Curious, anyone working on automation in the mining space? I'm interested in jamming out with people about doing work in the industry. Or using airships in places like africa to transport minerals from mines to regional hubs (e.g. to avoid the huge delays on roadways currently happening between DRC and Zambia).
Request for Startups: Climate Tech
101–110 of 282 posts
Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech
#102Really, the big win is going to be "efficient air conditioning for poor countries" and "using materials other than concrete to build."
Everyone loves AC. The more money you have the more you use it.
And everyone in poor countries uses concrete to build.
The bad thing is that these two things combine: the concrete box that is your building heats up like a brick oven, making AC work more. Doh!
Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech
#103I'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.
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. In many cases, more time is spent shoveling data over the network than actually doing the computation. This has become worse as storage density has increased, hundreds of TB/server is ordinary.
Second, the data is rarely organized in a way that makes it efficient to extract arbitrary subsets. There is still a lot of what is essentially "grep at scale" going on. Again, not a problem if the data is small but if I need a specific 50TB subset of a 10PB source, this becomes prohibitively slow. The data needs to be organized such that we can slice and dice it with high selectivity in place, much more like a proper database and less of a distributed filesystem. Because spatiotemporal analysis tends to involve iterative join-like operations, you want this to be efficient as possible.
The other big problem is many of these data sources are too large for everyone to have their own copy. Or if they did have their own copy, it would be extraordinarily wasteful. This is adjacent to the first issue. EDIT: And herein is the likely business model.
Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech
#104> Tesla for home appliances: re-inventing home appliances (water heaters, induction stoves, clothes dryers, etc) to create better consumer experiences using specific advantages of electric technology.
I mean heat pump water heaters already exist [346] and they're reasonable in most everywhere (they put extra load on the furnace in cold climates in the winter but can still be a win overall). The main advance here might be more "smart integration" with the grid, but that is going to have to be a national level thing.
[346] https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-pump-water-heaters
Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is objectively worse about them? They seem very popular with consumers.
Popularity does not necessarily correlate with quality. Tesla is typically rated at the bottom for quality and reliability.
Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech
#106Funny that after so many years of funding and encouraging crypto mining the VC industry now decides to go "green".
Those generative AI companies aren't exactly lean on energy usage either. It's about capturing the IRA money, which to their credit they are very up front about. Maybe something good will come out of it, after all, that's the point of the government spending! If they save the world purely out of self interest then we still get the saved world...
And what about when they take the government money and start doing innovative work, then once the funding dries up they realize that bitcoin mining is more profitable after all and promptly switch back to that. That's the problem with putting public good in the hands of private entities who have their next quarterly report to worry about and not much else.
Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech
#107Really, the big win is going to be "efficient air conditioning for poor countries" and "using materials other than concrete to build." Everyone loves AC. The more money you have the more you use it. And everyone in poor countries uses concrete to build. The bad thing is that these two things combine: the concrete box that is your building heats up like a brick oven, making AC work more. Doh!
Air conditioners are already pretty efficient, so you're not going to get huge wins there.
But solar-powered air conditioning could be a huge win. You can avoid the DC-AC-DC conversion losses, and avoid any impact on the grid. Most people without air conditioning would be quite happy with air conditioning that only works while the sun is shining.
Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech
#108The only thing that would move the needle on a massive societal level is reliable nuclear energy in every city and country. But is that too hard for startups to tackle? Or it doesn’t fit the narrative? Every other climate “tech” just nibbles at the margins if that even. And the byproduct of mass nuclear energy adoption would be that the issue is solved and there would be no more climate mongering amongst the conferen…
Why do people keep spouting this nonsense? Yes there is a place for nuclear in the mix, but renewables have already moved the dial in a lot if countries. I the uk about 40% of our energy is from renewables, mostly wind at 25% and biomass for much of the rest. Or does that not fit your narrative? Or do you not consider that moving the needle? It's a damn sight easier, quicker and cheaper to put up wind turbines and so…
This isn't true and you are also probably confusing energy and electricity
Edit: wow, since I'm receiving instant downvotes, here's the evidence.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech
#109Lately i've been thinking that right now may be a great time to start an oil company. Cost of solar is going down so capturing c02 and turning it into fuel is looking like a viable option. People would pay a premiun for carbon neutral fuel. Most climate companies, focused on carbon capture, tried to make the most efficient carbon capture possible, but what if one focused on scalability and reducing manufacturing cost…
This is the play that Terraform Industries is engaging in as well. Cost for synthesizing a unit of methane from atmospheric CO2 and water using solar power is set to drop lower than the cost of drilling it out of the ground. https://terraformindustries.com/
> lower than the cost of drilling it out of the ground.
Shipping is a huge component of the price of natural gas. So it'll be a long time before they're cheaper than the price of natural gas in Alberta or Siberia, but they'll be able to beat the price in Los Angeles a lot sooner.
Re: Request for Startups: Climate Tech
#110I'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…
> 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 are massive.
Could you point to any readings or resources that would explain these gaps? I'd be quite curious why our current spatiotemporal analysis techniques would be insufficient. Is it the analysis tools that just need new techniques or is the problem at the source (i.e. the sensors)? Or?