Good Morning! and welcome to our 198 new readers | In today’s edition: | 🎤 The state of CDR | 🤑 18 new deals! | 💼 A sprinkle of new NatureTech jobs | 📩 Got an upcoming fundraise or event ? Perhaps you have an ask to the NatureTech community? Reply to this email to be featured in future newsletters! | | | | | | | 🐘 Long read (5 mins) | The state of CDR - 2025 | This week we went deep into Nat Bullard’s latest 200 slide deck on all things decarbonisation. | One slide stood out: The explosion of Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) startups since 2021. | The numbers are staggering. Nearly 80 new carbon dioxide removal (CDR) startups were founded in 2021 alone, contributing to a total of approximately 500 companies globally. | | Here's a snapshot of the main CDR categories and notable players: | Forestry: Creating new forests, replanting cleared areas, and improving forest management to increase carbon storage. Uses both traditional and enhanced approaches like faster-growing trees. Notable players: Living Carbon, NCX, Pachama, DroneSeed] Direct Air Capture: Using engineered systems to filter CO2 directly from the atmosphere, typically through chemical processes, then compressing and storing it underground. Notable players: Climeworks, Carbon Engineering (Occidental), Heirloom, AspiraDAC Bio- and Soil-Based: Encompasses multiple approaches including biochar production, soil carbon enhancement, biomass burial, and bio-oil storage. This category includes both agricultural and industrial processes. Notable players: Charm Industrial, Indigo Agriculture, Verdant Earth, Carbo Culture, Loam Bio Ocean-Based: Various approaches to using ocean systems for carbon removal, including alkalinity enhancement, biomass sinking, and direct ocean capture. Notable players: Running Tide, Planetary Technologies, Ebb Carbon, SeaChange Enhanced Weathering: Accelerating natural processes where rocks absorb CO2 by crushing them to increase surface area and spreading them on land or in oceans. Notable players: Project Vesta, Eion, Lithos
| Five hundred different companies all trying to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere - impressive stuff - but what lies in store. | Lets take a deep dive: | Peak startup formation coincided with the height of the carbon credit market in 2021. But since then, we've seen a dramatic cooling off - credit issuance has dropped by more than half, falling from over 300 million credits to around 150 million in 2023. Though market transactions hit an impressive $2.1 billion in 2021, the subsequent decline has been sharp (Slide 73). One silver lining: credit retirements (actual usage) continue steadily, suggesting real demand persists despite market turbulence. A growing proportion of CDR deals are from novel methods. The share of forestry CDR deals has declined from 49% in 2020 to 30% in 2023, indicating growing investor interest in newer technologies such as soil and enhanced weathering. A proliferation of start-ups has left a confusing landscape. With so many companies pursuing similar technical approaches, differentiating between them has become increasingly difficult. The sheer number of startups makes picking winners particularly challenging for investors. Consolidation is on the horizon but how and when remains unclear. There's a growing recognition that market fundamentals, rather than speculative enthusiasm, need to drive growth. The big question isn't whether consolidation will happen, but how and when. The AI boom could offer a lifeline. The emissions resulting from the AI-fueled build-out of data centers is projected to be enormous - the sector’s boom is expected to emit 2.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent gasses by 2030. Hyperscalers have already begun to purchase CDR credits; between Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Apple they have contracted at least 18 million metric tons for delivery in the next decade.
| Who will win out? We believe there are four factors: | Technical Cost Advantage: With so many competitors, having marginally better technology isn't enough. You need a step-change improvement in cost structure or a clear path to it. Scalability Proof Points: Investors and customers are increasingly skeptical of lab-scale solutions. You need to demonstrate a credible path to megaton scale removal. Corporate Partnerships: Early relationships with major buyers (particularly tech companies) are becoming essential. The voluntary market alone isn't growing fast enough to support the current startup ecosystem. Secondary revenue streams: Players that are not solely reliant on the sale of credits and whose technology has applications beyond carbon removal like novel materials or agricultural products
| For CDR founders: If you're building a CDR startup today, you’re playing on hard mode. The long-term opportunity remains massive, but the path to getting there looks increasingly challenging. Success will require either exceptional technology advantages or strong early customer relationships - ideally both.
