Carbon13 invests another £1.3 million into a second cohort of 12 decarbonisation startups
Carbon13 invests £1+million across 12 startups generated by its Venture Builder Cohort 2, each with the potential to reduce CO2e emissions by 10 million tonnes per annum.
Twelve innovative carbon emissions-mitigating startups have been launched and invested in by Carbon13’s venture builder, just six months since we invested in eight from the first cohort. This brings the total to twenty venture investments in the last six months.
Each startup has received an investment of £103,000 plus in-kind support to fast track their development into highly scalable Net Zero ventures.
It is the focus on decarbonisation and carbon capture which sets these ventures apart, each venture has the potential to reduce emissions by 10 million tonnes per annum – our threshold for investing.
The 12 ventures range from hardtech solutions such as carbon negative concrete and methane reduction, to food and biotech including alt-protein and algae; and software-based solutions such as carbon offset insurance, NFTs for the climate, and computer vision in agritech.
The Carbon13 SEIS Fund II is supported by notable investors including ex-Dragon Nick Jenkins, Peter Cowley, Graham Hobson, Guy Farley, and Martin Frost.
Why Carbon13 is different: Focus and Teaming
Carbon13 is the only venture builder hyper-focused on generating ventures with the explicit goal of reducing CO2e emissions by millions of tonnes.
Just as importantly, the venture builder is “talent-first”, meaning we focus first on the founders’ potential to meet the challenge of building a significant venture, and only secondarily on the current state of their ideas.
This means that unlike incubators and accelerators, founders find cofounders from their cohort in the Teaming phase, and are supported to form high performance teams very quickly.
The talent-first and mission-focused approach means that our cohort is significantly more experienced than comparable programmes; on average our founders have over 14 years’ experience.
And the cohort is diverse both in skills (mix of scientists, developers, entrepreneurs and innovators) and other ways: 7 of the 12 Cohort 2 portfolio ventures have female leaders.
Carbon13’s founder and CEO Dr Chris Coleridge said: “from September to January, to see 65 people form 23 teams is remarkable, and 12 have such potential that we have invested in them. The talent and drive amongst entrepreneurs, both technical and commercial, to address the climate crisis is there, we just need to bring them together and provide an ecosystem for elite performance, and fast-track progress.”
Carbon13’s ecosystem
Carbon13 grew out of the Cambridge ecosystem of academia, entrepreneurship and innovation. This has allowed us to build a Net Zero ecosystem of our own, including partnerships with corporate innovators such as EY, Arm, DLA Piper and bp ventures, as well as over 100 domain experts and relevant investors like the Clean Growth Fund, Potential Climate Ventures, Octopus Ventures and Zero Carbon Capital to support the startups on their journey.
At the end of May, the ventures will be showcased in a series of events in Cambridge and London, aiming to raise seed investment to take them to the next level of development.
A look at the Carbon13 ventures
Biozeroc
BioZeroc uses biotechnology to make concrete without the need for cement, enabling the production of concrete products not only to become carbon neutral, but carbon negative. Our mission is to revolutionise the concrete industry; transforming one of the most polluting industries into the cleanest. Harnessing the power of scalable Biotech, we create carbon-negative building materials that enable everyday infrastructure to become carbon sinks.
Bluemethane
Although the threat has been invisible, stemming methane leaks from reservoirs, rice paddies, and wastewater could be one of the most powerful instruments to quickly slow global warming. Globally 51 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere from human activity every year. 3 billion tonnes are from methane escaping from water. Anthropogenic methane has a global warming potential 34 times greater than carbon dioxide. No scalable solution exists to remove methane from water -until now. Bluemethane’s solution to capture methane from water has an equivalent carbon offset value in excess of £20bn and the potential to generate a new source of bioenergy.
Croptimise
Croptimise is building a next generation global platform to give growers the tools they need to make the pest epidemic manageable, by making pests predictable and detectable. We’re building a network of computer vision enabled smart traps to track pests and combining this with state-of-the-art machine learning models to build accurate and actionable pest forecasts. Our pest forecasts give growers and agronomists the tools they need to manage pests on the farm, and financial institutions the tools they need to assess risk on farms.
