Hydropousse is an urban vertical farm founded in 2016 and located on rue Parmentier in Montreuil (93), on the outskirts of Paris (France). The company produces hydroponic seedlings and edible flowers for chefs in the capital.

The project is part of urban agriculture, the overall aim of which, according to founder Audrey Bonneil, is to :

produce as close as possible to the consumer, without pesticides, organic, promote social ties, sharing, short circuits, save energy, reason our consumption and, among other things, eat better.

https://lespepitestech.com/startup-de-la-french-tech/hydropousse

The aim is also to limit energy consumption.

If they are listed on“lespépitectech” as an innovative startup company, it’s hard to see what the innovation or growth potential is. Greenhouse cultivation is hardly a novelty…

Homebiogas is an Israeli company that has designed small domestic methanizers that enable individuals to turn their fermentable waste into biogas and digestate.

What is methanization?

Anaerobic digestion is the biological process whereby organic matter is broken down by micro-organisms in the absence of oxygen. This degradation produces a mixture of gases, mainly methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2), known as biogas. The materials used for methanization generally come from agricultural waste, food waste, sewage sludge or green waste.

The process takes place in several stages: During these stages, micro-organisms gradually break down complex organic matter into simpler compounds, eventually producing methane. Methanization comprises four key stages: hydrolysis, acidogenesis, acetogenesis and methanogenesis:

• Hydrolysis breaks down complex organic molecules into simpler elements.
• Acidogenesis converts these elements into volatile fatty acids and alcohols.
• Acetogenesis transforms these products into acetate, CO2 and H2.
• Finally, methanogenesis produces methane from acetate, CO2 and H2.

The Homebiogas domestic methanizer

Homebiogas offers a kind of mini domestic methanizer, just over a metre high and wide, for installation in the garden. An opening lets you put in fermentable household waste such as vegetable peelings mixed with water to aid hydrolysis. The gas produced is filtered by an activated carbon filter. The device can store pressures of up to 10 bar.

The company offers 3 digester formats: the smallest costs €1,200 and can produce 700L of biogas / day, which would be enough for 2h of combustion (?) and the largest costs €2,400 and can produce 2,500 L / day. It also produces a nutrient-rich liquid, ideal for fertilizing plants (digestate): from 6 to 20L for the smallest and up to 120L for the largest. The biogas is piped to a gas stove, supplied with the device. The system would be totally enclosed and odorless. They are also proposing a system combined with a toilet, sending the result directly into the digester.

The anaerobic anaerobic digestion process differs from conventional aerobic composting (with oxygen, in the open air) in a number of ways:

• the result is not the same (compost on one side, biogas and digestate on the other),
• anaerobic digestion does not attract insects, unlike compost
• meat and fish waste cannot be composted

Questions that arise

As is often the case with highly original products, a few questions arise. For example, what happens if you don’t use the biogas produced on a regular basis (e.g., if you go on vacation)? Is there a risk of explosion? We also note that you need to be able to connect the methanizer to the kitchen or the area where you’re going to use the gas, which isn’t easy.

Is the Homebiogas methanizer environmentally friendly?

On the face of it, the system does seem virtuous: it’s reasonable to assume that there are no leaks (to be confirmed), so the energy produced is CO2-neutral: the CO2 produced by combustion corresponds in principle to the CO2 absorbed by the organic matter used as a base. Ditto for the CO2 produced directly by methanization and mixed with CH4.

Then you have to ask yourself: what use is being replaced? For example, many people don’t use gas, but electricity, with electric ovens or induction hobs. For these people, this device offers little or no ecological advantage. We could ask the same question for countries that don’t have decarbonized energy, but the problem lies with electricity production.

Finally, we need to compare the effort and investment required with other alternatives. Wouldn’t it make more sense not to cook with gas? You could also compare it to installing a heat pump, for example. The basic module (which seems pretty big to me already) costs €1,200, or just under 10% of the price of an aerothermal heat pump. Which is more viable? So the final answer is, as in so many areas, “it depends”.

Note that, in rural African areas where there is no electricity, this product is clearly interesting. In fact, the company has set up a subsidiary in Kenya to serve farmers.

History, development and financing of Homebiogaz

HomeBioGaz is an Israeli company created by Yair Teller, Erez Lancer and Oshik Efrati in 2012. They developed the first prototypes between 2014 and 2016. The company was listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in February 2021 at a valuation of €79 million (TASE: HMGS).

