Hi there,

That was probably my fourth or fifth NY Climate Week; I’ve lost track. I’d say fifth. As always, ~100,000 people descending onto Midtown Manhattan for 1,000+ events across Climate Week and the UN General Assembly makes for a wild ride. So we have plenty to cover today. I for the most part, attended about 1-2 events a day, skipped 3-5, and stayed in bed as much as possible doing work. That’s just kind of where my social battery is at these day. Still, it was great to see some of you. And I hope to see many more of you in Iceland in a few weeks at the Summit that ARC (my day job) is hosting (a few spots may still be avail!). We’ve got 200+ people signed up already!

This newsletter isn’t about that, though, nor is it a New York Climate Week (and certainly not an UNGA) re-cap. Rather, it’s a roundup of three weeks worth of climate, energy, and other related news since my last re-cap of this kind. I also miss the days where I had a lot of time to devote to Keep Cool, so I pumped this edition full of color and commentary surrounding the news itself. ‘Twas a weird urge that came over me last night.

That said, in light of the aforementioned Summit in Iceland and many other things, I do want to note that this may well be my last roundup for another three weeks, if not longer. Q4 is shaping up to be busier than ever. BUT. That doesn’t mean no Keep Cool emails; there’s a lot I’ve worked on for months that’s almost ready to share elsewhere and that I’ll syndicate through these pages, at a minimum. Still, in light of what I’ve got going on, I’m not sure when I’ll have time to do a round-up like this one next, and I’ll definitely be busy in general and slow to reply to y’all on my keep cool email address. Will still be checking in, though.

Moreover, in a completely different vein, I’ve recently had three new short (and micro) works of fiction published, for those of you I know like that type of stuff too. You can read them here and here. Trigger warning for self-exit on the third story (the second story in the second link).

Finally, if you need a fun game / incentive to get through this whole email, I’ve got $5 for the first person who responds with correct identification of the 3 pieces of news I had a direct hand in in some capacity. There are actually more than three, but three shall suffice!

• SRM360 has a great new article out on the fledgling but growing funding for solar radiation management research, development, and other field-building efforts across both the private sector and public sector that’s well worth a look. Link.

• El Niño is running realllly hot as well as ahead of schedule. Temperatures in the patch of Pacific used to track it hit 3.07°C above normal over the weekend, matching the 2015 record, and the event typically doesn't peak until November or December. Zeke Hausfather, whose Carbon Brief analysis flagged the jump, called the figures "mind-blowing," while the Guardian notes this could be the biggest El Niño in a millennium. 2027 thus may well end up being the hottest year on record globally, though there’ll be a lot of regional variation. For instance, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has already declared a state of emergency to prep for storms and flooding, as the El Niño pattern brings more rain to the West Coast more often than not. Wherever you are, expect and watch out for knock-on climate risk plus things like even more upward pressure on food prices (great…). Link. Link. Link. Link.

• Further, before El Niño has even really kicked in, Copernicus data shows August tied July 2023 as the hottest month ever measured, with record August ocean temperatures. The atmosphere also carried more moisture last month (27.35 kg of water vapour per square meter) than in any month on record, beating the record previously set in July 2024. Link.

• Attribution science is getting sharper (purportedly). A new study in Geophysical Research Letters used AI trained on climate models to isolate the effect of emissions released only since the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, and found they made Europe's 2025 heat wave (115°F-plus in Spain and Portugal, 16,000+ dead) about a third of a degree Celsius hotter, with 99-in-100 confidence. I have long been skeptical of single-event attribution, especially as covered by journalists versus what scientists and staticians actually say, but am readily convinced that more advanced models make this work better. Link.

• Warming induced emissions, i.e., self-reinforcing feedback loops whereby natural emissions coupled with global warming beget more emissions and more warming, are starting to add up. Carbon and methane released by thawing permafrost, wildfires, wetlands, and inland waters could boost warming 20–30% this century, or roughly 0.2–0.4°C, per new research in Environmental Research Letters led by Sam Abernethy of Spark Climate Solutions (with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working) alongside Stanford, Woodwell, and the Environmental Defense Fund. In a middle-of-the-road scenario, that's roughly twice today's U.S. yearly CO2 output and six times its methane. About half comes from permafrost, and cutting human emissions shrinks these feedbacks too. Link.

