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Request for Startups: Climate Tech

ycombinator.com

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Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech

#121

Post by ravenstine »

ghiculescu wrote: post #93
bmitc wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to post this as well. For one, it doesn't even make sense. Tesla is a car manufacturer and makes objectively worse cars than the competition. They just happen to be EVs. Making any thing "Tesla" inside my house means it will be flashy but work less well than existing solutions, in addition to removing all knobs. All of which is the opposite of what I want. I've already de-smartified my Nests because, surp…

What is objectively worse about them? They seem very popular with consumers.

For one, their interior is rather unluxurious considering the price tag relative to other EVs. The only thing it's got going for it is the tablet screen, which was cool back in the day but today anyone can install an aftermarket one in their old beater.

If someone wants to buy a Tesla because they truly like it or the brand, they're the only ones who can decide the right answer for them. I personally don't get it. There are way better options now in my eyes; it's just they're uncool brand names like Subaru and Hyundai.

Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech

#122

Post by baremetal »

a_square_peg wrote: post #72
jandrewrogers wrote: post #65

I've worked in "climate intelligence" for many years. The list overlooks one of the largest and most immediate opportunities around that market: the data infrastructure and analysis tools we have today are profoundly unfit for purpose. Just about everyone is essentially using cartography tools to do large-scale spatiotemporal analysis of sensor and telemetry data. The gaps for both features and practical scalability…

Out of curiosity, is accessing & working with large datasets a problem in your areas of work? I run a weather/climate site that makes some of this less painful, taking datasets such as GFS or ERA5/ERA5-Land much faster to access. We have some enterprise clients who really value the time-saving aspect of this but I also feel like everyone has their own data-processing set up and problems are different for everyone.

Any chance you guys provide a free api for the little guy? I would love to have access to climate data via a json rest api. Specifically historical temperature and precipitation data at minimum.

I poked around a while back and wasn't able to find much of anything on the web. Maybe I missed it?

Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech

#123

Post by paulcole »

algoatecorn wrote: post #120

The agriculture section is disheartening. What is the VCs worlds' obsession with cellular ag and mushrooms? Totally missing the forest for the trees here. Global calorie supply is dependent on the Haber-Bosch process i.e. Nitrogen fixation. The next big agricultural breakthrough will be some form of nitrogen fixation: 1. That is not affected by a reduction of fossil fuels 2. Is on par with Haber-Bosch in terms of ele…

> Does not require a massive shift in consumer preferences

This is getting more and more irrelevant by the day. If “climate tech” fails to “fix” climate change (a goal which I believe to be impossible), then it’s not going to matter what people’s preferences are — the choices are going to be made for them and it won’t matter what they like/dislike.

Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech

#124

Post by bmitc »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #105
bmitc wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Popularity does not necessarily correlate with quality. Tesla is typically rated at the bottom for quality and reliability.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...

Note that that ranking only compares against other EVs, of which there aren't that many yet, and that Kia's new model, which has only been out for a year, is already above Tesla. I have said this for years, and it's been clear to me that Tesla cannot compete against traditional car makers moving into the EV space.

Consumer Reports ranks Tesla at either the bottom or second to last when compared against all other car manufacturers.

Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech

#125

Post by janalsncm »

Here are some of my unsolicited and harebrained climate startup ideas. I’m poor and I can’t afford to pursue any of these but I believe a carbon-neutral future will require these things:

* Cheap EV chargers for people who don’t own houses. Young people are the most likely to be open to EVs, but they’re also the least likely to own a house. Charging is a major barrier to entry. Create something so cheap and ubiquitous that charging is not a concern. For example chargers built into lamp posts.

* Figure out UHVDC to enable clean energy surpluses to be sold internationally. Reliable UHVDC networks will allow clean energy projects to service more geographic area, making them more competitive. Eventually, storage might not even be necessary, since dark/non-windy regions can always pull from regions with wind or sun. And when fusion power comes online in a few decades, huge energy surpluses will be very profitable.