According to the business report for 2021, published in June 2022:

• They would have sold over 15,000 systems in more than 100 countries in total in 2021 (a priori this should correspond to €20-35M in cumulative sales?).
• Sales would be $2,482,000.
• The company has 93 employees.
• They have set up a subsidiary in Kenya for farmers.

In France, it seems to be marketed by ATENEA Environnement and its website www.biogazmaison.com/.

Homeys monitors and optimizes heating energy consumption in residential buildings.

Henri de Noblens, the founder of Homeys, agreed to answer a few of our questions.

What environmental issues does Homeys address?

Our solution enables us to reduce the energy consumption of buildings by around 15%, and thus limit their greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to improving the energy performance of buildings, we also enable our customers to limit their on-site travel, which also has an impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

What solutions does Homeys offer?

Homeys offers a range of solutions to help people living in homes and buildings reduce their energy bills. Whether it’s by improving heating control, monitoring consumption more closely or identifying work to be carried out, our solutions enable you to identify, based on data, the most effective things you can do to improve the energy performance of your housing stock.

What added value do you bring to your customers?

Our customers save time in managing their energy and can react much more quickly when a drift is identified. And that’s not counting the fact that our analysis tools enable us to objectify comfort and provide recommendations for improvement.

Have you identified any competitors? If so, what competitive advantages set you apart?

Of course we have competitors, but they don’t generally have the global approach that enables us to work on the whole spectrum of energy performance, from improving regulation to carrying out work and optimizing energy bills. None of them have the focus on the residential sector that we have.

What’s currently preventing you from fully occupying your market?

We only started our marketing efforts a few months ago, so now we need to step up the pace to more fully occupy our market!

When we think of pollution, we don’t always think of light. Yet our artificial lighting has a number of perverse effects, whether on animals, whose perceptions it disturbs, or even our comfort, by making the stars disappear.

More prosaically, they consume a lot of energy: street lighting and building illumination consume 2,700 TWh every year, emitting 1,150 million tonnes of CO2. Yet nature also produces light. Who hasn’t heard of fireflies? There are also plants and animals that produce light.

Glowee’s technology

Glowee proposes to harness bioluminescence to light up the cities of tomorrow. It uses DNA sequences from bioluminescent bacteria and implants them in common, industrially-produced bacteria.

The advantages over conventional light production are numerous: the main material is cultivated, so it’s not a resource that’s depleted Bioluminescence produces less light pollution Production and maintenance consume less energy.

History and progress

Founder Sandra Rey was named one of MIT Technology Review’s 10 Innovators Under 35 in 2016. Glowee has just signed its first contract with the town of Rambouillet for street furniture

FAQ

Ergosup is a startup offering to produce ultra-high-pressure hydrogen using zinc electrolysis.

Hydrogen has several major difficulties, including :

• its volume (known as its density): at room temperature, 1kg of hydrogen takes up 11,000 liters! It is used compressed, but this is an energy-intensive process.
• its ability to absorb intensity variations. Intermittency is ill-suited to electrolysis: alkaline electrolyzers can’t handle it (except perhaps with Lhyfe’s technology?) and even PEM electrolyzers can. In any case, operating half the time doesn’t make installations profitable.

Startup Ergosup ‘s solution addresses both these issues.

The idea is to dissolve zinc in a bath in which two electrodes are immersed. Initially, at room temperature, electrolysis releases oxygen on one electrode and reduces the zinc, which becomes solid again and clings to the other. After releasing the oxygen, a reaction redissolving the zinc would release the hydrogen, this time in an enclosed space. Mechanically, the trapped hydrogen would be compressed (this is what we can interpret from their video). This would disconnect the moment of electricity consumption from the moment of hydrogen production. This is the first time I’ve heard of this process, so stay tuned…

The company proposes to create all-in-one H2 recharging stations, combining renewable energy production, hydrogen production, compression and hydrogen storage.

The start-up had raised 2.7 million euros in 2015 and has raised 11 million euros in 2019.

To find out more, read our article on hydrogen production.

To make the energy transition, we need to mobilize as much natural energy as possible. Wind and solar power are already harnessing the wind and sun. What about water? Every day, trillions of tonnes of water are moved by ocean currents and river flows. Could this colossal force be used to generate electricity?

That’s what EEL ENERGY is trying to do. They have developed a tidal turbine that mimics the undulations of fish, adapting to the current to capture as much of its energy as possible.