Emeralga Biotech
Emeralga Biotech employs novel biotechnology to mirror the circular model of nature. We use nutrient-rich, post-production wastewater from the food and beverage industry to grow small plant-like organisms called microalgae. Through microalgae processing, we generate by-products like proteins, vitamins and nutrients without the need for precious soil, land or freshwater. Treated wastewaters can be reused by industry and our products will help reduce the need for fishing, replaced with our vegan Omega-3 Fatty Acids, shrink carbon emissions from chemicals in fertilizers by our first-to-market phytohormones, and improve the quality of nutrition for people, plants, and the soil. At a time when it is needed the most, our purpose is to create from waste, products that will regenerate our planet.
foodloop
foodloop upcycles byproducts from food manufacturing into sustainable plant-based ingredients for the alternative protein industry. By expanding the ingredient landscape beyond the current range of virgin wheat, pea, and soy, we help alternative protein companies make even better products while reducing their carbon footprints. Our vision is a new marketplace where alternative protein companies can connect with byproduct producers, replacing the “take-make-dispose” model of production with a circular model where no food is wasted.
Insenti
Insenti is a software company that helps companies decarbonise their supply chains by identifying the most effective nature-based insetting projects for carbon and biodiversity. Our platform matches up co-investment opportunities and provides science based assurance and progress reporting to help companies achieve their net-zero and nature-positive targets.
Insetting projects are interventions along a company’s value chain that are designed to get better return on investment from business carbon reduction budgets, at the same time creating positive impacts for communities, landscapes, and ecosystems.
Kita
Kita’s purpose is to be a new type of insurance company, focused on enabling a new decarbonised world. Our vision is to be the world’s first “carbon insurer”, covering the risk that carbon sequestration solutions under deliver against their promised carbon removal targets (“carbon delivery risk”). By removing risk on both sides of the carbon transaction, Kita will enable greater development of these solutions – both biological and technological – and accelerate their climate impact.
Limetrack
Unavoidable commercial food waste is a 361.9Mt global problem, especially when that food waste ends up in landfills contributing to methane emissions. But separating food waste from general waste is a hassle, especially if it only makes up a small proportion. Collecting the separated food waste is inefficient and costly, and its destination is opaque. UK and EU legislation add a burden of being compliant to every hospitality and non-hospitality business – no matter the size – and providing reports in response to inevitable food waste audits is a headache.
Lime Track’s low-friction digital B2B food waste management platform eases that pain, ensuring that all businesses are fully compliant, that food waste is cost-effectively collected, tracked and processed, and that Scope 1 and Scope 3 emissions are reduced and accurately reported. Our ruthless pursuit of simplicity and compliance ensures success and supports every business’s journey to Net Zero.
NorthStar Platform
NorthStar Platform solves the intention-action gap for sustainable projects by eliminating the search problems and decision paralysis in discovering and executing small to medium sized sustainable projects.
Paradigm
Art, reimagined.
Paradigm sits at the intersection of art and philanthropy to create valuable digital assets with everlasting environmental impact. We exist to support the organisations making a positive impact on the planet but struggling to raise necessary monies to fund their work.
Phoenix Carbon
Composites are currently not sustainable and generate an enormous amount of CO2. The technology driver at the heart of Phoenix Carbon is a disruptive, composite recycling process that goes beyond the state of the art. The recycling status-quo cuts and degrades fibre quality while our process maintains 100% of the original fibre properties and fabric. Phoenix Carbon is the enabler for a composite circular economy across Aero, Auto, Marine and Leisure sectors while decreasing CO2 emissions by a factor of 10x.
Shanti Safety
Shanti is enabling safer urban life through smart data, helping people walk, cycle and use public transportation by providing safer routes. More than 1 billion people consider maps and navigation essential tools for smartphones. However, routing technologies are designed to optimise for the fastest routes, not the safest ones. Safety perception influences how people move around. Just to name a few examples, a study shows that 10 years ago, 64% of women in Mexico used public transportation and this has dropped to 52% due to safety concerns. In the same time frame, the number of vehicles has doubled. In the UK, a generation ago 70% of the kids used to walk to school, and now less than half do due to safety perception issues. We can help reverse this trend through smart safety data.