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The 12 companies awarded by BNEF in 2021 for their pro-climate innovations
The winners of its 2021 BNEF Pioneers award for companies leading the fight against climate change
BloombergNEF (BNEF) announced the twelve winners of its BNEF Pioneers 2021, a programme launched more than a decade ago that awards recently-established companies that are pursuing important initiatives to lower carbon emissions.
The winners have been recognised for their leadership in transformative technologies aimed at optimising long-haul freight, producing sustainable materials, monitoring greenhouse gases, valuing carbon sinks, and reducing energy use and chemical products.
For 2021 BNEF set 3 different challenges and selected 3 winners for each challenge.
1) Convoy, with offices in Seattle and Atlanta, provides a digital freight network, moving thousands of trucks each day in the United States through its optimised connected network of carriers. This saves shippers money and eliminates carbon waste.
2) Nautilus Labs is a New York-based information technology company that uses artificial intelligence to make ocean commerce more efficient. Its predictive decision support solution is driving sustainability and profitability in global maritime shipping.
3) Ontruck is a Madrid-based digital transport company that combines automation and machine learning to eliminate waste in the logistics process. It offers an efficient and low-carbon solution to move loads, helping shippers to reduce transport costs and carriers to increase earnings while removing carbon emissions from empty trucks.
The winning companies in the second challenge are:
1) Cemvita Factory (USA), which designs microbes that use carbon dioxide or methane as the raw material to produce carbon-less chemical products for industry. These chemicals are used by petroleum, gas, chemical, mining and aerospace companies in an attempt to reduce their carbon footprint by applying nature-inspired technologies.
2) Pyrowave (Canada), which electrifies chemical processes in the circular economy of plastics by using microwave technology to provide the chemical industry with recycled raw materials that are drop-in replacements for virgin chemical products.
3) Via Separations, a Massachusetts-based company that is focusing its efforts on the energy consumption wasted in the United States each year for the chemical separation process by electrifying energy-intensive stages in chemical production.
The companies awarded in the third category are:
1) Pachama, a California-based company that measures carbon captured in forests through machine learning with satellite imaging. The company brings latest-generation remote sensing technology, satellite imaging, and artificial intelligence to the forest carbon world to enable conservation and restoration of forests on a wide scale.
2) Planet (USA), which provides global satellite imaging and geospatial solutions to manage risks in various sectors, such as agriculture, forestry, energy and natural resources, in a better way.
3) QLM Technology (United Kingdom), which offers its quantum technology to give an understanding of greenhouse emissions in a convenient, accurate and scalable way using a system of cameras that visualise and quantify emissions as they occur.
“This year we selected three specific areas – heavy-duty transport, materials and the climate – where BNEF believes technology must play an important role in decarbonisation. For the last decade, the BNEF Pioneers award has been essential in highlighting exciting innovations in solar, wind, storage, smart grid and electric vehicles, to name a few. By focusing on specific themes each year where technology innovation is sorely needed, we hope that the competition will continue to shine a light on important, pioneering innovations”, commented Claire Curry, selection committee co-chair and head of digital industry research at BloombergNEF.
The winners have been recognised for their leadership in transformative technologies aimed at optimising long-haul freight, producing sustainable materials, monitoring greenhouse gases, valuing carbon sinks, and reducing energy use and chemical products.
For 2021 BNEF set 3 different challenges and selected 3 winners for each challenge.
Challenge 1: managing and optimising long-haul freight
The following companies were awarded in this category:1) Convoy, with offices in Seattle and Atlanta, provides a digital freight network, moving thousands of trucks each day in the United States through its optimised connected network of carriers. This saves shippers money and eliminates carbon waste.
2) Nautilus Labs is a New York-based information technology company that uses artificial intelligence to make ocean commerce more efficient. Its predictive decision support solution is driving sustainability and profitability in global maritime shipping.
3) Ontruck is a Madrid-based digital transport company that combines automation and machine learning to eliminate waste in the logistics process. It offers an efficient and low-carbon solution to move loads, helping shippers to reduce transport costs and carriers to increase earnings while removing carbon emissions from empty trucks.
Challenge 2: advancing materials and techniques for sustainable products
The winning companies in the second challenge are:
1) Cemvita Factory (USA), which designs microbes that use carbon dioxide or methane as the raw material to produce carbon-less chemical products for industry. These chemicals are used by petroleum, gas, chemical, mining and aerospace companies in an attempt to reduce their carbon footprint by applying nature-inspired technologies.
2) Pyrowave (Canada), which electrifies chemical processes in the circular economy of plastics by using microwave technology to provide the chemical industry with recycled raw materials that are drop-in replacements for virgin chemical products.
3) Via Separations, a Massachusetts-based company that is focusing its efforts on the energy consumption wasted in the United States each year for the chemical separation process by electrifying energy-intensive stages in chemical production.
Challenge 3: monitoring and understanding our changing planet
The companies awarded in the third category are:
1) Pachama, a California-based company that measures carbon captured in forests through machine learning with satellite imaging. The company brings latest-generation remote sensing technology, satellite imaging, and artificial intelligence to the forest carbon world to enable conservation and restoration of forests on a wide scale.
2) Planet (USA), which provides global satellite imaging and geospatial solutions to manage risks in various sectors, such as agriculture, forestry, energy and natural resources, in a better way.
3) QLM Technology (United Kingdom), which offers its quantum technology to give an understanding of greenhouse emissions in a convenient, accurate and scalable way using a system of cameras that visualise and quantify emissions as they occur.
“This year we selected three specific areas – heavy-duty transport, materials and the climate – where BNEF believes technology must play an important role in decarbonisation. For the last decade, the BNEF Pioneers award has been essential in highlighting exciting innovations in solar, wind, storage, smart grid and electric vehicles, to name a few. By focusing on specific themes each year where technology innovation is sorely needed, we hope that the competition will continue to shine a light on important, pioneering innovations”, commented Claire Curry, selection committee co-chair and head of digital industry research at BloombergNEF.
