Zero Carbon Capital

📚 Christmas and New Year are around the corner! Already wondering which book to dive into over the break? The ZCC team has some recommendations: 🌏 Sarah - Not the End of the World, by Hannah Ritchie Hannah Ritchie, Lead Researcher at ‘Our World in Data’, writes about our biggest environmental problems and how we can solve them with an optimistic view of the progress we have made so far and lots of data and graphics! ⚖️ Max - Don't Sweat the Small Stuff . . . and It's All Small Stuff; by Richard Carlson This easily digestible read by Richard Carlson has taught me a thing or two. It gives you a real sense of perspective and helps you to become more balanced, self-aware, and rational, especially in stressful or challenging situations. It’s the type of book you could pick up again and again. Valuable life lessons! 🌳 Chloe - After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration; by Holly Jean Buck Holly Jean Buck looks at different types of geoengineering including solar radiation management and carbon dioxide removal. She questions whether it will be a core part of climate policy, a panacea or a short-term fix whilst we reduce emissions. I enjoyed how she uses fictional vignettes of a future world in which these technologies are deployed to ask: how can we design a future that utilises these technologies (or not) to restore the climate and have positive social and economic impacts too? ⚙️ Alex - Exactly: How precision engineers created the modern world; by Simon Winchester Simon Winchester tracks the leaps in engineering craft that have enabled everything from steam engines, to watches, weapons and space telescopes. It’s fascinating to understand the degree of exactitude needed to power modern inventions like GPS and the JWST while realising that measurement and machining orders of magnitude more coarse were cutting edge less than a hundred years ago. While the scientific breakthroughs often get the limelight, it is the drumbeat improvement in engineering techniques that have delivered the world we inhabit. 🛰️ Pippa - Orbital; by Samantha Harvey This is a beautifully written study of life on board the International Space Station, and ultimately a love letter to the planet they are orbiting around and the life systems it supports. Harvey intermingles scientific observations about what is happening on board, and the geologic formations and weather systems on earth that the crew can see, with links to their impact on humankind. The juxtaposition of the extraordinary nature of the astronaut’s day-to-day routine with deeper observations about humanity certainly gives a new perspective. If you are looking to escape the craziness of the modern world this Christmas, try 250 miles above the earth’s surface. Happy reading!!

❓ How will we close bridge the looming #copper supply gap? ⚡️ Copper is critical to #electrification. Anything that needs wires—like electricity cables, electric vehicles, wind turbines—needs a lot of copper. 📈 Projections suggest that demand is set to grow from ~26 million tonnes (Mt) per year in 2024 to around 35 Mt in 2035. 📉 But copper supply is currently predicted to fall short, by around 10 Mt… ✍️ ZCC’s Chloe and Max have been looking into the challenges facing the copper mining industry. Read our latest article to learn more about these challenges, and the technologies being developed to close the gap. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/enMsbNHY We welcome your thoughts and questions in the comments below. #copper #mining #electrification #VC #climatetech

🧠 #Neurodiversity in #climatetech: a superpower or a challenge? 🎆 Great minds don't think alike. At The Drop conference in Malmö earlier this year, Pippa co-organised a ‘Ripple’ (roundtable) with Robin Allenson about neurodiversity in the climate start-up community. The people who joined them were mostly founders and investors, all of whom related to neurodiversity on a personal level. It is estimated that both #ADHD and #autism are found in the entrepreneur community at around five times the level of the general population, with around 29% having ADHD and 5% being autistic - so why don't we talk about it more? Pippa has written up some of the conversation from the Drop, including the superpowers and challenges that come with #neurodiversity. She's also shared the answers to the two questions that she's had most often from others since talking more about her ADHD. Read more here => https://lnkd.in/eGFNTE_G Please do get in touch with any thoughts or questions.

Over the years we've had more conversations with prospective investees about founder leaver provisions than any other item on the term sheet. Few subjects have the ability to stoke up division between a founder and an investor in quite the same way. Both sides are trying to protect the business while respecting individual contributions, but getting the balance right can be very hard due to the different perspectives on each side. Some of our thoughts: - Understand what is typical for the market you are in - phone a friendly lawyer. - Try to understand where your investor is coming from - they've done this before and seen the damage done by giving too much ground. - Know where the areas for negotiation are - consider backstops, definitions, triggers and cliffs. - Watch out for common pitfalls ... but keep it in perspective. Hopefully you won't need to refer to them again. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/enPpmQQi

