Biotech startup ZymoChem announced today that it has raised $21 million, with proceeds from the Series A funding round, in addition to funding from the U.S. Department of Energy and existing revenues, to be used to launch its first high-performance material and advance its first partnered product to commercial scale.

Founded in 2013, California-based ZymoChem uses microbes to convert renewable feedstocks into high-value, biodegradable polymers with a near-zero CO2 emissions footprint. According to the company, the process produces materials with a cost advantage over petroleum-based products, and at higher yields than current biomanufacturing.

Harshal Chokhawala, Co-Founder and CEO of ZymoChem said:

“We’re upending the materials industry. Our technology delivers sustainability without compromising performance, scale, and importantly economics. This unlock already catalyzed multiple partnerships with world-leading companies and we’re thrilled to expand our impact with our key stakeholders.”

The funding round was led by bioscience-focused venture investor Breakout Ventures with participation from new investors including lululemon athletica and Toyota Ventures, as well as existing investors including GS Futures, KdT Ventures, and Cavallo Ventures.

Lindy Fishburne, Managing Partner at Breakout said:

“ZymoChem has the most compelling technology we’ve seen to scale bio-based chemicals and materials while remaining cost competitive with petroleum-derived products.”

EU banking supervisor The European Banking Authority (EBA) announced the launch of a consultation on new proposed guidelines, setting out requirements for banks to identify, measure, manage and monitor ESG risks, including setting plans to address risks arising from the EU’s transition to a climate-neutral economy.

Requirements for banks under the proposed guidelines would include undertaking regular materiality assessments of ESG risks, ensuring the ability to identify risks through data processes and methodologies including exposure-based, portfolio-based and scenario-based approaches, and the integration of ESG risks in their regular risk management frameworks, with considerations of impact across risk categories including credit, market, operational, reputational, liquidity, business model, and concentration risks, across short-, medium-, and long-term time horizons.

The guidelines would also require institutions to develop Capital Requirement Directive-based (CRD) transition plans addressing risks arising from the climate transition and financial risks stemming from ESG factors and regulatory objectives.

According to the EBA, the new guidelines were developed in line with the regulator’s roadmap on sustainable finance. Launched in late 2022, the roadmap sets out the EBA’s priorities and plans in the areas of sustainable finance and in supporting and monitoring the integration of ESG risk considerations in the banking framework, through key objectives that include risk management and supervision, treatment of exposures, and ESG risk and sustainable finance monitoring.

Explaining the rationale behind the new guidelines, the EBA noted that despite actions taken over the past few years to manage the impacts of ESG factors, “several shortcomings have been observed in the inclusion of ESG risks in business strategies and risk management frameworks,” which the regulator said could “pose challenges to the safety and soundness of institutions as the EU transitions towards a more sustainable economy and ESG risks become increasingly substantiated or materialize.”

The guidelines also note a different approach relative to other sustainability-focused regulation such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the proposed Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which focus on the compatibility of business models with the EU’s climate and sustainability objectives, while the EBA’s proposals focus instead on ensuring ESG risks are assessed and embedded in strategies and policies, rather than requiring banks to align with specific sustainability goals or transition pathways.

While specifying that the goal of setting up prudential plans “is not to force institutions to exit or divest from carbon intensive sectors,” the guidelines do aim to “stimulate institutions to proactively reflect on technological, business and behavioral changes driven by the sustainable transition,” including focusing on the related risks and opportunities, transition planning and engagement.

Click here to access the draft guidelines. The EBA consultation is scheduled to run until April 18.

Element Zero, a green materials platform company, announced today that it has raised $10 million in seed funding, with proceeds to be used to scale up its platform aimed at decarbonizing iron and other critical metals production.

Founded in 2022, Element Zero offers a cost effective and efficient platform for the conversion of iron ore and other metals into their pure metal form with zero carbon emissions, using a non-aqueous electrochemical process to process the full spectrum of iron ores at a lower temperature that can run on intermittent renewables like wind, solar, and hydropower. The company said that it uses 30-40% less energy per ton of iron than coal and gas-based processes, without the CO2. Steelmaking is one of the biggest emitters of CO2 globally, and one of the more challenging sectors to abate, with total greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from the sector accounting for 7% – 9% of direct emissions from the global use of fossil fuels.

Based in Perth and the north of Western Australia, adjacent to ports responsible for nearly 55% of the world’s seaborne iron ore supply, Element Zero plans to develop five million tons per year of iron ore feed, producing around 2.7 million tons of high purity iron.

The company said that it will use the new funding to grow its R&D engineering, and project development teams and scale the development of a pilot iron plant.

