Intro

Good morning and TGIF! 🥳

The tipping point is near… To avoid a climate change catastrophe, it’s vital that we all pull together. Today’s cleantech start-up is at the forefront of the battle to save the environment, and create an efficient yet sustainable future.

Today’s update is 396 words, 2.0 minutes.

Snippets

🚜 High-tech AgBot: In its quest to enter the market for self-driving tractors, German agricultural machinery maker Claas has invested in a Dutch robotic start-up business. Farming is going futuristic! Dive Deeper →

🎬 Old movies, new ads: How product placements may soon be added to classic films. Dive Deeper →

👍 Social media: In a bid ‘to remove stress’, Instagram now lets users hide ‘Like’ counts. It’ rather unlikely to work. Dive Deeper →

🏥 Google Healthcare: Google will use patient data to develop healthcare algorithms for hospitals. Dive Deeper →

Startup of the Day

Earthbanc, Stockholm (Sweden)

Source: Earthbanc

Summary: Earthbanc offers green digital investment plans emphasizing effective climate change action. It’s one of the world’s first providers of Carbon & ESG (environmental social governance) reporting. In 2019, Earthbanc produced a yield of around 6%, while monetizing the carbon from 750k trees. Currently, the company serves around 23,000 active users through its B2B2C model.

What’s the deal: As we witness the Earth slowly approaching the environmental tipping point, it has become absolutely crucial that we all deal with climate change together.

At the forefront of this initiative are cleantech startups, motivated by the same vision of making society and the economy more efficient and sustainable.

Earthbanc is one of those startups, offering green digital investment plans emphasizing effective climate change action by developing and deploying advanced carbon offsets through corporate and financial market segments.

It’s one of the world’s first providers of Carbon & ESG reporting, and provides Sustainable Finance API services to financial institutions, banks, and asset managers. For its green cause, it has raised €700K in seed funding.

Why it matters: Whereas most banks offer sustainable loans in the form of solar loans or electric car financing, Earthbanc adopts a much deeper data-driven approach, allowing the automatic generation of sustainable loan opportunities.

Both ESG reporting and sustainable loans enable financial companies to detect loan opportunities for fleet enhancement, cutting costs and building retrofits for a more energy-efficient process, while reducing greenhouse gas emission.

Our take: While the road to a low-carbon future is long and hugely challenging, green fintech will play an essential role in achieving this goal.

But, as more fintech companies add ESG options, competition for Earthbanc is likely to prove expensive.