EC Food Climate and Sustainability

Just when you thought the hype about room-temperature superconductors was over, it’s not. A Swiss quantum algorithm startup, Terra Quantum, and a research lab at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) in Brazil claim that they have discovered a form of graphite that superconducts at ambient temperature and pressure. Terra Quantum isn’t a small operation. The company raised $60 million early in 2022 for its quantum-as-a-service platform. But that doesn’t mean you should get your hopes up.…

Lithium-ion batteries have come a long way, but in many ways they haven’t come far enough. They charge faster than ever before, but there’s still room for improvement. The materials they’re made of, particularly cobalt and nickel, are pricey and problematic. Researchers have been scrambling to find alternative materials, from manganese to sodium. Now they might have another: TAQ. Unlike nearly every other lithium-ion battery chemistry, TAQ is an organic compound — not the free-range hippie type,…

Websites, apps and startups are rushing to track government incentives for climate tech Spend some time with people in the climate tech world and you’ll soon learn that a lot of them share something in common: They’re not used to having a lot of money. That’s because for years, climate represented a cost for many businesses, not an opportunity. Fortunately, that’s started to change recently as investors have rushed into the space, seeking opportunities in “double-digit…

It's a precautionary tale for how to assess new markets — and how not to introduce a new product Hertz made a splash in 2021 when it announced that it would buy 100,000 Tesla Model 3 sedans in a little over a year. Six months later, the rental car company said it would buy 65,000 Polestars over five years. It appeared that the EV transition was about to sweep the rental car market. On Thursday, the sweep sputtered. Hertz said in an SEC filing that it would be selling 20,000 of its…

If you’re someone who loves an internet hype cycle, good news: There’s a new group of scientists who claim to have discovered a near-room-temperature superconductor. Yes, again. People on X (formerly Twitter), Hacker News and all the other places science enthusiasts post are getting worked up about a new material described in a paper that was posted on Tuesday to arXiv, the pre-print server. (It should be noted that most of these people do not appear to be scientists let alone condensed-matter…

One of the major stories that defined the tech sector in 2023 was layoffs. Companies large and small shed over 240,000 jobs in the last year, and while the trend has cooled of late, it hasn’t stopped, with nearly 7,000 jobs cut in November alone. But there have been bright spots. Climate tech is one sector that has been hiring, and 2024 looks like it will be continuing the trend. Clean energy jobs have grown 10% in the past two years, outpacing the economy as a whole, according to a report by…

With just a couple of days left in 2023, there’s no better time to take a moment to reflect on all that’s happened this year. From the Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse and crypto’s widespread troubles to AI’s ascent amid a volatile fundraising market, there was a lot to talk about this year, and investors and founders sure did share their thoughts freely with us in our surveys. Of course, some sectors are going to be more pertinent than others going into 2024, so we’ve listed some of our most…

Australia is a land of natural wonders, from the Great Barrier Reef and Daintree Rainforest to Kakadu National Park and the Blue Mountains. But because of the country’s naturally dry and biodiverse climate, it’s particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events that have been exacerbated by climate change. All of those wonders have been affected in recent years by bushfires, extreme heat waves, rising temperatures and floods.  Queensland is dealing with the worst flooding in history in the…

Sometime in 2024, maybe as early as February, half a dozen electric vehicle charging companies will face a reckoning. For years, they had little competition except for each other, which is to say, not much. Soon, though, they’ll have to contend with Tesla’s much-lauded Supercharger network. The EV world, from a charging perspective, was previously split in two. There was Tesla and then there was everyone else. Tesla owners enjoyed widespread, speedy and reliable charging. Everyone else made do…

Innovation in clean tech and renewable energy is moving fast — maybe a bit too fast. While there is no shortage of clean tech solutions available in today’s market (and in the works for the future), we now have a new problem: A shortage of folks who can install and maintain the tech. The clean tech industry is expected to create 8 million jobs by the end of 2030, according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency. These numbers are apparently based on current policies, and if more…