Michael Masterman, Founder and CEO of Element Zero said:

“Our processing platform will, for the first time, allow cost-effective and scalable production of carbon-free metals crucial to the iron and steel and critical metals industries. We are excited to have Playground Global join our journey to tackle the decarbonization of hard-to-abate sectors. Support from Playground Global goes way beyond financial investment, and we are already in deep discussions about developing green iron and green silicon value chains in the U.S. We are also working with major iron ore miners and iron and steel companies globally.”

The funding round was led by early-stage venture capital firm Playground Global. Peter Barrett, Co-Founder and General Partner at Playground Global, has joined the company’s board of directors.

Barrett said:

“Element Zero will help transform Western Australia from the world’s mine into the world’s foundry, dramatically reducing carbon emissions in the process. Australia is poised to become a leader in resilient and sustainable global prosperity – its natural wealth in minerals and renewable energy blended with innovation in electrochemistry and new materials will cement its leadership in the energy transformation. Element Zero is a major catalyst in this shift and the Pilbara region in the north of Western Australia stands as the premier location globally to showcase the company’s potential.”

Supply chain traceability platform TrusTrace, announced today that it has raised $24 million through a growth investment led by circular economy-focused investor Circularity Capital.

Founded in 2016, Stockholm, Sweden-based TrusTrace offers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for supply chain traceability and compliance, enabling brands and suppliers to standardize how supply chain and material traceability data is captured, digitized, and shared. With a focus on the fashion industry, the platform helps apparel manufacturers comply with sustainability commitments by tracking and verifying the source and journey of textiles used in manufacture. The data can be used for risk management, compliance, product claims and footprint calculations.

TrusTrace customers include some of the largest global apparel, footwear and luxury brands, including adidas, Brooks Running, Tapestry, and Asics.

The fundraising comes as the fashion industry is under increased scrutiny by regulators, environmental groups and consumers for human rights violations, unsustainable manufacturing processes and waste. For example, in 2023, the European Commission unveiled new proposed rules aimed at supporting the sustainable management of textile waste, and placing responsibility for the full lifecycle of textile products in the hands of producers.

Shameek Ghosh, CEO and Co-Founder of TrusTrace said:

“A growing number of fashion and textile brands are adopting supply chain traceability to support their sustainability goals and ensure competitiveness in the face of mounting regulatory and consumer pressure. The completion of this growth investment is further evidence that businesses see traceability as critical to achieving their sustainability goals.”

According to TrusTrace, proceeds from the new investment will be used to accelerate the company’s global expansion by expanding its presence in key markets, deepening product innovation, and expanding collaborations.

In addition to Circularity Capital, the growth investment included participation from existing investors Industrifonden and Fairpoint Capital.

Anders Brejner, Investment Director at Circularity Capital, said:

“We see a growing number of global fashion brands looking to transition away from today’s linear ‘take-make-dispose’ model of production and consumption to one that is more sustainable and equitable. We believe this is only possible at scale with the right digital backbone to provide transparency and traceability across complex global supply chains.”

Private markets ESG-focused data solutions provider Novata announced today the launch of a new solution, Novata Carbon Navigator, aimed at enabling users to track, measure and report carbon data.

According to Novata, the new solution was developed to address organizations’ needs to monitor and reduce their carbon footprint and meet disclosure requirements, as businesses face increasing transparency and sustainability demands.

Mark Fischel, Carbon Product Lead at Novata said:

“The Novata Carbon Navigator will radically improve the carbon experience for investors and their portfolio companies. Our clients have expressed the need for a simplified carbon solution and the Carbon Navigator, which is both fast and easy to use, meets this demand.”

Key features of the new solution include quick calculation of Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions in Novata’s ESG platform, simplified tracking of company emissions activities such as energy use and facilities, calculation of emissions from the supply chain by uploading expenses and categorizing vendors, and a shareable audit trail for emissions reporting and meeting regulatory requirements.

Novata is a public benefit corporation founded in 2021 by a consortium including S&P Global, the Ford Foundation, asset management firm Hamilton Lane, and social change-focused investment firm Omidyar Network, and supported and advised by several leading private equity firms and pension funds, to provide private markets investors with a solution for ESG measurement, data collection and benchmarking, and enable reporting on ESG data.

Lauren Peat, Chief Revenue Officer at Novata, said:

“With the Novata Carbon Navigator and our expert ESG Services team, we are now the one-stop solution for data collection and management so our clients can make progress on their sustainability goals.”

Amazon announced that it invested in more than 100 new solar and wind energy projects in 2023, claiming the title of largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy for the fourth consecutive year, and bringing the company’s pipeline of clean energy capacity to greater than 77,000 GWh per year, roughly equivalent to the power needs of 7.2 million homes.

According to Amazon, the new projects will move the company closer to its expectation to have 100% of the electricity powering its operations be attributable to renewable energy sources by 2025, ahead of its original 2030 target. The company said that more than 90% of its operations were powered by renewables in 2023.