• The annual planetary health check from 60 scientists at the Potsdam Institute finds seven of nine planetary boundaries breached, each by its widest margin yet. Only the ozone layer and aerosol pollution have improved over the past decade, and the authors warn we may be overestimating how much forests and oceans can keep absorbing, with the Amazon at risk of tipping into savannah. Link.

• Antarctic sea ice hit its third-smallest winter peak in 48 years of records (17.59m km², 14 Sept, provisional NSIDC data). The five lowest July extents have all come since 2022, though scientists say it's too early to call a structural shift. The Arctic minimum tied for 10th lowest. Mind you, Antarctic sea ice is a lot more ‘stochastic’ in terms of how it has responded to climate change compared to Arctic sea ice; Arctic sea ice has been in consistent and significant retreat for decades (~12% decline per decade since 1979). Link.

• Rainmaker (see Deals section as well for more news) is facing backlash in Alaska after an August 23 drone cloud-seeding test over Kachemak Bay. The company says it produced 19 million gallons of rain. Local officials say they weren't told in advance. Rep. Sarah Vance sent a cease-and-desist since, and state regulators note no permitting framework exists, though that doesn’t really suggest you can do whatever you want from a sound governance perspective. From my vantage point, this is a problematic potential drag on many other organizations conducting research with much more attention paid to cultivating license and legitimacy among rights holders and local communities. The company says the silver iodide release was tiny and safe, and touts visible "cavum" holes in clouds as proof its seeding works in Oregon. Both claims are quite debatable, the latter being based on insight from scientists with PhDs in ice nucleating proteins, not my own. Link. Link. Link.

• Documents obtained through FOI requests show the U.K. Ministry of Defence's research arm paid Cambridge Consultants to study solar radiation management, marking the first confirmation that British security services have funded active work in the field. The U.K. officially opposes ‘deploying’ SRM, but was already known as one of its biggest research funders via ARIA's £56.8 million (~$75.0 million) program (as also noted above in our “In one sentence and a chart section). Link.

• The DOE is spending $1.9 billion in SPARK grants on 31 grid projects across 26 states; with utility cost-share, total investment is about $5.3 billion. Much of the money should go to advanced conductors and dynamic line rating, i.e., reconductoring or rebuilding 1,500+ miles of transmission and adding grid-enhancing tech to nearly 21,000 more. The TLDR looks like ~23 GW of new capacity, ideally. Link.

• For the first time, New England's wind turbines pushed more than 2 GW onto the grid at once. The $6.2 billion Revolution Wind project finished installing all 65 turbines despite two federal stop-work orders and should hit its full 704 MW by year-end. Still, BloombergNEF's 2035 U.S. offshore wind outlook has collapsed from 39 GW to 6 GW since Trump won the most recent presidential election. Still, a rare win for offshore wind in North America. Link. Link.

• U.S. solar installs hit 11.4 GW in Q2, up 45% year-over-year, according to SEIA and Wood Mackenzie. Link.

• Moss Landing’s battery energy storage facility is burning (again). Damaged batteries awaiting removal at Vistra's Northern California site caught fire about 18 months after the January 2025 disaster, though county officials say this one is far smaller. Link.

• The Fed hiked a quarter point to 3.75%–4%, its first move under Chair Kevin Warsh and first increase since 2023, and signaled one more hike is likely this year. With high oil prices and data center spending pushing the 10-year Treasury yield above 5% (a high not seen since 2007), money is getting pricier for everyone in and outsdie AI, including CAPEX heavy clean energy development. Link.

• Copper's Charlie 2.0 battery-backed induction range has more powerful burners (3,000 W each), an oven that preheats more than four times faster than many gas ovens, and plugs into either 120V or 240V outlets. Miele will build it at its Alabama plant, marking the first time Miele has made another brand's appliance. Full Link.

• Oil is back near $100 as Middle Eastern tensions I stopped covering for a while still…. continue, with ongoing strikes across the region and between parties. Doesn’t seem like resolution is close at hand, even as energy prices weigh on everyone worldwide. Link.

• U.S. diesel averages about $6.50 a gallon, a hair below its Sept. 22 record of $6.53 and up from $3.69 a year ago, thanks to the war with Iran, Hormuz disruptions, and Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries, among countless other relevant constraints. Link.

• Coal is, well, still a large share of global energy production. Not that I ever thought that would change overnight. But the IEA sees global demand actually climbing 1.2% again this year to a new record of 8.94 billion tonnes, and coal power generation is rising again after falling in 2025 due to the Middle Eastern conflicts. As a reminder, coal is still the second largest fuel source for energy worldwide (second only to oil), as energy is more comprehensive than just electricity (which is only about 20% of the total). Link.