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| | | | | | | 💬 Snippets for your lift conversations | 💼 Big business: | Google revealed today that it contracted for more than $100 million in carbon removal credits in 2024, including restoration of natural carbon sinks, enhanced rock weathering (ERW), biomass capture and biochar, and direct air capture (DAC). (Read more) Shell dominated the carbon credit market in 2024, relying heavily on offsets to meet its climate targets. Despite scaling back clean energy spending, Shell retired 14.9m credits, more than any other company, although these were relatively cheap credits ($10/ton). (Read more)
| 🏦 Finance: | Mirova has launched a second iteration of its Land Degradation Neutrality Fund, with aims to raise $400 million of public and private capital by the end of 2025. (Read more) German development bank KfW has raised €3 billion ($3.1 billion) from a tap of its existing green bond due March 2032, with the deal attracting an orderbook of around €8.75 billion. (Read more)
| 💻️ Tech: | An AI-powered robot and gaming are helping scientists identify new deep-sea species (Read more) AI model creates new protein that simulates 500 million years of biological evolution (Read more) Dog food made from lab grown chicken to go on sale in 'world first' (Read more)
| 📖 Research: | Lost cities of the Amazon: how science is revealing ancient garden towns hidden in the rainforest (Read more) Europe's water resources under pressure, most surface bodies polluted, EU says (Read more) Nat Bullard dropped his annual presentation on the state of decarbonisation. (Read more)
| 📝 Policy: | in the US, funding for The LEAF Coalition, which aims to halt deforestation by financing large scale tropical forest protection, was halted as part of a broader stoppage to USAID (Read more) The Democratic Republic of Congo to create the Earth’s largest protected tropical forest reserve (Read more)
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| | | | | | | 🎣 Deals | 🇺🇸 Tidal Vision raised $172.1M (Series B) for their products and solutions derived from chitosan, as an alternative to synthetic chemicals Source | 🇨🇭 Oxyle raised $16M (Seed) for their advanced technologies for eliminating PFAS from wastewater Source | 🇬🇧 Modern Synthesis raised $5.5M (Seed) for their regenerative materials for the fashion industry Source | 🇧🇪 BiocSol raised $4.6M (Seed) for their sustainable crop protection solutions Source | 🇳🇱 OneThird raised $3.6M (Series A) for their platform and scanner to track supply chain and reduce food waste Source | 🇮🇹 MESPAC raised $1.6M (Seed) for their data services to the offshore wind and ocean energy industries Source | 🇩🇰 Visibuilt raised $1.1M (Pre-Seed) for their sustainable alternatives to traditional chemicals used in road construction Source | 🇺🇸 PlantBaby raised (Seed) for their plant-based foods and beverages Source | 🇬🇧 NatureAlpha secured investment from DNV Ventures, the corporate venture arm of assurance and risk management firm DNV Source | 🇸🇬 Nibertex raised (Series A) for their PFAS-free electrospun polyurethane membrane materials for the textile industry Source | 🇪🇸 Nanochronia raised (Seed) for their nanosensors utilizing graphene-based technology to detect hazardous gases Source | 🇺🇸 Heritable Agriculture raised (Seed) for their AI and gene editing to advance crop development Source | Currently fundraising: | Rhizocore is raising a £5m Seed round. Rhizocore collects, selects and delivers elite strains of local ectomycorrhizal fungi to tree planting operations to increase tree growth rates, tree survival and newly planted forests' resilience to drought and disease. toby@rhizocore.com Daniel at Gentian is raising a $3Mn Seed for their world leading habitat mapping software, powered by AI and remote sensing. dan@gentian.team WeRadiate are raising a $1Mn Seed to restore soil nutrients through data-enabled food waste recycling solutions weradiateny@gmail.com Elyse at Tenax ai is raising pre-Seed funding; their software protects residential property and its insurability from extreme weather events, beginning with wildfire. Tenax ai is a B2B2C SaaS venture at the intersection of Insurtech x ClimateTech x Proptech, with pilots in California. elyse@tenaxai.com Darina at Agrivero is raising €1.3m to close a €2.5m seed round by mid-February 2025, backed by an already secured non-dilutive €1.2m funding from the IBB (Development Bank of Berlin). Agrivero builds an ultimate AI-driven OS for the green coffee trade darina@agrivero.ai
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| | | | | | | 💭 Little Bytes | 📊Read: Nine new species of carnivorous land snails have been discovered in the forests of Papua New Guinea, a biodiversity (Read more) | 🎞️ Watch: How carbon finance is seeding new hope for northern forests (Read more) | 💬 Research: A new study estimates it would cost $15.6 billion per year for 30 years to prevent the extinction of 99 priority species(Read more) |
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| | | | | | | 📆 Events | 🇺🇸 Future Energy Summit, 17th February 2025 (Attend) | 🇿🇦 Africa’s Green Economy Summit, 19th February 2025 (Attend) | 🇸🇬 Annual FinTech Summit, 26th February 2025 (Attend) | 🇳🇱 EV Charging Infrastructure Forum, 28th February 2025 (Attend) | 🇺🇸 MIT Energy Conference, 3rd March 2025 (Attend) | 🇺🇸 Breakthrough to Deployment, 3rd March 2025 (Attend) | 🇬🇧 Sustainability LIVE Net Zero, 5th March 2025 (Attend) | |
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| | | | | | 💼 Jobs | Start-up: | Multiple roles, Planet A Foods, Germany (Apply) Multiple roles, Revalue Nature (Apply) Multiple Roles, Ulysses, USA (Apply) Software Engineer, Cecil, Australia (Apply) Backend Engineer, Landbanking Group, Germany (Apply) Sales Development Representative, Arbonics, Remote (Apply) Multiple roles, Space Intelligence, Edinburgh (Apply) Commercial Director, Space for Good (Apply) Back End Engineer, Credit Nature (Apply) Director of Nature Based Solutions, Sylvera (Apply)
| Corporate: | Climate, Nature and Social Risk Modelling Vice President, JP Morgan, London (Apply) Nature-Based Solutions, Subject Matter Expert, Ramboll, USA, (Apply) Asset Manager - Nature Based Carbon Strategy (Apply)
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| | | 📩 Written by Ollie and Pat. Feel free to send us deals, announcements, or anything else using the link below or via LinkedIn. | |
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