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BFD Expert Voices - Climate Deals

BFD Expert Voices

Fusion startups continue to attract major investment from some of the biggest names in climate and tech, Katie writes.

Why it matters: Commercial fusion energy would be the clean energy game changer of the century.

Driving the news: Fusion startup Xcimer Energy has raised a $100 million Series A round to build a prototype of its laser-driven fusion system.

The round was led by London-based tech investor Hedosophia, which has been active in architecting SPACs over the past couple of years.

The funding also included a who's-who of climate tech VCs: Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Prelude Ventures, Emerson Collective, Gigascale Capital and Starlight Ventures.

Xcimer co-founder and CTO Alexander Valys said the funding would be spent on engineering and hardware to build out a 100-foot-long, 60,000-square-foot laser prototype system that would "fill most of the inside of a warehouse in Denver."

Catch up quick: Xcimer is developing a type of nuclear fusion tech called laser-driven inertial fusion, which uses a high-powered laser to compress nuclear fuel and kick off the fusion reaction.

Inertial fusion is an alternative, arguably overlooked approach to fusion. Many of the companies developing fusion systems use magnets to confine fusion plasma using designs like the tokamak.

Xcimer's co-founders, who were roommates at MIT, say the laser-driven inertial fusion systems can be simpler to design and have lower development and operating costs compared with the magnet-based fusion systems.

In late 2022, California's National Ignition Facility achieved fusion ignition and breakeven using a laser-based inertial fusion design.

The big picture: Researchers have been working on fusion tech for many decades, and it's not yet commercialized.

Yet the NIF breakthrough emerged at a time when there's also an insatiable demand for clean electricity driven by the combination of onshoring, the growth of EVs, and AI data centers.

Companies like Microsoft and Nucor have even done deals to buy electricity from future fusion plants built by startup Helion.

AI startup OpenAI is also reportedly in talks to do a deal with Helion.

What's next: Xcimer will eventually need to build the world's highest energy laser to build its planned commercial fusion reactor.

Xcimer says it has a goal to produce up to 10 times higher laser energy at 10 times higher efficiency and over 30 times lower cost per joule than the NIF project.

1 big thing: Laser-driven fusion

Illustration of an atom with a coin as the nucleus. 

An accelerator program is backing an overlooked and inefficient segment of food in New York state: the cold chain, the group tells Katie.

Why it's the BFD: Transporting, storing and selling food has a sprawling carbon footprint across everything from chiller trucks to warehouses to grocery stores.

Driving the news: The nonprofit The Clean Fight just unveiled seven startups in its latest, fourth accelerator program, which is focused on the cold chain.

The companies are selling technology such as an urban geothermal system, cold chain software, and cleaner and more efficient ways to purify air in food storage spaces.

The companies get access to $125,000, connections to retail customers like Albertsons and Walmart, and mentorship on how to navigate the New York market.

The New York cold chain market is huge and complex, but "if you can crack the New York market, it's a model that others can follow," says Kate Frucher, The Clean Fight managing director.

Zoom in: The program is funded by groups like the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency (NYSERDA) and the Department of Energy.

The companies include: air purifier Air Water Global, geothermal startup Bedrock Energy, cooling company Blue Frontier, heat pump and chiller startup Energy Machines, fleet management company Flipturn, HVAC software startup Glacier Grid, and cold chain software developer Ndustrial.

The big picture: Food waste is a massive problem in the U.S. It's a major source of carbon emissions as well as lost value.

2. The BFD: Off the cold chain

Illustration of HVAC fan blades overlaid with money.

🥵 The chief heat officer playbook: As record-breaking heat becomes commonplace, city chief heat officers are developing playbooks to help their communities adapt to rising temperatures.

Bloomberg talked to five of them from regions like Miami-Dade County, Melbourne and Athens.

🟥 Data center red tape: The top trade association for investor-owned utilities, the Edison Electric Institute, is expected to tell lawmakers today that red tape is thwarting development needed to serve data centers, reports Ben Geman in Axios Generate.

There's a House hearing today on power demand growth.

EEI's Phil Dion plans to argue that litigation under several environmental laws winds up slowing "clean" energy.

🌋 Hot pipes: Utility Eversource plans to flip the switch today on the country's first utility-operated underground thermal energy network, reports Canary Media.

The one-mile loop of pipes — which connects to houses, commercial buildings, and a fire station — will circulate a water-and-glycol solution through 88 boreholes that extend hundreds of feet into the earth, and bring the warm liquid up to heat the buildings.

3. Temperature check

a box of matches that pictures a small outline of the earth and text that reads "Temperature Check"

• Ulu Ventures, a Palo Alto, Calif., seed-stage VC firm, has raised ~$190.8m toward a targeted $200m, per an SEC filing. axios.link/4aJt6el

• Volta Energy Technologies, a Naperville, Ill., VC firm targeting energy storage startups, raised $131.3m toward a targeted $500m, per an SEC filing. axios.link/3V5Gt2F

• TIFF Investment Management in Radnor, Pa., raised $121.5m for a Sustainable Equity Fund, per an SEC filing. axios.link/4aMkq77

• Samara, a Spanish solar panel installation startup, raised €9m in Series A funding co-led by Green Generation Fund and Move Energy and joined by Ring Capital, Athletico Ventures, Seaya, and Pelion Green Future. axios.link/4c5pvbD

• Sol Systems raised $85m in debt from Macquarie Asset Management to build five utility-scale solar projects in Illinois and Ohio. axios.link/3Xa4IQ6

• Joby Aviation, an eVTOL company based in Santa Cruz, Calif., has acquired the autonomy division of Xwing. axios.link/3VsvMIU

• Zum, the bus management company based in Redwood City, Calif., has been awarded $32m from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Clean School Bus Program. ridezum.com/

4. Hot deals

• Tom Williams will become executive vice president and chief marketing officer for BNSF Railway Company. Williams was previously group vice president, Consumer Products for BNSF. axios.link/4aP5tBl

5. It's personnel

Happy first Tuesday of June. We've got a laser-focused edition for you, starting with a nod in our subject line to villainous Dr. Evil. But before we get to that...

❓ Tuesday trivia: In what city did scientists with the National Ignition Facility achieve first fusion ignition and breakeven? 

Previous answer: Europe's original sustainability-focused VC firm ETF was founded in 2006.

🥳 Katie is ecstatic that the drive-your-kid-to-school commute ends today thanks to a new school starting in the fall.

Thank you to Michael Flaherty and Chris Speckhard for today's edits.

And thank you for reading Climate Deals! Please share with your friends, family and fusion fanatics.

June 04, 2024

1 big thing: Laser-driven fusion