Tech for Good is a monthly newsletter about the purpose-driven economy in Europe. I share noteworthy investments, market observations and personal experiences. If you enjoy this issue, please like it above and subscribe.
Happy new year!
As we enter the first week of 2021, I wanted to reflect on the past year and write about what’s ahead.
2020 was a crisis year. It was shaped by social movements such as Black Lives Matter, wildfires in Australia and California and the biggest health & unemployment crisis we ever saw. At the same time, the pandemic also showed us what can happen if we treat the climate crisis with the same urgency and global collaboration effort like the corona crisis. Due to COVID lockdowns and reduced economic activity, renewables used for generating electricity have grown by almost 7% in 2020 and global energy demand has declined by 5%. So let’s have a quick round-up on what happened 2020 in terms of climate (tech)!
2020 in Climate
January: Australian bushfires burn 46m acres, killing 33 people and 1b animals
February: A study by Brown University found that 25% of all climate-related tweets are produced by bots, mostly supportive of the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the climate agreement and/or spreading misinformation about climate science
March: European Union pledges to become carbon-neutral by 2050
April: BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, launches a Global Impact Fund which enables investors to direct finance towards companies that are supporting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
May: The forced confinement reduces temporarily daily CO2 emissions by -17%.
June: Amazon announces $2b Climate Pledge Fund to invest in companies building products, services, and technologies to decarbonize the economy and protect the planet. Lyft pledges all-electric fleet by 2030
July: Microsoft rolls out its measures on reducing scope 3 emissions as part of their carbon-neutral pledge by 2030
August: Californian wildfires burn more than 4m acres, kill 31 people and destroy 10k buildings
September: Uber pledges all-electric fleet by 2040. Research by PwC found out that VC investment into climate grows 5x faster than overall VC.
October: Stripe launches world’s first large-scale carbon removal purchase tool
November: Joe Biden becomes the 46th US President and with that, climate change is back on the White House’s agenda. Biden announces a $2T clean energy plan which aims to make the energy grid carbon-free in 15 years.
December: 🚗 Tesla sparks 743% stock surge, propelling the company at $699 billion market value
Looking Ahead
As with every start of a new year, many people around the world make resolutions on how to exercise regularly, eat healthier or make more time for friends & family. Many will also put for the first time climate and sustainability resolutions on their list. 2020 brought among many things also time to pause, reflect and re-prioritize.
In 2020, we saw
…how unprepared our educational institutions are
…how important our mental and physical health is
…how much positive impact on carbon emissions and our climate we can make
…how we need to rethink our food supply chains
…how much we human beings crave for social connectedness
I believe crisis breeds also opportunities and that’s why the importance around “Tech for Good” will only continue to rise in 2021.
So how can you take small steps towards action?
📚 Learn: Read and share this newsletter 🤗 Learn from climate podcasts, books and blogposts. You can find in this article an excellent guide of climate resources and pragmatic tips from a startup operator turned VC investor.
🗣 Connect: Connect with thought leaders and experts and make topics such as climate, education or mental health regularly a part of your conversations with friends and family.
🧘🏻♀️ You do you: Prioritize mental and physical health with these startup brands, compiled by Thingtesting.
Have a great start into 2021!
Thanks to those who responded to my survey in the last issue to make the newsletter a better experience for all readers. It showed that 40% of you love the mix of this newsletter and 32% of you gain especially value from useful links & reads as well as my conscious consumer corner. The rest is evenly interested in investments and new startups while diversity made the last spot. I will keep this in mind and re-shuffle also the order of content accordingly.
💭 50 top tech thinkers make predictions on “The next big thing in 2021 is...”. Among those are climate crisis, health care and food
🇪🇺 Why Europe must reskill workers to reach its climate goals
🤖 Does Europe really need ‘deeptech’ to solve global threats such as climate change?
🌍 The Year 2020 in Climate
💨 Europe’s biggest Utility Company to ramp up spending on wind and solar power
💵 BlackRock vows to back more shareholder votes on climate change
🎓 Request for Edtech Startups by Erik Torenberg (On Deck)
Last month I was…
🤳🏻 Trying new carbon-offsetting and tracking apps
From 🇩🇪
Launched in 2020
Raised € 5m seed round by e.ventures, HV Capital, 468 Capital
Yay: It’s easy. I answered 3-5 questions, they calculate your carbon footprint, I chose a project to offset (in my case €15 for a rainforest project). Done.
Nay: Well, it’s easy. I’ve found the experience actually quite underwhelming. After one year of app development I would have expected a little more. It felt to me like a one-off transaction.
From 🇸🇬
Launched in 2020
Raised seed round as part of Antler’s program
Yay: It lets you track your monthly carbon footprint by focusing on your daily means of transport (by location tracking) and diet preferences (e.g. low meat) so you don’t need to put manually data in.
Nay: UX is not really great. I tend to forget to go use the app daily and I don’t know how my monthly footprint is comparing to benchmarks. There is also some content to learn, but it’s too long.
From 🇺🇸
Yay: It calculates your emissions from flights and trains by accessing your receipts from the providers in your email account. Smooth integration!
Nay: Solely focus on travel (planes and trains). You can offset your emissions coming from traveling and that’s about it.
There are also Yayzy (🇬🇧 based) and Joro (🇺🇸 based, recently raised $2.5m from Sequoia Capital). Both are not in Germany yet, but by surpassing some geographic limitations on Apple (🤓) I took a quick glimpse. It looked promising but also did not really get me fully hooked, so I believe there is still great potential in the market! The player that first cracks data capture, engagement and habit-forming will win this race.
🇪🇺 EU approves Google’s $2.1 billion acquisition of Fitbit
🇩🇪 🚗 Sono Motors, the electric car company from Munich, has raised € 45M
🇬🇧🥛 Better Dairy picks up £1.6M seed funding to produce animal-free dairy
🇬🇧 🏢 Infogrid raises $15.5M from Northzone to retrofit buildings with ‘smart’ IoT
🇧🇪 Aphea.Bio, Belgium-based agtech startup, secured € 14m in Series B funding from Astanor Ventures
Here are selected early-stage startups spotted last month.
🇩🇰 Matter. Specializing in sustainable investments in the pension space.
🇳🇴 Savvie. Helps to boost profitability, reduce food waste and streamline operations.
🇸🇪 Hooked. Develops a plant-based shredded salmon alternative.
Check out this great running overview of Climate Tech VCs:
📉 Global VC funding to female founders dropped dramatically in 2020
👩🏼 Launch of Sie.Ventures, a capital platform to help European female founders by providing better access to support, network, and capital
🤣 Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo had to pay a fine of €90k for breaking national rules in 2018 on gender parity (by naming too many women in senior roles)
Thank you for reading! Do you have comments, questions, tips?