Call For ClimateTech Startups — Climate Adaptation & Resilient Cities
Heat death. Drowning. Wildfire. This feels more like the recounting of the ten plagues than a call for startups. But this has become the new normal. The UN currently estimates that climate-related disasters are now happening at a rate of about one every week. Even with the progress we’re making on climate action, our cities will need to adapt to a new, biblical-sounding, normal.
As the scenarios below demonstrate, we’re likely closer to the beginning versus the end of major warming. No matter what path, we’re in for more of everything from storm intensity and shifting rainfall patterns. Most of our efforts at Urban Us, so far, have focused on reducing emissions via anything from improving building performance to electrification of transportation and logistics but we’ve so far seen very little on resilience and adaptation.
In The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells walks us through our emerging new realities associated with already-locked-in warming. Among other things, Wallace-Wells describes the following:
- Life threatening heat
- Crop failures
- Floods & drowning
- Wildfires
- Freshwater access
- Unbreathable air
- New diseases
Each of these issues is complex. For example, in a warming world, we can simply add more AC. But if we use our current AC tech, we’re going to miss our current emissions targets, pushing us to the worst climate scenarios.
This summer provides a great example — Germany has so far avoided widespread adoption of AC and their emissions target reflect that, but this summer is changing attitudes and AC installers are completely overwhelmed. It’s increasingly likely that Germany will need to revise the timing of their emissions targets unless we find better approaches to cooling our indoor spaces.
At Urban Us we’ve made some investments in better AC like Flair and Treau or in better building performance like Radiator Labs, Sapient, Cove Tool, Swell or Blueprint Power. But what about heat impact when we’re outside riding our Onewheels, scooters or bikes? Or what happens if we need to work outside? Perhaps we’re going to have new types of clothing with active cooling. We think of these types of approaches as adaptations.
We’d like to see many more startups working on adaptations.
We’ve already made some adaptation investments. For Urban Us, Bowery Farming is about adapting to crop failures and floods and freshwater access. Bowery Farming’s answer is indoor, vertical farms that are extremely efficient with both space and water, but also resilient to emerging, damaging weather patterns.
One Concern was one of the first companies to look at how to adapt to fires and floods. They’re focused on resilience — or how long it takes to fully recover from a shock like a fire or flood. We may not be able to fully adapt to these changes, but we can limit their impact by improving emergency response and specific design interventions like flood controls or new approaches to vegetation that borders urban areas.
We’re excited about all of these investments, but we need to do a lot more. We’re interested in meeting with startups who are working on adaptations and resilience solutions for cities, especially related to:
- Heat
- Food
- Floods
- Wildfires
- Fresh water
- Air quality
- Epidemiology
Our primary interest is that you’ve identified an approach that might be quickly scaled — think 100 cities in 2 to 5 years. If you know who your customers are, that’s great, but not essential. It’s often the case that you will have multiple stakeholders and some might make more sense as first customers. We can help figure that out.
We’re accepting direct applications.