• Amazon's next wave of data centers will be powered in part by eight new gas plants totaling 17.5 GW, built by utilities and independent power producers. Link.

• Germany has formally pledged to quit fossil fuels by 2045. Only France and the Netherlands in the EU have previously set such aggresive and concrete goals. It’s a bold statement in an atmosphere where most companies and countries have been headed in the other direction, but I highly, highly doubt it will be achieved. If it decarbonized electricity alone, that’d be a massive feat. Industry, for which you need things like super high heats, and heavy transportation (boats, construction equipment), are a whole ‘nother matter. Even a 75% reductions in fossil fuel usage for electricity usage alone from present by 2045 would be amazing. Link.

• Helion, a leading nuclear fusion company valued most recently at $15.5 billion, is walking back its timeline. No huge surprise here; though it’s a very notable (and predictable) story that deserves more attention really. The company walked back a 2028 electricity target for its Orion plant from its website, and an executive conceded full operation won't come until 2029 or 2030 (still ambitious), even as Microsoft’s contract still calls for grid connection and operations to begin by end-2028. Link.

• Holtec filed for an IPO at up to a $10.2 billion valuation but has since scrapped its plans based on the classic, nebulous “market conditions” excuse. The company is still pushing to pull off the first-ever U.S. reactor restart in coming months. Standard Nuclear's July listing was also scaled back. Westinghouse's planned $50 billion IPO for October is still TBD. Newcleo is the one ahead anyway, listing on Nasdaq through a $247 million SPAC deal. Private investors, meanwhile, have put $4.6 billion into U.S. nuclear startups this year. Meanwhile, X-Energy is trading nearly 40% under its IPO price at present. Link. Link. Link. Link. Link.

• TVA became the first utility to seek an NRC construction permit for an SMR (Clinch River, Oak Ridge, TN). Blue Energy also followed with an application for its first gas-to-nuclear plant at the Port of Victoria in Texas; it’s only one of five companies to get this far. Link. Link.

• Google is doubling (tripling) down on nuclear. In Iowa, the DOE closed a $1.9 billion loan for NextEra to revive the Duane Arnold plant, whose output Google has agreed to buy. In Finland, as part of a $15.1 billion AI infrastructure push (its biggest ever in Europe, including three new data centers), Google also signed a 22-year deal with Fortum for up to half of the Loviisa nuclear plant's power. It's Europe's first direct plant-to-hyperscaler contract, and it underwrites roughly $1.1 billion in relicensing to keep the two Soviet-era reactors running to 2050. Finland's grid is already about 95% carbon-free. Link. Link. Link.

• South Korea is considering a $120 billion U.S. investment package that includes eight reactors, possibly pairing its own APR1400 design, which a settlement with Westinghouse bars from markets like North America, with U.S.-financed AP1000s (South Korea alos wants a 15% stake in Westinghouse as part of the transaction). Link.

• Private fusion bets have passed $14 billion in recent years, and Washington may be the next to add more fuel to the proverbial fire. Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Jay Obernolte introduced the bipartisan American Leadership in Fusion Act, which would put around $10 billion in tax-payer dollars to work to help private companies commercialize. Link.

• Speaking of fusion, Inertia Enterprises says a high-fidelity simulation using Lawrence Livermore's validated ignition models shows its first commercial plant could yield more than 25 times the laser energy it uses and send over 250 MW to the grid. It's the second item checked off its 10-step roadmap. Link.

• Fervo's Cape Station in Utah is now sending power to the grid, almost exactly three years after groundbreaking. The first phase is three 33 MW units, with two more due by 2027. Big milestone! Link.

• The DOE picked 21 geothermal projects for up to $99 million. Link.

• Dig Energy completed its first commercial project, drilling seven geothermal boreholes at Suffolk Construction's Boston HQ with a 10,000-psi water jet that it says can slash drilling costs by as much as 80%. Only about 1% of U.S. buildings use geothermal heating and cooling. Link.

• The EPA is scrapping carbon limits for fossil-fueled power plants, paired with a separate rule revoking the finding that power-plant greenhouse gases pose a threat. Per the NYT, that would more or less spell the end of all major Obama- and Biden-era climate rules and, if it holds up in court, could stop future administrations from re-regulating power-plant emissions, too. Yikes. Link.

