25 Emerging Climate Tech Startups
The Moonshot guide to emerging climate tech startups creating greener cities, buildings, and infrastructure.
One way to think about startups is that they're a form of constructive criticism, a suggestion that there may be a better way to do something than the status quo approach. In the past few years, we’ve seen a resurgence of startups focused on a problem that needs a lot of this kind of thinking: climate change.
The time is ripe and there’s a lot of tailwinds, including plummeting costs for solar and storage technology, historic levels of investment from governments (such as the Inflation Reduction Act), and meaningful commitment from venture capital and institutional investors. Most of all, there's a new generation of entrepreneurs that care about climate change and are building businesses to help address it.
This has given rise to a new class of “climate technology” startups that span sectors, from agriculture to zero emission vehicles. This list profiles 25 emerging climate tech startups to keep an eye on in 2024, whether you’re looking for a new job, to invest, or for inspiration. I'm especially interested in how climate tech can shape our buildings, infrastructure, and cities, so the list features a lot of companies focused on this area.
This list spotlights companies that are:
Climate tech
Privately held, early or mid stage startups
Consumer or B2B
Hardware and/or software
Technology alone won't solve the climate crisis, but given the impact that solar, storage, and electric mobility are having, it's clear that technology has a crucial role to play. I hope you find these startups and all their different kinds of "constructive criticism" as inspiring as I did when putting this together. If you enjoyed this, pass it along to a friend or subscribe for free to get future stories and discoveries on climate tech, sustainable design, and more. Thanks for reading.
Hugh McFall, Editor, Moonshot
1. Felt
Modern mapping for everyone
What Figma did for design, Felt has the potential to do for mapping. The company gives anyone the ability to create their own detailed maps and collaborate with others using a simple, well-designed interface. At a time when wildfires, floods, and droughts are becoming more common, Felt is a go-to product for businesses, policymakers, activists, journalists, and more, helping in areas like disaster response and urban planning.
2. Tyba
Better modeling for solar & storage
Even for the most experienced renewable energy companies, it can be difficult and complex to build and operate energy storage power plants. The Tyba platform makes it easy to manage the daily operations of battery plants and develop new solar and storage projects. Analysts, traders, and data scientists use Tyba’s modeling software to make informed development decisions, and deploy new strategies that make their renewable projects more profitable.
3. Amber
Extended warranty program for EVs
While EVs typically have lower total cost of ownership and less maintenance issues, longtime owners have found that EVs often outlive their warranties, which ends up costing drivers if they have issues with high voltage parts or the battery. Amber gives EV drivers breakdown coverage beyond what EV automakers typically provide, helping customers avoid costly expenses and keep their EV on the road longer.
4. Raptor Maps
Solar inspection & management
Inspecting and maintaining solar panels can be a challenge, especially for larger solar fields or if they’re in hard to reach areas. The result? Underperforming panels and lost revenue for energy producers. Raptor Maps is building a platform for managing solar assets, including using drone images to capture and create a “digital twin” of a solar field to make it easier to track performance. Raptor Maps has analyzed over 100 gigawatts of solar systems so far, and are building AI-enabled products to bring advanced insights to their customers.
5. Bloom
Bringing e-bike manufacturing to the U.S.
Bloom aims to bring manufacturing back to Detroit, but this time for e-bikes, not cars. Newly launched in November 2023, Bloom positions itself as a vertical integration partner for e-bike brands looking to manufacture and service e-bikes on U.S. soil. The e-bike industry is growing quickly, but there are still supply chain bottlenecks and kinks to work out. Bloom is focused on helping the industry reach its full potential.
6. Enode
A single platform for energy data
Building a climate tech app? Enode is your gateway to data from 400+ energy devices like EVs, chargers, HVACs, thermostats, solar inverters, and batteries. The startup has pre-built integrations with every big manufacturer, so you can easily build, for example, a new smart home app and without having to manage custom integrations with Honeywell or Ecobee thermostats.
7. Cedar
Accelerating climate-smart housing development
We can’t address climate change without improving how we build our cities. Instead of urban sprawl and more single-family homes, we need to build more “gentle density” and multi-family properties in our existing urban areas. But this can be complex and time-consuming even for the best intentioned developers, requiring them to navigate planning, permitting processes, and zoning laws. Cedar has built an “operating system for urban development” to help solve this, with a catalog of off-the-shelf design options that can fit local zoning and regulations to get approval more quickly. Currently available in Austin, Texas, with more cities to come.
8. Upfront
Demystifying rebates for merchants and consumers
There are thousands of rebates available across the U.S. for clean energy products, from EV chargers to heat pumps. But it can be a challenge for merchants to figure out how to find all of these rebates and help customers take advantage of them. Upfront has a database of rebates that can be easily integrated into retail experiences, helping both customers get a better price and merchants sell more products. They’ve helped customers find over $1 million in rebates in November alone, and their vision is to expand beyond chargers and heat pumps into a full suite of electric products.
9. Tangible
Marketplace for sustainable construction materials
The real estate and construction industry is waking up to the importance of embodied carbon because it makes up the bulk of their annual emissions. Tangible helps reduce embodied carbon with a marketplace for contractors to buy more sustainable materials, and helps customers measure embodied carbon across all of their buildings.
