Greenify #60: Electrifying everything
April 28, 2023
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📌 Fact of the week
Electric vehicles are becoming cheaper day by day, with the basic version of the Tesla model Y SUV now cheaper than the average vehicle price in the US! 😲
(Have a look at the graph of the week to see the results of this!)
Hottest news of the week…
Regulation 🗃 – Germany bans fossil fuel heating ⛔
What happened: The German government has adopted a proposal for a law that would ban new fossil heating installations starting in 2024. The proposal states that, starting in 2024, all heating systems installed in new buildings will have to run on at least 65% renewable energy. Despite the larger market to tackle would be renovation (i.e. replacing your existing fossil fuel boiler with a heat pump), this is already an important step, considering Germany is the largest heating market in Europe.🔥
Zoom out: Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s effort to diversify away from Russian gas have been massive. Hence, changing the way the majority of Europe heats its homes has been of primary focus; to that end, heat pumps are increasingly growing in popularity. Heat pumps, which run on electricity, are considered a renewable form of heating, and policy support towards their deployment is increasing: the European Commission targets 30 million additional heat pumps to be installed between now and 2030. To put it into context, heat pumps sold in Europe in 2022 were close to 3 million, a 40% increase vs. 2021 levels.📈
Business 💰 – Volkswagen setting shop in Canada ⚒️
What happened: Volkswagen and the Canadian government committed c.$15 billion of investment into a battery giga factory in Saint Thomas, Ontario. This represents the single largest investment in the EV supply chain for Canada. Works are expected to start in 2024, with the plant being fully operational by 2027; overall, it is expected to generate around 3,000 jobs. 🚗
Zoom out: As the U.S. launched its Inflation Reduction Act in an effort to localize supply chains in key industries such as electric vehicles, this move can be interpreted as a response from Canada. Of the $15 billion investment, the Canadian government will provide c.70% of it under form of manufacturing tax credits through 2032, credits whose level are designed to match production subsidies offered by the U.S. IRA. 💸
Innovation 💡 - Northvolt building an aviation-ready battery!
What happened: Northvolt, a Swiss battery cell and module development start-up, considered among the most advanced climate-tech ventures in Europe, announced major developments on a battery that can theoretically power planes! The development of this lithium-metal battery was done by Cuberg, a US subsidiary acquired in 2021. The battery cell at the heart of this development has already been tested and is currently being delivered to various customers. What Cuberg now managed to do is to integrate these cells in to an aviation-specific battery module, which leverages extremely high energy density to overcome the current issues with more traditional lithium-ion batteries in the aviation sector: excessive volume and weight! 👍
Zoom out: Although we are big supporters of transports’ electrification and big fans of Northvolt, we are more skeptical about battery applications in the aviation sector. However, this lithium-metal battery cell is trying its best to change our minds. In fact, this battery could deliver a performance improvement of more than 70% compared to lithium-ion batteries, when applied to aviation. Northvolt is not the only company making great progresses on this space: industry leader CATL just announced a very similar program one week ago… This is the competition we want to see! 💪
Deep dives of the week…
Chart of the week - EVs are booming! 💣
This week the IEA published a revised forecast for EV sales in 2023, and the numbers are impressive: a 35% increase from 2022, bringing total sales to 14 million units, almost 20% of total cars sales! More than half of these sales took place in China, followed by Europe and US! This is great news if you think that road transports account for c.12% of global emissions and for 40% of global oil demand. 👍
Company of the week - Reverion, doing everything in a container! 🤔
Today we want to talk about Reverion, a German start-up that builds very cool modular fuel cells which transform biogas into electricity with zero-emissions. In other words, they build plug and play fuel cells, more or less the size of a container, that can be placed at every biogas production site (imagine a farm), and transform this gas into electricity. The process is done via electrochemical reaction, which generates biogenic CO2 that is directly captured. In summary, you get emissions free- electricity! What happens in time of low electricity demand and high renewable generation? The modular plant is capable of the reverse process: uses electricity to generate green hydrogen through electrolysis. 😮
How they do all of this in such a small space is still to be understood by the writers… but investors seem to trust them, as they just backed them with a €8.5M investment! Ever wondered how does a pitch deck for these financing rounds look like? Sifted, came in our help by publishing it here! 😉
Deal of the week - Greening hydrogen attracts money 💚
Green hydrogen company Ohmium has raised $250million (😳) in a Series C growth equity financing round. Ohmium designs, manufactures and deploys electrolyser systems, used in the production of “green” hydrogen. The round, led by TPG Rise Climate fund, will support the company’s 2GW plans of annual manufacturing capacity and the deployment of projects globally, as order pipeline for electrolysers is strong.
👋 See you next Friday, for the best sum up of this coming week!
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