This technology offers a number of advantages that set it apart from other attempts to harness the forces of nature. It: is predictable does not pose a risk to wildlife; is, for the same output, 10 times smaller; and does not cause noise or visual pollution.

Nevertheless, the project has not yet been scaled up. In early 2019, the price per MWH was estimated at €300, compared with €130 for wind power. However, they hope to bring the price down to €100/MWH with larger machines.

The Eel technology is covered by 5 international patents and works with leading partners such as IFREMER and Dassault Systems. It is the subject of considerable national exposure, having been the subject of articles in Les Echos, Le Parisien and many other national and regional titles.

Comwatt is a French startup that optimizes the triggering of your electrical appliances according to the availability of photovoltaic energy, increasing the profitability of your panels.

We have classified it in the“Low-carbon electricity generation” category.

Grégory Lamotte, President of Comwatt, kindly agreed to answer our questions. Many thanks to him 🙂

What environmental issues does Comwatt address?

In the current context, everyone understands that there is an environmental problem. Everyone agrees that there is, but it’s hard to know where to start. A lot of people are waiting for the government to pass laws or make decisions on their behalf to solve this problem, but the solution won’t come from the top, it will come from the bottom, from the citizen.

We have therefore developed a technology that enables citizens to understand their energy consumption, reduce it, lessen its environmental impact and produce as much renewable energy as possible at the point of consumption. To date, we have marketed 20,000 installations in France, enabling our customers to reduce their energy bills by over 70%.

What solution does Comwatt offer?

Our solution is a technology based on connected objects. Everyone has the Internet now, and everyone has electrical equipment. Comwatt is a technology that bridges the gap between the Internet and your equipment.

Our solution combines connected objects and software to measure and control your equipment in real time using artificial intelligence. Our solution is installed and marketed by a network of approved craftsmen.

What added value do you offer your customers?

Our technology makes it possible to shift consumption. If you put solar panels on your roof to reduce your bill, you’ll quickly realize that the solar panels aren’t going to produce electricity when you need it most. That’s because the solar panels are going to produce mainly in the middle of the day, when you’re not often at home.

If you decide to set up self-consumption with solar panels and you don’t use Comwatt technology, you’ll simply reduce your bill by 20%, which corresponds to recruitment between the time you produce and the time you consume.

With Comwatt technology, you modify the time at which your equipment consumes so that it consumes at the precise moment when the energy is produced, thereby reducing your bill by up to 70%.

Have you identified any competitors? If so, what are your competitive advantages?

We have several competitors in France who offer solutions similar to ours. We have a number of advantages.

Firstly, the Comwatt solution is the first on the market. For 7 years now, we’ve had 20,000 customers, and with this installed base, we have very good customer feedback and very good information from the field, which enables us to fine-tune our algorithms so as to be more and more efficient every day.

Secondly, we have developed a solution that is very easy to install and even easier to use. Because at Comwatt we believe that developing an efficient technology is a good start, but the most important thing is to develop a technology that can be accessed by as many people as possible.

Last but not least, our solution can be installed in any home in less than 30 minutes, whereas Comwatt’s competitors’ solutions take 2 to 5 hours. This is a very significant gain for the craftsman who has to install this technology.

What’s currently preventing Comwatt from completely filling its market?

The self-consumption market is colossal. There are currently around 70,000 installations in France, and the French Ministry of Energy has estimated that over 4 million sites will be equipped in 10 years’ time.

One of the challenges is to make consumers aware that solar energy has become very affordable. Connected object technology has also become very affordable, and together they can reduce electricity bills by 70%.

However, our biggest obstacle is undoubtedly regulation: the administrative blockages that are slowing down the energy transition.

There are several administrative bottlenecks:

Firstly, it’s becoming very difficult for even a serious craftsman to find ten-year insurance to cover work on his sites – it’s a real obstacle course. The constraints weighing on craftsmen are so numerous and so complex that many are discouraged from taking up solar energy.

Secondly, the energy transition is in direct competition with the incumbent energy suppliers, who make their living from energy sales. Indeed, if a customer decides to reduce consumption or produce energy on his roof, that’s as much energy less that the energy supplier will sell. The incumbent energy suppliers have therefore put in place a strategy of systematically blocking the deployment of the energy transition.

For example, do you know why only owners of single-family homes can reduce their electricity bills thanks to solar energy? Do you know why tenants and city dwellers are deprived of this reduction in the cost of producing solar-generated electricity? It’s a regulatory block, which is revolting.

