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Meet the Startups Innovating in Experts’ Top Climatetech Areas for 2024

2024 is here, and it’s full of promise for the climatetech industry. 

As analysts, investors, journalists, and other experts offer up their predictions for this year’s climatetech areas to watch, Greentown’s featuring just a sampling of our startup members innovating in these key categories. 

What are you predicting for this year of climate action and climatetech innovation? Let us know on LinkedIn!

Cell-based meat 

Named to Lux Research’s “Climate Tech 2024 Watch List”

  • Tender is introducing a new generation of alternative meat products—produced in the kitchen by chefs—that have the same texture, taste, and consistency as real meat.

Circularity for critical metals and minerals

Recommended to Axios’ Climate Deals by Clean Energy Ventures

  • Carbon To Stone is developing a carbon mineralization technology coupled with high-value minerals and metals recovery.
  • GreenLIB is pioneering a sustainable future by transforming battery waste into profitable, closed-loop solutions within the global lithium-ion battery market.
  • Nth Cycle’s circular refining method extracts high-purity critical metals of any type, in any state, using just electricity and water.

Clean hydrogen 

Part of PitchBook’s 2024 Industrial Technology Outlook

  • Advanced Ionics’s electrolyzers use up to 50 percent less electricity per kilogram of hydrogen and work in an intermediate temperature range—above liquid water but below expensive, superheated steam. 
  • Elemental Recycling’s single-step, proprietary process recycles any and all plastics and tires into high-purity graphene and hydrogen.

Climate adaptation

Included in Forbes’ “New Year, New Outlook: Climate and VC Predictions for 2024”

  • Allium Engineering creates building materials that don’t degrade, enabling critical infrastructure such as bridges to reach 100-year lifetimes.
  • Regenerative Resources acquires highly degraded land, transforms it—whether into restored ecosystems or agro-ecologies—and commercializes the outputs via an on-shore aquaculture system.
  • QuantAQ’s durable, professional-grade air-quality sensors detect a range of gasses and particulate matter with more convenience and at a fraction of the cost and complexity of traditional monitoring solutions.
  • WIP International Services works with partners around the world to deliver pure drinking water created from atmospheric water generation.

Decarbonization of cement, steel, and chemicals

Recommended to Axios’ Climate Deals by Clean Energy Ventures

  • Hertha Metals is developing technology to cost-effectively produce steel from low-grade iron ores with 98% lower CO2 emissions than the conventional process.
  • Sublime Systems is developing technology to decarbonize cement-making, which is currently responsible for eight percent of global CO2 emissions. This tech reduces a cement kiln’s emissions by 50 percent, without changing the properties or chemistry of the cement.
  • VIA BioFuels produces and sells premium drop-in fuels and chemical feedstocks—based on bio-produced molecules—to the international transportation, aviation, and chemical industries.

Enhanced geothermal power 

Named to Lux Research’s “Climate Tech 2024 Watch List”

  • Fervo Energy is developing next-generation geothermal projects to deliver 24/7 carbon-free energy.

GHG abatement

Named to Lux Research’s “Climate Tech 2024 Watch List”

  • Carbon Upcycling Technologies utilizes point-source CO2 and mineralizes it with waste materials to create supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) that can be used in building materials.
  • Ebb Carbon uses a proprietary electrochemical system to separate acid out of salty water, de-acidifying the ocean and enhancing its natural ability to capture CO2 from the air and store it safely and stably as bicarbonate for at least 10,000 years.
  • Mantel’s molten borates are the first liquid-phase carbon capture materials that operate at high temperatures—a combination that solves challenges holding back carbon capture. 
  • TerraFixing develops a direct-air-capture technology for cold climates using zeolite-based adsorbent materials.

Grid transmission and monitoring

Recommended to Axios’ Climate Deals by Clean Energy Ventures

  • Overstory uses machine learning to interpret satellite imagery and climate data in order to monitor the risk of vegetation interacting with power lines, decreasing the risk of fires and outages and reducing costs.

Methane-focused technologies

Recommended to Axios’ Climate Deals by Azolla Ventures

  • Capwell eliminates methane emissions by offering an inexpensive solution that sits on a well until it can be properly plugged, helping clients quickly mitigate the problem while exploring permanent solutions.

Want to engage with these startups and other Greentown members?