10. Zauben
Green roofs & living walls
We’re happier and healthier when we’re surrounded by plants and green space, but bringing more greenery into an office or an apartment building shouldn’t require hiring a full-time gardener. Zauben makes turnkey, self-maintaining green walls and roofs, such as the Model Z, a self-irrigating plant wall that makes it easy to bring greenery into any space.
11. Aurora Solar
Solar design & sales platform
Before purpose-built tools like Aurora Solar, it was more difficult and time-consuming to design solar projects — slowing down deployments of a technology that the planet sorely needs. Aurora puts powerful, solar-specific design tools into the hands of installers and sales teams, helping ensure customers deploy solar successfully.
12. cove.tool
Design software for better buildings
The easier it is to design sustainable buildings, the more of them we’ll build. cove.tool helps architects and designers analyze and optimize energy usage, embodied carbon, solar potential, and more, making it simpler to design LEED-certified buildings and ensure they’re as environmentally-friendly as possible.
13. Populus
Helping cities manage mobility and curbs
Have you seen scooters around your city — maybe even in your way on the sidewalk — and wondered, “isn’t there a better way to manage these?” That’s something Populus can help with. The way we get around cities is changing with the rise of bike shares, scooters, mopeds, and self-driving cars. Populus builds software for cities to manage this new reality, helping analyze trip patterns and plan new policies and infrastructure accordingly.
14. Stable
Data science for profitable EV charging
EV charging networks are growing their footprint across the world, and Stable Auto is focused on helping them do it profitably. Stable builds software that helps charging networks and investors deploy EV charging more strategically, with tools for predicting utilization, qualifying and ranking potential locations, finding the right incentives to lower costs, and more.
15. Span
A modern electrical panel
The typical home electric panel hasn’t evolved in decades, but it plays a crucial role orchestrating solar, batteries, EV charging, and smart devices. Span built a modern electric panel that makes it easier to adopt and manage clean energy at home, and reduce unnecessary energy usage.
16. Station A
Real estate analysis for clean energy projects
Station A helps developers & real estate owners quickly evaluate and qualify their properties for solar, batteries, and EV charging. Then, they’ll connect you to clean energy providers who can bring it to life. Just put in an address and their platform will analyze, grade your building, and turn it into a request for proposal.
17. Lumen Energy
Automatic power purchasing for real estate owners
For commercial real estate owners looking to deploy solar, it often means working with a tangled web of sustainability consultants, engineers, and vendors — all of which can slow down the process. To help speed up evaluation and deployments, Lumen Energy has launched an automated power purchase agreement (PPA) for solar and battery systems. Their software helps customers quickly figure out what the right solution is for their properties, both for cashflow and their emissions reduction goals, and then get started with their PPA product.
18. Helio Home
A “whole home” approach to electrification
Adding solar, storage, EV charging, and a heat pump can mean having 4 different contractors to manage. Helio is a single platform and service provider that serves as one point of contact from start to finish, promising to make it easier and less stressful for homeowners to build a more sustainable place to live.
19. Quilt
Heat pumps with AI-driven efficiency
Quilt is aiming to bring Tesla-style design and simplicity to a fast-growing category: heat pumps. Still in stealth, Quilt is building a ductless heat pump system and promising “AI-driven efficiency and room-by-room control”. People buy Tesla cars because they’re desirable, quality products that also have an environmental benefit. If Quilt can do the same for heat pumps, it’s worth keeping an eye on.
20. Arch
Sales software for heat pumps & HVAC
Heat pumps have emerged as a key climate solution because they’re fully electric and can replace gas furnaces. But to deploy heat pumps at scale, we’ll need to arm the front line of HVAC professionals with better proposal and sales software. Arch is doing this by building software for HVAC installers to create more effective quotes and system designs, helping make heat pumps a more compelling choice for homeowners across the country.
21. Mill
Replacing your compost bin
Mill is like a combination of a compost and a garbage disposal, a sleek design that grinds food scraps and turns them into dry grounds. Mill will also coordinate picking up your grounds and put them back into the food system — like by using them as food for chickens — and give you reports on how much emissions you’ve avoided with each batch.
22. Dance
E-bike subscription service
In many countries, the best-selling electric vehicle isn’t actually a car: it’s an e-bike. Demand for e-bikes is growing exponentially, but they can still be too expensive for many would-be buyers. Dance, available in Berlin, Paris, Munich, Vienna, and Hamburg for now, gives locals the ability to subscribe to have their own e-bike or moped at a much more accessible price than buying one outright. They deliver the bike to your door and help with repairs, theft protection, and more.
23. BlocPower
Home electrification at an accessible price
BlocPower helps finance and install “all-electric upgrades” in homes and apartments, including heat pumps, EV chargers, and electric stovetops. The company has electrified over 5,000 homes so far, with its own technology for analyzing and qualifying sites.
24. Sublime Systems
Low carbon cement
Cement has helped build the modern world, but it’s also one of the most emissions-heavy materials there is. Sublime Systems has developed a new electrochemical-based process for creating cement, which is far less carbon-intensive than the typical kiln-based process. They’re aiming on making a true zero-carbon offering in the future, which would have a massive impact if deployed at scale.
25. Mighty Buildings
3D printed carbon-neutral homes
Mighty Buildings is a vertically-integrated home builder, using 3D printing and pre-fabricated production to make cheaper and more sustainable homes. Their homes take 4 days to assemble on-site, and they generate less waste with 3D printing. They’re focused on helping solve both the climate and the housing crises — which are inextricably linked — by changing how we build.