French MPs passed a law allowing collective self-consumption over 2 years ago. What’s more, European deputies have also voted in favor of collective self-consumption in France for the past 18 months. But the incumbent operators don’t want this law to be applied, because it’s in the interests of the citizen but not in the interests of these operators.

In a nutshell:

• Your photovoltaic panels reduce your electricity bill by 20% without Comwatt and 70% with it.
• 30 minutes to install Comwatt sollution
• 20,000 installations in France
• A potential market of 4 million installations over 10 years
• Key challenges: informing consumers and combating administrative obstacles

For more information, please consult the press articles referenced on their website.

CommonWealth Fusion Systems (CFS) is the most-funded nuclear fusion developer: 1.8 billion euros. The technology being studied is the tokamak.

Nuclear fusion has been a hot topic for several decades. However, considerable progress has been made in recent years, and more and more companies are attempting to make fusion the next low-carbon energy source. Among these companies, the one that has received the most funding is CommonWealth Fusion System (or CFS).

Nuclear fusion CommonWealth Fusion Systems

CommonWealth Fusion System is developing nuclear fusion in a tokamak: deuterium and tritium nuclei are accelerated in a circular path (torroidal to be more precise: they twist) until they collide and fuse. For the time being, the main challenge is to succeed in producing more energy than we consume.

Before that can happen, however, the plasma must be confined. To this end, the company has focused on the development of newhigh-temperature superconductor (HTS) magnets , a stage which was completed in September 2021 with the scaled demonstration of the performance of a 20 Tesla magnet. The main challenge was to be able to accelerate the particles and, at the same time, confine the plasma by means of a magnetic field, so that it does not destroy the installation.

The next step is to build a demonstrator, the SPARC, which aims to produce more energy than it consumes (the point of ignition). CFS claims that its performance would be similar to ITER, but with a tokamak 10 times smaller.

History and financing of CommonWealth Fusion Systems

CFS is a spin-off from MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center founded in 2018 in Cambridge (Massachusetts, USA) with an initial investment of $50 million. It takes over the“Alcator-C-Mod” tokamak research conducted at MIT.

Funds soon flowed in:

• Its Series A financing round brings in $115m in June 2019, with ENI, Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Khosla Ventures among others.
• A Series A2 round brings in a further$84M in May 2020 from, among others, Temasek, Equinor and Devonshire Investors.
• In 2021, following the announcement of a successful experiment on its superconducting magnet, CFS raises $1.8 billion, in particular to finance the construction of 2 tokamaks: an experimental one, SPARC, and a commercial one, ARC. This round was led by Tiger Global Management and included new investors (notably Bill Gates; Coatue; DFJ Growth; Emerson Collective; Footprint Coalition; Google; JIMCO Technology Fund, part of JIMCO, the Jameel Family’s global investment arm; John Doerr; JS Capital; Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures) and historical investors (including Breakthrough Energy Ventures; The Engine; Eni; Equinor Ventures; Fine Structure Ventures; Future Ventures; Hostplus; Khosla Ventures; Lowercarbon; Moore Strategic Ventures; Safar Partners; Schooner Capital; Soros Fund Management LLC; Starlight Ventures; Temasek).

FAQ

Carbon Solar or CARBON is a French industrial company set up in 2022 to produce photovoltaic cells, their components (ingots and wafers) and their assemblies. Its ambition is to build a production plant by 2025, representing an investment of 1.5 billion euros.

Today, photovoltaic wafers and cells are almost exclusively produced in China, which exposes global photovoltaic production to geopolitical risks. CARBON proposes to produce them in France, as well as their assembly, by positioning itself on technologies of the future.

Carbon Solar (CARBON) technologies

CARBON will offer three types of product: it will produce photovoltaic cells and their components (ingots and wafers), and then assemble them into modules.

While P-type wafers dominate the market, N-type wafers will enable “a more rapid and dynamic evolution of cell technologies”. This is the type of wafers they have chosen.

The high-efficiency solar cell technology they have chosen is called TOPCon (Tunnel Oxide Passivated Contact). It offers “a better temperature coefficient, little or no degradation of performance due to LID and LeTID, and a better bifaciality coefficient” than its competitor, PERC, which is dominant today.