Over the past year, Amazon has expanded its renewables portfolio into 27 countries and more than 20 U.S. states, with new projects in Arkansas, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Virginia as well as Canada and Brazil. The company’s 2023 European renewable energy investments include projects in nine countries, with 15 rooftop solar installations on Amazon facilities across Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, and the UK, and 24 utility-scale wind and solar projects in Finland, Germany, Greece, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

The company also added 13 projects in the Asia Pacific region over 2023, including eight utility-scale wind and solar projects and its first in South Korea. In China, Amazon announced two new wind farms; Amazon Wind Farm China–Daqing, which began operating in March, and Amazon Wind Farm China–Bobai.

Overall, Amazon said that it now has more than 500 wind and solar projects globally.

Adam Selipsky, CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS) said:

“Amazon’s investments in solar and wind projects are helping power our operations, while also providing new sources of clean energy to the grid, spurring economic growth, and supporting jobs in the communities where our customers live and work.”

Lawmakers in the European Parliament and Council announced today that they have reached a provisional agreement on proposed new rules to strengthen emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles, including a requirement for a 90% emissions reduction for heavy trucks by 2040.

Additional interim requirements covered by the agreed standard include 45% emissions reductions from 2030, and 65% from 2035.

The agreement follows an initial proposal by the European Commission in February 2023 for a revision of the CO2 emissions standards for heavy duty vehicles (HDVs). Trucks and buses account for over 6% of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the EU, and more than 25% of GHG emissions from road transport.

Among the most significant revisions in the new agreement to the Commission’s initial proposal include an expansion of the scope of the regulation aimed at making nearly all HDVs subject to emissions reduction targets, including smaller trucks, urban buses, coaches and trailers, while allowing exemptions such as small-volume manufacturers and vehicles used for mining, forestry and agriculture, and vehicles for use by the armed forces, fire services, or in civil protection, public order and medical care. Additionally, the agreement extends the scope of the regulation to vocational vehicles such as garbage trucks or concrete mixers from 2035, while also introducing a 2035 100% zero emissions target for urban buses, with an intermediate 90% 2030 goal.

The agreement also includes a requirement for the Commission to review the effectiveness and impact of the amended regulation in 2027, including evaluating the possibility of developing a common methodology for the assessment and reporting of the full lifecycle CO2 emissions of new HDVs, studying the potential role of introducing a carbon correction factor (CCF) to enable the inclusion of renewable fuels and carbon neutral e-fuels in the fleet transition mix, and assessing the role of a methodology for registering HDVs exclusively running on CO2-neutral fuels.

With the provisional agreement reached, the new regulation will need to be endorsed by member states’ representatives on the Council and by Parliament’s environment committee, and then formally adopted by the Parliament and Council before entering into force.

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) announced a commitment by 320 companies and financial institutions to start nature-related corporate reporting, based on the recently released TNFD recommendations, with some to begin disclosures with their annual corporate reporting for 2023.

The commitments, announced at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, marks a significant move towards the establishment of standardized reporting on nature-related governance, strategy, risk management and targets, with companies signing on representing $4 trillion in market capitalization, and also including more than 100 financial institutions across banks and insurers as well as asset owners and managers representing $14 trillion.

Each of the companies have pledged to begin providing TNFD-aligned disclosures as part of their annual corporate reporting for either the 2023, 2024 or 2025 fisal years.

Asset managers joining the commitment included Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), the investment manager for Norway’s $1.4 trillion oil fund.

Carine Smith Ihenacho, Chief Governance & Compliance Officer of NBIM, said:

“Addressing nature-related financial risks has been a longstanding priority on our ownership agenda at Norges Bank Investment Management. As active contributors to the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), we are committed to leveraging this tool to deepen our understanding of our portfolio’s nature-related impacts and dependencies, further reinforcing our responsible investment efforts in this important area.”

The commitments follow the publication in September by the TNFD of its final recommendations for nature-related risk management and disclosure, following a a two-year process, beginning with the formation of the TNFD in June 2021, building on the success of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).

The TNFD’s recommendations are anticipated to be used to help shape the development of future sustainability disclosure standards. The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) of the IFRS Foundation, for example, which recently launched its landmark sustainability and climate reporting standards, has already announced that the TNFD recommendations will inform its future standard setting, and environmental disclosure platform CDP stated that it plans to align its global disclosure platform with the TNFD framework.

Calling the commitments a “milestone moment for Nature finance and for corporate reporting,” David Craig, Co-Chair of the TNFD and former founder and CEO of Refinitiv, said:

“As climate-related sustainability reporting goes mainstream through the new International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) standards and regulation in a growing number of countries, this is a clear signal that investors, lenders, insurers and companies are recognizing that their business models and portfolios are highly dependent on both nature and climate and need to be treated as both strategic risks and investment opportunities.”