• The EPA also quietly deleted its online resources helping companies measure Scope 3 supply-chain emissions, with a spokesperson noting the program isn't legally required. Link.

• On the flip side, some checks and balances still exist. A federal appeals court unanimously ruled that the DOE overstepped its emergency powers by repeatedly ordering Consumers Energy's 1,420 MW J.H. Campbell coal plant in Michigan to stay open past its planned May 2025 retirement (six 90-day orders so far). Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois' attorneys general brought the challenge with environmental groups. Link.

• The House passed the Ratepayer Protection Act 417–3, nudging states to consider a federal standard under which big power users pay the full cost of new generation and transmission they require, though it isn't a mandate. Link.

• There was a lot of momentum for a bipartisan permitting deal in U.S. Congress as recently as a week ago, at least it felt like it. But—and this is now a tale as old as time—that all looks less likely. I won’t put in all the details here; hard to say how ‘real’ the likelihood of its passing is at this point but it seems to have fallen considerably from what might have been a coinflip at points earlier this month. Link.

• Ahead of approving a third runway at Heathrow, the U.K. quietly scaled back its hopes for SAF (now 30% of fuel by 2050, not 50%), efficiency gains, and electric planes. Its new "ambitious" pathway leaves 2050 aviation emissions at 28.1 MtCO2e, about 50% above the previous jet-zero target, and emissions would climb to 41.1 MtCO2e without new policy. Link.

• On the not-so-great side of things but also unsurprisingly, all but one EU member nation has failed to meet a clean hydrogen objective which was adopted in 2024 and gave participants (who opted in, mind you), two years to pass laws aligned to EU-level guidelines for clean hydrogen production. Batting 1/27 ain’t great. The one country that did? Italy, surprisingly. Link.

• "Environment" beats "climate" as a message, at least right now. In Heatmap and Embold Research polling, 72% of registered voters called the environment extremely or very important to them, 17 points ahead of climate change, and even a third of climate skeptics said it matters a lot. Words are my bread and butter, so I find all this fascinating. I understand it, too; climate carries a certain “angry activist” connotation for many people at this point in general, I imagine, and in institutional sectors its (sometimes at least subconsciously) conflated with underperforming financial returns (in most public equity examples, albeit the sample size there isn’t huge). Environment, meanwhile, carries more local connotations, too, or, say, specific ecosystem connotations, which makes sense to me insofar as to why it’s easier to get behind. Link.

• In general, and thankfully, the idea that people don’t care about climate change simply isn’t true, as many polls often still show. Half of Americans say they're extremely or very concerned about AI's environmental toll, for instance, and more than three-quarters are at least somewhat concerned, per the annual EPIC/AP-NORC poll (including 65% Democrats and 42% of Republicans). Link.

• On the flip side, less good news: 57% of U.S. voters think renewable boosters oversell how cheap wind and solar have gotten (and I agree, a lot of solar sellers in particular are pretty predatory in terms of the fees they charge on top of actual costs), though fewer than a third think cleaner energy is the reason bills are rising (which it certainly is not). So that one’s still mostly positive. Link.

• Finally, for this email at least, meta-analysis of 71 studies with 216,000+ participants finds that climate messages tapping emotion (awe at nature, fear of losing it) drive action better than facts alone, and that video and images beat text. Lecturing people about personal responsibility barely moved them and sometimes provoked the opposite reaction. Link.

• Expensive fuel is helping to sell more EVs in Europe (and probably elsewhere). Sales rose more than 50% year-over-year last month, and EVs are now nearly a third of the market (in terms of new sales, not the total light-duty fleet, mind you). Some of the same is likely to happen worldwide, especially in markets where Chinese EVs (read as affordable) are sold, considering there’s little insolation from fuel price increases in most markets (or any for that matter). Link.

• China's new five-year plan aims to pump some numbers up. Specificially, it wants "new energy vehicles" to claim 70% of new passenger car sales and 40% of new commercial vehicle sales by 2030. Bloomberg expects the passenger target to be met even earlier. Link.

• The Hyundai Ioniq 5 was the top-selling non-Tesla EV in the U.S. in H1 2026 and won Edmunds' electric SUV test, despite barely changing since 2021. Its 800-volt system can add about 100 miles of range in eight minutes, and after aggressive price cuts it now starts at $35,000. Goes to show, again, sometimes less is more. Link.

