[HN Gopher] 2022 Climate Tech VC funding totals $70.1B, up 89% o...
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2022 Climate Tech VC funding totals $70.1B, up 89% on 2021
Author : doener
Score : 57 points
Date : 2023-01-08 20:14 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.holoniq.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.holoniq.com)
| finikytou wrote:
| this is the new crypto. I mean crypto was already the new
| climate. can you guys remember how it was in the 90s in western
| countries with the "ozone hole" or the "ozone depletion" and how
| it evolved to the new "global warming".
|
| of course tech funding would grow as climate is something even
| more intagible than crypto or the economy. no one knows what will
| happen. al gore predicted we'd be already dead and it made him a
| millionnaire.
|
| n,b: im obviously not saying it is an hoax but that as it is
| intangible it is easy very to market the fear it creates and make
| a lot of money out of it. as capitalism taught us: why solve
| something that makes you richer
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| Yeah, and now no matter what happens gets blamed on global
| warming... I mean climate changes (had to rename it because
| it's not warming as fast as they hoped for). Snow? Effect of
| climate changes. No snow? Effect of climate changes. No matter
| what, they'll blame it on climate change.
|
| And of course they implement lots of policies restricting
| movement, taxing and limiting airplanes... except for private
| jets which are always exempt from those policies.
| it_citizen wrote:
| You should check what happened with Ozone. It was a real
| problem and it ended up being solved thanks to useful
| regulations and an amazing show of global cooperation.
| tectonic wrote:
| And this is definitely incomplete, so the real number is probably
| significantly larger. I know of multiple climate tech deals not
| present in the data they cite.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| does this include building Liquid Natural Gas facilities, ports
| and heavy shipping for LNG, in that number?
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Hopefully not, as including fossil fuel industries in "climate
| tech" would be very disingenuous.
| prepend wrote:
| If the goal is reducing carbon emissions, then replacing coal
| with LNG seems like a move in the right direction.
|
| Maybe "cleaner tech" is a better label.
| cinntaile wrote:
| I think climate tech is fine, as long as it's an
| improvement over the status quo. It's a marketing term
| anyway.
| fungi wrote:
| more fossil fuels are incompatible with 1.5c target
|
| https://www.carbonbrief.org/new-fossil-fuels-incompatible-
| wi...
|
| at this point they simply must stay in the ground
| flavius29663 wrote:
| gas is emitting half of CO2 than coal, it's also much
| cleaner: coal emits heavy metals and radioactivity when
| burned.
|
| Gas also enables a higher penetration of renewables. We won't
| get to zero emissions in the next 10 years, but we can get to
| zero emissions for days on end, because of gas plants.
| sammalloy wrote:
| Going forward, the best solution is to implement Wilson's "Half-
| Earth" biosphere reserve proposal, more popularly known in its
| current, reduced form as "30 by 30", an agreement by 100 nations
| (currently) at the COP15 meeting of the Convention on Biological
| Diversity to conserve at least 30 percent of our land and water.
| If more people got behind this initiative, the number of new
| business and economic initiatives supporting this idea would be
| astronomical, and would form a new paradigm for thinking about
| the way we see our planet. Travel, hotel, and tourist
| opportunities would present unlimited growth opportunities, and
| the new scientific research coming out of it would benefit
| humanity in unique ways. My overarching point is we need to stop
| thinking about the problem of climate change remediation as the
| only issue, it's deeply connected to how we see the planet and
| use our resources wisely.
| thfuran wrote:
| >unlimited growth opportunities
|
| That's the antithesis of conservationism
| thesausageking wrote:
| I question how much of this is going to actually help with
| climate change and how much is just inflating another bubble that
| will enrich investors and do little for the climate.
|
| So many of the startups being backed are building things that
| either have a very minimal impact or they're based on
| technologies that are so far out they won't be commercially
| viable for 20 years, if ever.
|
| The big things we need are all boring infrastructure investments
| that don't have startup-like returns. Things like rearchitecting
| the electrical grid, upgrading rail and public transit, etc.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| How do you arrange carbon credits for ecosystem restoration? Eg,
| restoring kelp forests. Asking for a friend!
| rcme wrote:
| Growing plants isn't capturing carbon, so restoring kelp
| forests probably shouldn't count.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| It does if you harvest your planes and store them deep in
| caves.
| FredPret wrote:
| Or on a bookshelf
| kortilla wrote:
| Yes it does. The problem is that it releases the carbon on
| death so it needs to be net new plants.
| rcme wrote:
| No, the carbon is released when the plants die. So you're
| only holding the carbon for the lifetime of the plant. Even
| if the plants are "net new", their CO2 will still be
| released when they die.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Isn't it actually released when the plant decomposes? So
| if you stored the plant matter after death it would keep
| it sequestered?
