investors about any climate- or energy transition-related risks publicly traded companies face.
And depending on how far the SEC takes the proposed climate disclosure rule, many of these startups stand to benefit.
Scope 3 emissions are the broadest category, and if the SEC would require their reporting, the effects would ripple far beyond just publicly traded companies.
Look for it to be one of the first climate tech companies to list publicly when the IPO window opens.
Enter Bend, a corporate spend startup that focuses not just on tracking expenses, but also carbon emissions.