• And, how could we ever forget. China's battery giants keep raising the bar. CATL built a pack specifically for big American pickups that U.S. automakers have already tested and could license rather than import, plus a new heavy-truck platform built for megawatt charging. CATL and BYD both plan solid-state trial production in 2027, though mass-market volumes aren't expected before 2030. Link. Link.

• Meanwhile, Geely, another Chinese competitor, unveiled a charger that takes under five minutes. Announced today, the company is also taking a 30% stake in Nio (another Chinese EV company’s) battery-swapping unit. Link. Link.

• Domestically, at least some automanufacturers are doing something. GM rolled out its first EVs with batteries made entirely from recycled critical minerals. Link.

• New York City (my old haunts, though I’m back in office almost once a week now on average) awarded Brooklyn-based it's electric (the company) a $60.2 million contract to grow its curbside charging network from 88 ports to about 700 by 2030, with chargers made in Queens and priority given to neighborhoods where rideshare drivers live. Link.

• Joby's autonomy system flew a converted Cessna Caravan 3,100 miles across the U.S. without a pilot stepping in. Link.

• And if that all wasn’t enough, here’s a Robotaxi roundup: Waymo will launch Japan's first fully driverless commercial taxi service in Tokyo in 2027, and opened to riders in Las Vegas (U.S. city #15). Meanwhile, Tesla now offers driverless Cybercab rides in Austin in a car with no steering wheel or pedals. Federal safety officials are pressing Tesla on federal safety standards, but I see these as normal bumps along the road (sorry, had to); in 5-10 years, robotaxis will be the norm in major metropolitan areas in many countries, which will be great for greenhouse gas emissions reductions and not for tens or hundreds of millions of people who drive for a living. Wayve also launched in London, marking the first ever autonomous taxi rides in the U.K. It’s partnered with Uber and still has safety drivers aboard for now. It has also signed deals with Nissan and Stellantis, and is expected to hire former Waymo CFO Elisa de Martel. Link. Link. Link. Link. Link.

• May Mobility is going public via a SPAC at a $1.4 billion valuation (TBD; as noted elsehwere in this newsletter, these plans sometimes crumble before coming to fruition). Link.

• The U.S. is taking a 10% stake in Trilogy Metals, co-owner of the Ambler Mining District project in Alaska, with the Pentagon pledging to help finance the proposed 211-mile Ambler Road. The Pentagon also struck a $450 million deal with The Elmet Group, including $150 million for Blue Moon Metals' Nevada tungsten mine, and the DOE granted $73 million for next-generation mining projects. Link. Link. Link.

• Trump and Xi's recent talks leaned heavily on rare earths and critical minerals and ended with a two-month trade-truce extension. Analysts expect U.S. dependence on Chinese rare earths to last well into the next decade. Link.

• Google is backing Stegra's green-steel mill in Sweden by buying environmental attribute certificates tied to up to 91,000 metric tons of first-year output, helping cover the premium for hydrogen-based steelmaking without taking any metal. Google's emissions rose 18% from 2024 to 2025 on data center materials. Link.

• Uniper signed one of the biggest-ever offtakes for green hydrogen-based jet fuel. Specifically, the deal is for 40,000 metric tons for at least a decade. Link.

• Cement decarbonization is progressing, albeit slowly: Holcim (big cement company) will use two heat batteries from at one of its plants starting early next year (the goal, at least), which will be the first time thermal storage will supply heat directly for cement calcination. Electrified Thermal Solutions has logged 1,000+ hours of runtime at its first commercial unit in San Antonio (unrelated to Holcim). Link.

• Carbon capture is (even more slowly) scaling up too: Europe's biggest CCS plant opened at Yara's Sluiskil fertilizer site in the Netherlands, which will be able to capture up to 800,000 tons of CO2 a year. Link.

• Climeworks' Mammoth plant in Iceland, the world's largest DAC facility, captured 675 tons of CO2 in H1, offering nearly six times more removal capacity than a year earlier while cutting operating costs by more than half. Regardless of these improvements, orders of mangitude more scale are still required here in coming decades if engineered carbon removal is to offer any future utility at all in global climate response efforts. Link.

• Overall ‘clean’ tech investment is slipping slightly in some areas: Global investment fell 17% in H1 2026 year-over-year, per Rhodium Group and MIT. Power and transport investment also fell from the previous six months as China pulls back on manufacturing to avoid oversupply. China still dominates, though: 57% of announced battery, EV, wind, and solar factory investment since 2019 has come from Chinese companies, according to an Atlas Public Policy and Clean Power Information Project analysis. Link. Link. Link.

