Sustainable Technology Companies to Watch

Below, I have picked five of the top trending sustainable technology startups to watch in 2020. If you want to learn more about the United Nations Sustainability Goals and technology companies that are addressing the SDGs, take a look at another post here on that topic.

The companies I have chosen below are young start-ups focusing on a variety of different sustainable technology areas.

MycoWorks

Mycoworks key facts:

• San Francisco
• Less than 10
• 1 round, $17M
• mycoworks.com

Location Team size Funding round(s) Website

There is much debate about the impact that farming animals has on the planet, as I cover in another article about robotic roof-top farms, here.

MycoWorks have created a new material that they hope will be a viable and sustainable alternative to leather, for us in all sorts of applications from fashion to automotive.

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Spark

Spark key facts:

• London
• Less than 10
• 3 rounds, $3.7M
• sparkchange.io

As covered in this article, if you can influence where and how the money flows, you can influence which companies get the opportunity to impact the planet; positively or negatively.

Spark looks to have a positive influence on the planet, by giving investors information about how sustainable businesses are using something called an “ESG” which stands for “Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance”.

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Lilac Solution

Lilac Solutions key facts:

• Rhode Island, USA
• Less than 10
• 4 rounds, $23.6M
• lilacsolutions.com

Lithium is a precious resource and crucial to power the global growth of electric vehicles. In the next decade demand for lithium is expected to quadruple. Even more, to convert the entire global vehicle fleet to electric would need the lithium extraction to increase thirty-fold.

Lilac are developing a new process to increase the speed and efficiency of extracting lithium from the planet. A process that typically takes years can now take hours, whilst doubling the yield of usable material.

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Bloom

Bloom key facts:

• Fribourg, Switzerland
• Less than 10
• 14 rounds, $1.5M
• bloombiorenewables.com

Finding alternatives to fossil fuels that require little modification to legacy infratsutrure and systems, is a much challenged prize. This small company in Switzerland seems to have found a way to efficiently convert biomass into viable fossil fuel alternatives.

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i4see

Bloom key facts:

• Steiermark, Austria
• Less than 10
• i4see.tech

Whilst significant improvements have been made to the efficiencies of renewable energies, there is still quite some way to go. For most renewable energies which have lower energy efficiencies than their fossil fuel counterparts, true efficiency comes with scale. With scale comes complexity and cost, and when things unexpectedly stop working the loss in productivity multiplies with the cost of fixing, causing any gains in efficiency to be marginalised.

i4see is focusing on helping owners and operators of wind farms get a grip on these lost efficiencies, by helping them easily predict when maintenance is required, therefore ensuring output whilst minimising risk.