They are also developing cells using IBC (Interdigitated Back Contact) technology. Their advantages are “higher surface efficiency ( Wp/m²), better performance at low irradiance, greater resistance to hot spots and improved aesthetics.” (Carbon)

Financing and history of Carbon Solar

Carbon Solar or CARBON (the latter name is preferred) was founded in March 2022 in Roche-la-Molière (Loire)

In March 2023, they announced a gigafactory project in Fos-sur-mer that would be able to produce 5GW of photovoltaic cells and 3.5GW of modules. Construction is scheduled for completion by the end of 2025, and the project will represent an investment of 1.5 billion euros and directly create over 3,000 jobs. A further 4 billion euros are planned, with the aim of producing 20GW by 2030.

To find out more:

• Maxence Cordier’s reaction (energy engineer) https://twitter.com/maxcordiez/status/1631702430181203968
• The reaction of @Qraaal (electronics engineer ?) https://twitter.com/Qraaal/status/1632055392376111105

Carbios is a French biotechnology SME developing a process specifically for degrading PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastics. The company co-founded Carbiolice and is involved in the Whitecycle project.

Carbios: a French biotech SME

Carbios was founded in 2011 by Jean-Claude Lumaret and Philippe Pouletty (as director of Truffle Capital).

In 2012 , a research and development projectcalled “Thanaplast” was launched, involving several academic and industrial partners (CNRS, INRA, TWB, Université Poitiers, Deinove, Limagrain and Groupe Barbier).

In 2013, the company went public, raising 14.15 million euros.

In 2016, the operation of the sought-after enzymatic process was entrusted to a joint venture, created for the occasion by Carbios, Limagrain Ingrédients and the SPI “Société de projets industriels” investment fund operated by Bpifrance, Carbiolice.

Emannuel Ladent was appointed Managing Director in 2021, replacing founder Jean-Claude Lumaret, who retired.

The company now has 85 employees. Although the company is still in the R&D phase (-€6,145,600 in 2020), it still generates net sales (€1,346,100 in 2020).

Carbios technology: enzymes to treat plastic

The first bottle from enzymatic biorecycling of plastics will be produced in 2019. It is made entirely from purified terephthalic acid (rPTA). The first from textile waste arrives in 2020.

In 2020, scientific recognition comes: their process, co-authored by Carbios scientists, is published in Nature :

Tournier, V., Topham, C.M., Gilles, A. et al. An engineered PET depolymerase to break down and recycle plastic bottles. Nature 580, 216-219 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2149-4

Over a period of 10 hours, they succeeded in depolymerizing 90% of the exposed PET by hydrolase, with a productivity of 16.7g of terephthalate per liter of water per hour, at an enzyme concentration of 3mg per gram of PET (i.e. 0.3%).

This publication boosted its share price from around €6.9 on 31/03/2020 to a high of €59.36 on 15/02/2021.

Achievements and projects

On September 29, 2021, Carbios inaugurates its first industrial demonstrator to test its C-Zyme process.

Carbios is coordinating the ” LIFE cycle of PET” project with T.EN Zimmer GmbH (monomer repolymerization) and Deloitte (environmental performance analysis). In November 2021, the consortium was awarded a European grant of 3.3 million euros (including 3 million for Carbios).

The consortium’s scientific director, Professor Alain Marty , was awarded the Biocat prize in 2022 for outstanding achievements in biocatalysis. He received it at the tenth International Biocatalysis Congress in Hamburg.

The Lyon-based startup has just signed a partnership agreement with TechnipFMC, a major oil and gas group

Carbiolice is initially a joint venture between Carbios, Limagrain aliments and the SPI investment fund, managed by Bpifrance. Carbios is a Lyon-based SME set up in 2011 to develop the enzymatic process used by Carbiolice. It bought out Limagrain Ingrédients on October 8, 2020, and the SPI investment fund on June 3, 2021, for €17.9 million.

It is now Carbios’ subsidiary in the green chemistry sector.

It develops processes to improve the recycling of plastics, particularly those that pose the greatest problems due to their small size, fineness or the presence of other substances.

The Carbiolice product: Evanesto

Their first product is Evanesto inside. It’s an additive containing an enzyme that makes plant-based plastics, based on polylactic acid (PLA), 100% biodegradable and compostable. Until now, they were only biodegradable under industrial conditions.

The additive is included in the product at the design stage. Developed by Carbios, the enzyme is produced by Novozymes.

About the startup

Carbiolice was awarded “Europe’s most innovative industrial biotech” in 2019 by EuropaBio.

The company is a société par actions simpliée (simplified joint-stock company) registered with the Clermont Ferrand Registry under RCS number B 820 924 801 and is located Rue André Messager in Riom (63 200). Its Chairman is Carbios’ CEO, Emmanuel Ladent.