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Dear Friends of Greentown,

One of the biggest ways we support our members is by helping them connect and engage with corporates. Why is this so important to early-stage climatetech companies? It’s simple: most climatetech startups are B2B, meaning that they typically sell to a corporate or through a corporate.

Yet these partnerships are challenging to form. Even if an entrepreneur gets connected with the right person at a corporate—which in and of itself is no small feat—differences in timescales, communication styles, and working cultures between startups and corporates can prevent mutually beneficial relationships from developing.

This spring at Greentown, we’ve had the chance to celebrate the magic that happens when relationships between entrepreneurs and industry leaders flourish. The Greentown Go Healthy Buildings Challenge—the 2022 program in the Go Build track, with Saint-Gobain and supported by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center—saw pilot projects, a demonstration, and more to advance the startup participants’ commercialization. Greentown Go also announced seven startup participants for Go Energize 2022 (the Low-Carbon Hydrogen Accelerator, in partnership with EPRI, Shell, the City of Houston, and the Urban Future Lab at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering) and opened applications for Go Make 2022, a program with Mitsubishi Corporation (Americas) and supported by the M-Lab Companies that’s focused on supply-chain decarbonization.

It’s been just as exciting a time for our Incubator Partnerships Program. Our partner Carrier recently invested in our member OhmConnect—one of the first investments made via its new CVC—and our partner Silicon Valley Bank invested in our startup SparkCharge’s $23M Series A. And earlier this month, we announced Saber Equity as our newest Terawatt Partner.

We’re thrilled to see these startups growing and scaling their climate technologies in collaboration with corporates capable of unlocking commercialization pathways. If you’d like to dive even deeper into startup-corporate partnerships, join us at the Carbon to Value Initiative Year 2 Kickoff Event on June 8 in Houston!

As always, please don't hesitate to reach out if you want to get involved with or support our community. Thank you for your commitment to climate action!

Warmly,
The Greentown Labs Team

Member Milestones

What does climate action look like? Climatetech startups receiving funding, winning awards, deploying their tech around the world, and more! Read a roundup of our members’ recent milestones here and check out some highlights below:

Criterion Energy Partners, CF Technologies, Cemvita Factory, MicroEra Power, Littoral Power Systems, and Massachusetts Materials Technologies received SBIR and STTR grants from the Department of Energy.
CalWave is collaborating with Launch Alaska to facilitate wave energy projects in Alaska.
Bold Ideas 2020 participant Salient Energy announced a partnership with Horton World Solutions (HWS), where HWS will host the first in-field demonstration of Salient’s zinc-ion storage system and qualify the system for installation in its planned construction of over 200,000 homes.
Cemvita Factory was selected for the AWS Clean Energy Accelerator 2.0.
Folia, OffGridBox, Micronic Technologies, Katz Water Technologies, and Onvector were named among the 101 most innovative water purification companies in the U.S. by Futurology.

Mark Your Calendars for These Upcoming Events!

June 9: Celebrating Leadership in Offshore Wind Energy [Greentown HQ]
We’re hosting a celebration of leadership in offshore wind energy on June 9! Join us for remarks from Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, Minister-President Jan Jambon of Flanders, and our partner Vineyard Wind’s CEO Klaus Moeller; a signing ceremony witnessed by Her Royal Highness Princess Astrid of Belgium; a panel debate; and more.

June 16: Transition On Tap: Atlantic Council Veterans Advanced Energy Project [Greentown Houston]
Our June Transition On Tap is in partnership with the Veterans Advancing Energy Project. The event will include a panel—titled “The Energy Transition: Our Next Tour of Duty”—and an evening of networking.

July 14: Investor Speaker Series: Both Sides of the Coin [virtual]
In the next installment of our Investor Speaker Series, we’ll chat with two Greentown entrepreneurs and their investors as they talk about their experiences working together before, during, and after an equity investment was made in the company.

Aug. 4: EnergyBar August 2022: Summer Rooftop Networking [Greentown HQ]
You’re invited to a summer edition of our signature EnergyBar networking event—on Greentown’s roof deck!

Sector Spotlight: Manufacturing

This year, we started quarterly sector spotlights that highlight the technologies, partnerships, financing avenues, and policies that are needed to decarbonize each of the key greenhouse-gas-emitting sectors.

After exploring buildings in Q1, we’re turning our attention to manufacturing. Here are just a handful of our members innovating to decarbonize the sector:

H2Ok Innovations’ IoT analytics platform provides comprehensive, real-time visibility into industrial liquid systems to enable data-driven, optimized operations.
Elemental Recycling recycles any and all plastics and tires into high-purity hydrogen and graphene.
Bucha Bio creates novel biomaterials grown by fermenting renewable bacterial-nanocellulose for high-performance textiles and composites for premium applications instead of animal leather, polyurethane, latex, vinyl, epoxy, and more.
Wootz takes raw carbon nanotubes and aligns them so they are as strong as Kevlar, as flexible as cotton thread, half as lightweight as aluminum, nearly as thermally conductive as diamond, highly resistant to chemicals, and electrically conductive enough for most electronics applications.
Applied Bioplastics is commercializing plant-based polymers that are far healthier and more sustainable than, and at competitive pricing to, their petrochemical-based analogues.
Eugenie AI has developed an AI-based predictive maintenance platform for manufacturing, oil & gas, energy, and smart city industrial operations.

Celebrating AAPI Climate Champions

Happy Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! We’re celebrating by honoring AAPI leaders and organizations taking climate action. Here are some we’d like to shout out:

Our member Jose LaSalle, CEO of florrent. “Building a company through islander values has been foundational to forming a healthy team and developing a compelling technology,” he says. Hear more from him here.
Greentown entrepreneur Janice Tran, CEO of Kanin Energy. She says her parents are her biggest AAPI climate champions; read more here.
Our member James Kong, Director of Alp Technologies. “There are specific challenges in climate and energy in the global regions that disproportionately affect AAPI populations in the lower-income populations,” he says. Read more here.
Rooted in California's Asian immigrant and refugee communities, the Asian Pacific Environmental Network strives for holistic environmental justice and a regenerative, rather than extractive, economy. Follow them on Twitter.
Drawing on Sikh values that call for reverence of all creations, EcoSikh engages Sikhs to restore and live in harmony with the earth through advocacy and action on environmental issues in Punjab and beyond. Follow them on Twitter.

Join the Greentown Team

The Greentown team is growing! We are hiring the following roles:

Controller (Somerville, MA or Houston, TX)
Senior Director of Facilities (Somerville, MA)
Membership Business Operations Specialist (Somerville, MA)

Thank You to Our Partners 🌍

What Happens When Startups and Corporates Partner?

From The Ecosystem

What Happens When Startups and Corporates Partner?