• Open Cosmos, based out of Harwell, U.K, raised $405 million from investors including Lightrock, ETF Partners, Institut Català de Finances, and Entrepreneurs First to build satellites and runs communications and Earth-observation constellations. Link.

• Verda, based out of Helsinki, raised ~$189 million in Series B funding from Emergence Capital, 6 Degrees Capital, byFounders, ENDUR, Lifeline Ventures, and others for its cloud service provider business designed specifically for renewable energy. This raise elevated the company to unicorn status. Link.

• Mazama Energy, based out of Frisco, TX, closed a $135 million Series B (including grants), co-led by Centaurus Capital and Doerr Capital to develop superhot-rock geothermal for baseload power. ConocoPhillips, Shell Ventures, SiteGround Capital, H. Barton Asset Management, and the Jeffrey and Marieke Rothschild Foundation, plus returning investors Khosla Ventures and Gates Frontier also invested. Link.

• Rainmaker, based out of El Segundo, CA, raised a $100 million Series B from NOA VC, Upfront Ventures, DCVC, Lowercarbon Capital, and Dream Ventures to seed clouds with drones and silver iodide (or other INPs) and measure the resulting rain and snow with radar and advanced models. More cloud seeding! Link, plus more reading from me here.

• Ultraviolette, based out of Bengaluru, raised $85 million to make high-performance electric motorcycles and EV platforms. Yali Capital and TDK Ventures co-led; Lip-Bu Tan invested. Link.

• Amprius, based out of Fremont, CA, says it has raised “up to $75 million” in Pentagon grant funding to produce high-density cells for unmanned aerial systems. Link.

• Kairos Power, based out of Alameda, CA, raised $70 million in equity from Samsung C&T as part of a deal worth up to $100 million including in-kind engineering services for its high-temperature small modular nuclear reactors cooled by fluoride salt. Link.

• Kanin Energy, based out of Calgary and Houston, raised a $60 million Series A to develop, finance, own, and run on-site plants that turn industrial waste heat into electricity. S2G Investments led and Canada Growth Fund invested. Link.

• Heron Power, founded by ex-Tesla executive Drew Baglino to build next-gen transformers and grid equipment, added a $60 million credit facility from J.P. Morgan and TriplePoint Capital, six months after raising a $140 million Series B. It also brought on former Tesla CFO Zach Kirkhorn onto its board. Link.

• Amber Electric, based out of Melbourne, raised a $56.3 million Series E to time home batteries, rooftop solar, and EV charging to wholesale power prices. Morgan Stanley led; ETF Partners, Innovation Victoria, and E.ON invested. Link.

• Isometric, based out of London, which certifies carbon removal credits and has built significant digital infrastructure and partnered with many established financial institutions, raised $50 million from Intercontinental Exchange. Link.

• Polaris Electro-Optics, based out of Carlsbad, CA, raised a $50 million Series B to develop electro-optic modulators for fast optical data links. Walden Catalyst Ventures led; Socratic Partners, Cambium Capital, Knollwood, and Hudson River Trading, plus returning investors Koch Disruptive Technologies, M Ventures, Rhapsody Venture Partners, Buff Gold Ventures, and Blue Sky Capital, all invested. Link.

• Bluecore Energy, based out of Long Beach, CA, raised a $50 million seed to build small reactors on barges to power ports, data centers, and neighboring towns. Silverton Partners led; Collab Capital and HartBeat Ventures, plus returning investors Slauson & Co, Harlem Capital, and Chris Larsen, all invested. Link.

• Steady Energy, based out of Helsinki, raised €40 million (~$45.6 million) in convertible funding from the European Investment Bank to develop small modular reactors. Link.

• Solcoa Industries, based out of Alameda, CA, raised $45 million in equity to use modular reactors to produce rare earth metals for EVs, robots, and defense. Bain Capital Ventures led; Gigascale Capital, Long Journey, Felicis, and Dylan Field invested. The company also raised $30 million in debt. It plans to use the funds to build Solcoa One, a 500-tonne rare earth metallization plant in Nevada. Link.