And the winner is..... Carbon13! 🎉 🥳 🥂 Last night, Zero Carbon Capital were awarded second place in the Growth Investor Awards 'Investing in Women - Team of the Year' category. We're proud to be recognised, and always happy to be runners up to Nicky Dee and her team with their incredible track record of supporting female-founded teams at the Carbon13 venture builder. Pippa and Sarah had a great evening at our 'climate investors table' with Nicky, Alicia from Eka Ventures and Johnathan from Empirical Ventures. Thanks to the amazing Claudia Winkleman for being the ultimate pro and keeping us dancing. Kudos to the Growth Investor Awards (in partnership with British Business Bank) for putting such a focus on investing in women throughout the night. From next year, any investor will need to be a signatory to the #InvestingInWomen Code to be nominated for an award. If the UK invested in women-founded companies at equal levels to male-founded, the economy would gain a potential £250 billion, along with a wealth of untapped talent. Women-led teams are more capital efficient, driving 35% higher ROI. We know women are twice as likely to invest in other women, but only 11% of senior investment professionals in PE and VC are women, so men are twice as likely to make it through an investment committee. Investors, you are leaving performance on the table. Invest in Women Taskforce #ImpactBeyondInvestment #GrowthInvestorAwards

Will copper shortages slow down the energy transition? ⛏️🧑🏭 Copper is critical to electrification: it is needed for wiring in the grid, for electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels, and so on. This means that demand is set to increase from ~26 Mt today, to over 36 Mt by 2040. But recycling copper can only meet a fraction of this demand, and supply shortages are expected. Some of the challenges include: 🔍 discovering and developing new mine sites can take over 20 years 📉 declining ore grades (i.e. copper concentration per mass of rock) mean that we need to mine more ore to get the same amount of copper 🌱 the need to mine sustainably to prevent ecosystem degradation and water contamination ZCC’s Chloe and Max have been digging into the challenges and solutions in this space. What would you like to know? And if you’re working on these problems, or know someone who is, please get in touch – we would love to speak with you. #vc #climatetech #mining #copper

Congratulations to our portfolio company Echion Technologies on the unveiling of this whopping 2,000 tons/year production facility developed in conjunction with their strategic partner CBMM, who supply the niobium which gives Echion's anode material its high-performance super powers. Building a #FOAK in joint development with vertically integrated partners can be a win-win, enabling rapid scaling and value for both sides. Echion are accelerating their product to market, and we're excited to see fast charging, high power, long duration vehicles with XNO batteries hitting the road sooner.

Defossiling the chemical industry 🪨🔥🏭 The clue is in the name, the *petro*chemical industry relies heavily on fossil fuels, both as an feedstock, and as a fuel for the reactions. And we rely heavily on these #petrochemicals for our daily lives: the polyethylene packaging to keep our food fresh, polyester clothes to keep us warm and PVC pipes to bring us water. We wrote about some of the options to #decarbonise this mammoth industry earlier this year: https://lnkd.in/eFs4-rqE But this is a major challenge: annual demand for #plastics is around 400 million tonnes per year and growing (at a rate of ~4% per year). To meet the carbon demand of these plastics in 2050 we will need to draw down 4.5 billion tonnes of CO2 — to provide the 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon needed — either via carbon dioxide removal or via biomass, according to this analysis from Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment - University of Oxford. A reminder as COP starts today: we need to stop fossil fuel extraction completely, and to use these fossil feedstock alternatives.

🚀 November is going to be another busy month! Come meet the Zero Carbon Capital team at one of the following events in Europe: 🇫🇷 Cleantech Forum Europe - November 5-7 📍 Chantilly, France Our Managing Partner Pippa will be attending the 20th Anniversary edition of Cleantech Forum Europe alongside our portfolio companies Biozeroc, Cambridge Electric Cement, IONATE and NitroFix, who have been included in the Cleantech 50 to Watch list! 🇬🇧 Zinc VC Climate Pitch Competition - November 6 📍 London, UK Our Research & Analysis Lead Chloe will be a jury member at this climate tech-focused pitch event in London! 🇩🇪 Climate Tech Hardware Drinks - November 6 📍 Berlin, Germany Our Associate Max and our Principal Sarah will be co-hosting this evening with our friends at Extantia! Sign up for the event here: https://lu.ma/ico0j2fy. 🇩🇪 Falling Walls - November 7-9 📍 Berlin, Germany Our Principal Sarah will be supporting our portfolio company Level Nine, which has been nominated as a finalist for the Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year award! 🇬🇧 Growth Investor Awards - November 21 📍 London, UK ZCC have been nominated as a finalist for the Investing in Women - Team of the Year award at this year's Growth Investor Awards! Our Managing Partner Pippa will be there! We are looking forward to connecting with you at these events! Cleantech Group | Zinc | Extantia | Falling Walls Foundation | Falling Walls Lab #climate #tech #venturecapital #hardware

Looking for a job in Climate Tech? 🌎 Our portfolio companies are #hiring! This month we are spotlighting two exciting opportunities at one of our most recent additions to the portfolio Exergy3 Limited. Want to build #thermal #batteries to power industrial heat loads using clean renewable power? Or maybe you want to bring these to market? Exergy3 Limited are hiring for a CCO and CTO! 🚀 Find out more here: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eDXHvFXz Perhaps you are looking for a role in data engineering or in the lab instead…we keep our #Careers page up to date with all the latest opportunities in our portfolio, take a look here: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eKye_pGX #jobs #ClimateTech #industrialheat