Hawaii-based climate technology incubator Elemental Excelerator announced its 10th cohort of companies on Wednesday morning, effectively expanding its portfolio to include a total of 136 businesses since 2009.
The 19 companies in this crop, including one based in the Islands, will receive between $200,000-$500,000 to scale their operations in the areas of mobility, energy, agriculture, water, and circular economy. Seven of the companies are the first to receive funding for worldwide tech deployment under Elemental's new Global Track.
"We have one of the largest climate tech portfolios in the world. There is a big opportunity to leverage Hawaii as a testbed to strengthen our innovation economy and bring more dollars to our university and state," Tiffany Huynh, director of external affairs for Elemental Excelerator, told Pacific Business News.
There were more than 600 applicants for the cohort, she said.
The local company is Maui Nui Venison, which works to reduce the Valley Isle's invasive deer population while providing a food alternative to beef at a quarter of the methane emissions.
"When looking at this year's companies we really looked at how they are approaching equity and access and their impacts on underserved communities," Huynh said. "We know that the best solutions will be the most equitable."
- The national and international companies in the 10th cohort are:
- Dimensional Energy: Which is testing a fuel replacement of hydrogen and atmospheric carbon in place of traditional CO2 for things like flights.
- EnergyRM: An analytics platform that helps landlords decarbonize their buildings through large-scale energy efficiency investments.
- SHYFT: Which offers technology that allows energy service providers and renewable energy companies to monitor, manage and control distributed power systems.
- WeaveGrid: Which helps utilities monitor and manage EV charging on grids that were not designed to support the high-power needs of widespread charging.
- Courial: Which connects consumers and businesses with a curated fleet of on-demand gig workers to deliver a wide range of goods.
- Nuventura: Which is attempting to eliminate the world's strongest greenhouse gas, sulphur hexafluoride (SF6), from the energy industry by introducing dry air as an alternative insulator for electric grids.
- Rally: Which encourages the use of high-capacity buses over personal cars for transportation, accelerating adoption of electric buses.
- Tradelanes: Which brings trade operations into an online system that allows large and small businesses to transact with customers worldwide.
- Climate Robotics: A continuous, in-field biochar production system, whose advanced robotics sequester carbon and improve soils.
- Vibrant Planet: A platform to manage natural systems in forests to store carbon, deliver clean water, and support biodiversity and local economies.
- The Better Packaging Co.: Manufactures sustainable, customized packaging accessible to businesses of all sizes to displace traditional single-use packaging.
- Nth Cycle: Developer of an electro-extraction technology that helps recyclers and miners upgrade waste into production-grade critical minerals.
- Reath: Helps businesses adopt infrastructure of re-use and re-manufacturing systems while staying compliant and creating new revenue opportunities
- WEEE Centre: Which collects and dismantles e-waste to recover raw materials for recycling into new electronic products.
- 120 Water: An end-to-end solution used by water professionals in 23 states in the U.S. to manage critical lead and drinking water programs.
- enVerid Systems: Improves efficiency by scrubbing indoor air of contaminants rather than constantly replacing it with large volumes of outside air, as conventionally designed HVAC systems do.
- Matter: Developer of technology to filter microplastic emissions in wastewater without the need for disposables, cartridges, or replacement components.
- Sentry: A platform to offer real-time water quality monitoring at treatment plants.
Elemental created a trading-card-themed microsite for the 19 companies and their leaders.
