carbon footprint

Greentown Labs partners with VC firm on new emissions calculator integration

Greentown Labs has a new tool for evaluating potential members. Photo via Getty Images

If you want to be a member at either Boston-area or Houston location of Greentown Labs, you better have a small carbon footprint.

Leading global venture capital firm Clean Energy Ventures, which funds early-stage climate tech innovations, announced a partnership to offer access to the firm’s Simple Emissions Reduction Calculator (SERC) to Greentown Labs, the largest climate tech incubator in North America that is dually located in Houston and Sommerville, Massachusetts. New members will be required to report their CO2e emissions reduction potential as part of the incubator’s climate impact assessment as part of the Greentown Labs’ application process.

Greentown Labs has nurtured more than 525 companies across its two locations with a 94 percent success rate for startups. Greentown Labs supports and fosters collaboration with corporates, early-stage entrepreneurs, investors, government and other players while providing members access to labs and resources.

“As we continue our work to support the most innovative climate tech startups, we’re doubling down on how we quantify impact — both the impact Greentown Labs is having on the entrepreneurs we’re privileged to support, and the impact the startups themselves are having by reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” Kevin Knobloch, CEO and president of Greentown Labs, says in a news release. “Having access to this timely tool that Clean Energy Ventures has created is elevating our recruitment efforts and helping us standardize how we quantify the projected impact of our member community.”

CEV developed SERC in 2021 to assist startups with tools and algorithms to estimate their technology or business model’s emissions reduction potential. SERC is now used as an essential screening tool in over 1,000 companies asn a climate tech accelerators, incubators and investors across the globe, and was awarded an honorable mention by Fast Company World Changing Ideas in 2022.

“As climate tech investors, we are always eager to support the growth of an ecosystem of innovation and impact,” CEV Managing Partner David Miller in says in the release. “With the number of climate tech companies seeking investments today, startups that are able to estimate their innovation’s capacity to mitigate CO2e emissions truly stand out from the crowd and are more likely to secure investment. Through SERC, investors are able to gain critical insight to back the most impactful technologies with the potential to address climate change as quickly as possible over the next two decades.”

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A View From HETI

The USDA has announced a $1.4 billion investment to transition San Miguel Electric Cooperative in rural South Texas to a 600-megawatt solar and battery energy system, aiming to reduce climate pollution and create jobs by 2027.

The United States Department of Agriculture recently announced that San Miguel Electric Cooperative Inc., located in Christine, Texas, in Atascosa County, just outside of San Antonio, will transition its operations to produce 600 megawatts of energy using solar panels and a battery energy storage system (BESS).

The project is expected to reduce climate pollution by 1.8 tons annually, equivalent to removing 446,000 cars from the road each year, says USDA.

The project with the San Miguel Electric Cooperative plans to use more than $1.4 billion investment to procure 600 megawatts of renewable energy through solar voltaic panels and a battery energy storage system to power 47 counties across rural South Texas. The clean project also hopes to support as many as 600 jobs.

This is part of the over $4.37 billion in clean energy investments through the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Empowering Rural America (New ERA) Program, which has rural electric cooperatives supporting the economy via job creation, lowering electricity costs for businesses and families and reducing climate pollution. The New ERA was made possible by President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which was the largest investment in rural electrification since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Act into law in 1936.

San Miguel plans to convert its operations to a 400-megawatt solar generation facility and 200-megawatt battery storage facility, and the transition should be complete by 2027. Currently, San Miguel produces 391 megawatts of electricity through a contract with South Texas Electric Cooperative (STEC).

“USDA is committed to enhancing the quality of life and improving air and water in our rural communities,” Secretary Tom Vilsack says in a news release. “The Inflation Reduction Act’s historic investments enable USDA to partner with rural electric cooperatives to strengthen America’s energy security and lower electricity bills for hardworking families, farmers and small business owners.”

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