• Rune, based out of Mountain View, CA (my hometown!), which builds modular data centers that run AI workloads on otherwise wasted solar power, raised a $40 million Series A, led by Spark Capital. Union Square Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Activate Capital, Committed Capital, Timeless Partners, and Logos Fund all invested. Link.

• Tavion, based out of Stockholm, raised €34 million (~$38.8 million) to develop and operate battery energy storage parks. Leitmotif and Oberon Capital led, with BackingMinds and Course Corrected VC also joining in. Don’t ask me why that’s an equity bet at this point and not coming from another part of the capital stack. Link.

• Wint, based out of New York, raised a $36 million Series D to read a building's water data to flag leaks, waste, and failing equipment early. LIP Ventures and Inven Capital co-led. Link.

• Vaulted Deep, a bio-waste sinking carbon removal company, raised up to $35 million in debt from Italy's Mediobanca to expand across the U.S. This is particularly noteworthy as its a rare bank loan in carbon removal (key word, “bankability,” baby), made possible by existing offtake contracts (that presumably pass banker-level scrutiny). Link.

• ARC Ride (not my employer!), based out of Nairobi, raised $33.3 million to run battery-swapping stations for two- and three-wheelers across sub-Saharan Africa. Novastar Ventures and Norrsken22 co-led; IFC, British International Investment, Proparco, and Mirova, plus returning investors Musashi Seimitsu and Talanton, all invested. Link.

• Branch Energy, based out of Houston, raised a $33 million Series B to install parking-space-sized "grid in a box" batteries at commercial buildings, trimming tenants' bills while selling the stored power into the market. Piva Capital and Clean Energy Ventures co-led; Active Impact Investments and Whitecap Venture Partners, plus returning investors Prelude Ventures, Zero Infinity Partners, and Inovia Capital, all invested. The company plans to expand from Texas into Illinois. Link.

• Planted, based out of Oakland, raised $31.8 million to use field robots and dense, terrain-following solar arrays to build solar-plus-storage faster. Piva Capital and RA Capital Management Planetary Health co-led; Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Gigascale Capital, Google, and Khosla Ventures invested. The company is aiming to get 100 MW up and running in 2026, up from the 10 MW+ it had last year, with a 20 GW+ pipeline currently in place. That’s a lot of ground to cover in Q4 😉 Link.

• Nomos, based out of Berlin, raised $23.1 million (€20 million) to allow home energy installers and manufacturers to sell their own branded electricity plans while it handles procurement, metering, balancing, and billing. Index Ventures led; Markus Villig, Daniel Dines, and Tomas Okmanas invested. Link.

• Mojave Energy Systems, based out of Sunnyvale, CA, raised a $19 million Series B to make commercial air conditioners that use liquid desiccants to control humidity and temperature separately. Fairtree Elevant Ventures led; River Bay Investments, Cleo Capital, and MetaTrail invested, as did returning investors At One Ventures, Fifth Wall, Myriad Venture Partners, and Starshot Capital. Link.

• iGii, based out of Stirling, Scotland, raised a £12 million (~$15.8 million) Series B to develop carbon nanomaterials for advanced manufacturing and energy storage applications. The Scottish National Investment Bank led; PXN Ventures, Archangels, and Scottish Enterprise invested. Link.

• R3 Lithium, based out of Covington, GA, raised a $15 million Series A from TDK Ventures, Integral GlobalTech Partners, and Axial Partners to recover lithium carbonate from recycled battery materials. Link.

• 011h, based out of Barcelona, raised up to €12 million (~$13.7 million) from Axis to make industrialized building systems for more efficient construction. Link.

• StandardX, a U.K. deep-tech startup building what it calls the world's first scalable isotope refinery, aimed first at cancer care and later fusion-for-energy-purposes, raised a £10 million (~$13.2 million) seed. Vsquared Ventures and East X Ventures led; firstminute capital, UKI2S, Brevan Howard Macro Venture, and Geometry invested. Link.

• CorePower Magnetics, based out of Pittsburgh, raised $10.6 million in equity, co-led by Engine Ventures and Material Impact, to use heat-tolerant nanocrystalline magnetic alloys to make smaller, more efficient inductors and transformers for data centers, the grid, and industrial applications. Evergreen Climate Innovations, Carnegie Mellon Catalyst Fund, and Baruch Future Ventures invested. Link.

• Cura Climate, based out of Calgary, raised $10 million in equity funding led by Zacua Ventures to electrify cement's core chemical step with electrochemical technology that works with existing cement and lime plants. Sandpiper Ventures, Amplify Capital, and Vantage Futures invested. Link.