| rcme wrote:
| Yes you could do that, but that sounds more like farming.
| Additionally, you should only get the carbon credit once
| you actually sequester the kelp, but this isn't don't in
| practice. E.g. some managed forests get carbon credits
| for trees that they plant, but sometimes those trees burn
| in a forest fire before they can be sequestered.
| thatcat wrote:
| That's a poor accounting of carbon fluxes
| einpoklum wrote:
| You don't. "Carbon credits" is an anagram for "continue
| emitting carbon in rich countries, find poor countries to sign
| for it".
| LatteLazy wrote:
| You just start selling them. They're an unregulated product so
| you don't need a license etc.
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| We can get all of the crypto folks in on this, it sounds
| right up their alley.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| To the Moon!
| SoftTalker wrote:
| No startup is going to do didly-squat about the climate. If you
| want to reduce CO2 you will need nation-state commitment to
| nuclear power. Nothing else matters.
| izzydata wrote:
| I bet if you spent $70 billion on planting trees it could do
| something.
| einpoklum wrote:
| "Nothing else matters"? 5 Bucks say you drive an SUV.
| jmschlmrs wrote:
| They could if there was a (nation state) enforced price for
| carbon and hence a market to operate in.
| malux85 wrote:
| We should try though, for example did you know that 1% of
| humanities global energy production (that is, our civilisations
| entire output) is sunken into producing nitrogen based
| fertilisers,
|
| That's why my startup is working on catalysis models, so that
| we can get some catalysts to dramatically decrease the energy
| requirements of these enormous industrial processes. Also
| things like green chemistry (another project we are working on)
| is going to remove the need for a petroleum based chemical and
| replace it with an organic one that comes out of discarded
| orange peels.
|
| Yep sure, I'm not going to have a nation-state level of impact,
| but the discovery of the right catalyst can often change entire
| industries.
|
| So I'm trying as hard as I can, every day, to push towards a
| sustainable future, if enough people do it, we might be able to
| start to move the needle
| pshc wrote:
| "Only my pet solution will work (which is in political
| gridlock) so give up and don't try to innovate or change
| anything."
| arnaudsm wrote:
| + energy storage with density comparable to oil.
|
| Once we have these two, full electrification become possible
| nharada wrote:
| I totally agree that a large commitment to green energy (which
| will have to include nuclear) is necessary. But not sufficient,
| imo.
|
| > Nothing else matters
|
| I assume you're writing this as hyperbole, but for readers who
| may not realize, this is definitely not true. Even if the
| entire grid was nuclear, there are still lots of other
| greenhouse emitting sources that need to be decarbonized. For
| example, building materials (like concrete) and livestock
| emissions account for ~10% of emissions alone [1]. Not to
| mention that many sources of transportation (16.2% of
| emissions) are currently not capable of running on just
| electricity (i.e. aviation) and need technology innovation.
| This problem is too complicated to be fixed by one single
| thing.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
| vlovich123 wrote:
| It's actually worse. Even if we dropped our emissions to 0,
| global warming still keeps going because we've pumped so much
| greenhouse gasses into the air already.
|
| I think OP is correct that we have to get behind nuclear in a
| big way. A way that we haven't even started going down.
| You're also correct that it's not sufficient.
|
| However. If you have a lot of nuclear capacity (and I'm
| talking a massive overbuild in capacity), suddenly spending
| gobs of it on CO2 recapture isn't a big deal. That's probably
| why OP is saying nuclear at this point is the only viable
| path forward. Because if you want to do recapture at scale
| (and you have to go try to even try to arrest the growth),
| nothing other than nuclear can provide the capacity needed.
| pojzon wrote:
| Even if we started building thousends of new nuclear power
| plants:
|
| - we dont have enough trained staff to build and operate
| them
|
| - it takes 5-10years to build one
|
| - we dont have infrastructure to supply them all with fuel
| and dispose waste (even new ones that can run on previous
| waste MSR)
|
| - we are too divided as a spiecies and too occupied with
| worthless disputes (are you pink or blue? Yada yada)
|
| Ppl at the top realized that they cannot stop changes, so
| instead are preparing for alternatives.
|
| There is not much place left to run to, so better get
| trained now to defend yourself and your family.
| overview wrote:
| > Nothing else matters.
|
| Not if you're a for-profit VC firm looking to invest in an area
| with changing regulation, which could lead to trillions of
| dollars of economic opportunity.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear,
| simple, and wrong."
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Now all they need is a customer. And a product.
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