Lawmakers in the European Parliament voted 593-21 on Wednesday to adopt a new anti-greenwashing law banning a series of commercial practices, including the use of unproven generic product claims such as “environmentally friendly,” or “climate neutral,” or marketing a product as having a reduced environmental impact based on the use of emissions offsetting schemes.

The agreement follows the release in March 2022 by the EU Commission of a set of proposals to amend the EU’s existing rules aimed at protecting consumers from unfair commercial practices such as untruthful or aggressive advertising and providing consumers with information on products, to include considerations relating to the green transition. A recent study by the Commission found that more than half of green claims by companies in the EU were vague or misleading, and 40% were completely unsubstantiated.

Key aspects of the new law include rules aimed at making product labels clearer by banning the use of generic environmental claims not backed up with proof, and the regulation of sustainability labels to allow only the use of those based on official certification schemes or established by public authorities. The law will also ban the use of claims based on offsetting schemes that indicate that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive impact on the environment.

The new law also includes rules focused on product durability, requiring guarantee information on products to be more visible, and mandating the creation of a harmonized label to give more prominence to goods with an extended guarantee period, as well as banning unfounded durability claims, prompts to replace consumables earlier than strictly necessary, or presenting goods as repairable when they are not.

The new legislation must now be approved by the EU Council, which reached a provisional agreement in September with Parliament on the proposals, before passing into law. Once published in the EU’s Official Journal, member states will have 2 years to integrate the rules into national law.

In addition to the new law, the EU Commission has also proposed a “Directive on Green Claims,” to protect consumers from greenwashing, aimed at establishing a new set of rules requiring companies to substantiate and verify their environmental claims and labels.

Following the MEP’s vote, Parliament’s rapporteur Biljana Borzan said:

“This law will change the everyday lives of all Europeans! We will step away from throwaway culture, make marketing more transparent and fight premature obsolescence of goods. People will be able to choose products that are more durable, repairable and sustainable thanks to reliable labels and advertisements. Most importantly, companies can no longer trick people by saying that plastic bottles are good because the company planted trees somewhere – or say that something is sustainable without explaining how. This is a big win for all of us!”

Clean fuels startup INERATEC announced today that it has raised over $129 million in its Series B funding round with proceeds to be used to scale production of the company’s sustainable e-fuels, aimed at decarbonizing hard-to-abate industries.

Founded in 2016, Karlsruhe, Germany-based INERATEC produces sustainable e-Fuels and synthetic chemicals to replace fossil crude oil. The company builds modular chemical plants for “Power-to-X” Power-to-X and gas-to-liquid applications, which use hydrogen from renewable electricity and greenhouse gases such as CO2 to produce fuels and chemicals including e-kerosene, CO2-neutral gasoline, clean diesel or synthetic waxes, methanol or SNG.

According to INERATEC, the financing comes as demand for drop-in e-Fuels is expected to increase rapidly over the next several years, as sectors that rely heavily on fossil fuels, such as aviation, shipping, road transport and chemicals, seek renewable alternatives to achieve their climate goals. INERATEC produces a drop-in e-Fuel, a synthetic fuel that releases no CO2, and can be used in place of fossil fuels.

The company said that the new capital will be used to start mass production of its industrial-scale Power-to-X plants worldwide. INERATEC has also begun construction of its largest plant to date in Frankfurt and is expanding through international projects in the Netherlands and Chile, with the expansion expected to yield a 1,500 x increase in production, recycling over 12,000,000 metric tons of CO2 annually.

INERATEC CEO Tim Boeltken said:

“This financing round is a major milestone for INERATEC as well as the transition from fossil fuels to sustainable e-Fuels. With the new capital, we are positioned to catalyze a paradigm shift in the energy sector. Our focus is to scale-up e-Fuels enabled by this new investment. By transforming 1GW of renewable energy into 125 million gallons of sustainable e-Fuel by 2030, we are taking solid steps in creating a viable alternative to fossil fuels.”

The round was led by San Francisco-based venture investor Piva Capital with participation from investors including Planet A Ventures, MPC, High-Tech Gründerfonds, FO Holding, Safran Corporate Ventures, Honda, ENGIE New Ventures, HG Ventures, TDK Ventures, Copec WIND Ventures, RockCreek, Emerald, and Samsung Ventures.

Adzmel Adznan, Co-founding Partner at Piva Capital said:

“INERATEC’s pioneering technology is the most promising e-Fuel solution we’ve seen to date in addressing the hardest-to-decarbonize sectors such as aviation, shipping, and chemicals. The company is doing more than just creating e-Fuels; their proprietary reactors are more efficient and scalable, re-imagining how industry can transform waste CO2, green electrons and hydrogen to meet various needs, from fuel to power cars, planes, and ships to green chemicals for our everyday consumptions. We believe that INERATEC has the winning solution to transform industries and help the world meet its collective goal to transition away from fossil fuels for energy.”