• Rebaba, based out of Stockholm, raised a $4.6 million seed to turn retired EV batteries into stationary storage for homes, businesses, and industry. Sistafund led with EIT Urban Mobility participating. Link.

• Fryte Mobility, based out of Munich, raised a $4.1 million seed to match e-truck routes with charging operators, letting dispatchers lock in charging windows at public and private chargers. 4impact capital and Rethink Ventures co-led; Revent, F-LOG, and accilium ventures invested. Link.

• Veridue, based out of London, raised a $4 million pre-seed to help buyers, lenders, and insurers vet renewable energy and data center deals during due diligence. Episode 1 Ventures led. High-Tech Gründerfonds and Pi Labs invested. Link.

• Furo, based out of Munich, raised €3.44 million (~$3.9 million) to build an intelligent operating system to optimize and automate commercial and industrial battery storage systems. TQ Ventures led; Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, Neo, and CDTM Venture Capital invested. Link.

• Fusionality, based out of Lausanne, Switzerland, raised a $3.7 million pre-seed from investors including Founderful and Playfair to make off-the-shelf control software and simulators for fusion startups running magnetic-confinement reactors. Link.

• Depotcharge, based out of Munich, raised a ~$3.1 million pre-seed to connect idle e-truck chargers at logistics depots with fleets that need more places to charge. High-Tech Gründerfonds led; xdeck Ventures, Kopa Ventures, and Prequel Ventures invested. Link.

• Nigeria's sovereign wealth fund has a new $300 million clean energy vehicle aimed at scaling off-grid power. Link.

• Wittington Ventures, based out of Toronto, raised $130 million for its third fund (50% bigger than its 2022 fund) to back roughly 15 Series A and B companies across climate, commerce, consumer, healthcare, and food tech. Link.

• Clean Growth Fund, based out of London, raised £81.5 million (~$107.6 million) in the second close of its Fund II, more than halfway to its £150 million (~$198 million) target, to invest in seed and Series A climate tech companies. Link.

• Energy Revolution Ventures, based out of London, held a first close on its second fund, which targets $50 million for seed and Series A rounds in energy storage, grid tech, and advanced materials. Centrica anchored with $13.5 million. Link.

• Resilient Systems Capital, a spinoff of Climate Capital (where I work!), closed a $4 million debut fund, mostly backed by AngelList LPs, to write $100,000 first checks in climate tech companies. We plan to back 30–35 mostly pre-seed and seed startups in low-carbon energy, adaptation, and infrastructure AI; about half the fund is already deployed, FYI. Link. I’ll have more to say about this in these pages as well soon (which has already been penned and printed here).

• The Wallace Global Fund, which divested its entire endowment from fossil fuels back in 2010 and still posted top-decile returns for more than a decade, is now accelerating plans to spend that endowment down to zero. It's calling on other foundations to pay out more and stop holding shares in the companies their grantees are fighting. "If you own fossil fuels, you own climate change," says executive director Ellen Dorsey. Link.

• The OpenAI Foundation is committing $60 million across six organizations to put AI-powered weather and crop-disease forecasts in the hands of 100 million smallholder farmers across South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Africa over three years. Link.

• Renaissance Philanthropy and Conservation X Labs launched a fund at Climate Week aiming to raise $100 million for wildfire detection and response in South America, anchored by $30 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and $5 million from Packard. It arrives mid-fire season, with smoke pushing Manaus air into unhealthy territory. A new UN report shows tropical forest protection is still short by billions, and this fund leaves out Africa and Southeast Asia. Link. P.S., while this is where I work and I know the team behind this Fund well and speak to them often, I didn’t work on this one.

• Renaissance Philanthropy launched Aggregate, a five-year fund to turn low-carbon cement and concrete from proven tech into real, scaled markets, anchored by $10.2 million from Builders Vision Philanthropy and led by Trisha Miller. Cement is the fourth-largest source of CO2 on Earth after China, the U.S., and India, yet heavy industry gets only about 2.6% of climate foundation dollars. Happy to have helped with this one! Link.

++ CTA: If you know potential and/or existing philanthropic funders looking for underserved, high-leverage climate programs to fund ($100k to $10M), hit me up!

Appreciate you being here. For some more good reads on the climate beat see here, here, here, and here. If you’d like good reads otherwise, I got you covered here and here.

— Nick