* Passive carbon capture via nuclear barges. We’ve had nuclear reactors in the water for decades, let’s put them to use capturing carbon.

* Floatovoltaics. Land isn’t always cheap. Put solar panels in other places. There are other positive side effects as well, such as reducing algae blooms and reducing evaporation.

Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech

#126

Post by counters »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #103
a_square_peg wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, is accessing & working with large datasets a problem in your areas of work? I run a weather/climate site that makes some of this less painful, taking datasets such as GFS or ERA5/ERA5-Land much faster to access. We have some enterprise clients who really value the time-saving aspect of this but I also feel like everyone has their own data-processing set up and problems are different for everyone.

There are a couple issues I see with basic access and working with large datasets. Ease of access for typical users is also a valid issue. First, we still mostly move the data to the computation when we should be moving the computation to the data. Moving the data works fine when data is small but if the data volumes are large (as sensor/geo data tends to be) then it can take an incredibly long time to move the data.…

Want to make sure you're familiar with the Pangeo community: www.pangeo.io

I don't think any of these challenges are "solved", but there's a groundswell of technology that is well-situated to make a big impact in these domains. The largest barriers that still remain are the ownership of engineering processes/workflow to transform larger gridded datasets to ARCO (analysis-ready, cloud-optimized) formats, as well as tooling to mediate between heterogeneous datasets (e.g. combining regular vs irregular or arbitrarily gridded data, such as land surveys or ZIP codes).

There are definitely players in the space working on these, but much is left to be done here.

Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech

#127

Post by bombcar »

malfist wrote: post #117
ibejoeb wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>water heaters Are we being serious? I have an electric water heater. I have an induction cooktop, which is electric by necessity. I have an electric clothes dryer. (Is there even a consumer-grade gas-fired clothes dryer on the market?) The consumer experience is fine. I turn on the hot water tap and hot water comes out. What am I missing?

You mean you don't want to download an app to your phone that steals your data so you can....adjust the temperature setting of your hot water heater?

If you're heating hot water you already have a problem ;) (I know, I know).

Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech

#128

Post by kokanee »

pcl wrote: post #116
kokanee wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.twelve.co is doing this (with fuels as well as other carbon-derived chemicals). Trouble is, this is carbon recycling, not carbon sequestering. It's better than the status quo, but I'm more excited about ideas that either sequester GHGs permanently or replace industrial GHG-generating processes permanently.

Storing liquids (or solids) from at STP is far simpler than storing it in gaseous form. If we can cheaply extract CO2 or methane from the atmosphere and make liquid from it, we could sequester it in all sorts of trivial ways.

Sure, but that's not what Twelve is doing or what the "I should start an oil company" comment suggested. They're talking about extracting CO2 to make fuel, and then burning it again in the same petroleum-based economy.

Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech

#129

Post by yongjik »

r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #25
notlukesky wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core issue is that they are unreliable when there is no wind or sunlight. Storage at scale is still not affordable or available for the whole world. The recent electricity issues that western Europe faced are indicative of the failings of unSustainable energy.

The recent electricity issues are because Putin invaded Ukraine and reduced the gas supply. Which is nothing to do with sustainable energy.

"We said we were running on renewables, but we were also dependent on burning Russian gas, and we plan to keep burning gas for the foreseeable future, sans the buying-gas-from-Russia part" sounds like a pretty important detail to talk about sustainable energy, IMHO.

Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech

#130

Post by kokanee »

ebiester wrote: post #75
paxys wrote: post #47

Funny that after so many years of funding and encouraging crypto mining the VC industry now decides to go "green".

With 800 billion dollars of funding from the government, there are going to be a lot of opportunities to follow the cash.

Yeah, this is not VC "going green" for ethical reasons, this is VC investing in the next tech wave, which luckily is climate tech.
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