Looking back at The Clean Fight's first cohort
In 2020, The Clean Fight launched its growth stage accelerator to help speed the energy transition for all New Yorkers. We set out to support companies with scale-ready solutions to decarbonize New York State’s building stock, and are impressed and excited by what the cohort has achieved in just a year.
Since the nine companies in our cohort completed the program in April, we have many reasons to be immensely proud of them. They have collectively raised over $100M in funding, and The Clean Fight has awarded the cohort and additional $900,000 in grants. As of today, the cohort has received 13 letters of interest or are in advanced development discussions with corporate partners, 2 projects are underway, and 4 additional projects have been enabled through The Clean Fight grant program. The companies are not only doing business with customer partners but also each other. Two sets of cohort companies have official partnership agreements, with one having already achieved their first co-sale.
Since graduating from The Clean Fight’s program, here is what some of our inaugural cohort has been up to:
Brooklyn-based BlocPower, a startup that replaces heating and cooling systems with more efficient heat pumps in financially underserved communities, is expanding its team of experts with 5 new employees. This comes at a time when the company has undertaken an initiative to retrofit more than 1,000 buildings in disadvantaged communities in New York, won the contract to manage NYC’s $37M employment program to upskill individuals from underserved communities to work in the clean energy sector, and won the City of Ithaca’s contract to decarbonize all of its buildings, the U.S’s first large-scale city electrification initiative.
CarbonCure Technologies, which helps reduce the carbon impact of concrete by introducing recycled carbon dioxide into fresh concrete, recently won NRG COSIA’s the Carbon XPrize and signed its first New York City-based concrete producers, Gotham Ready Mix and Superior Block Corporation. The company also became the first carbon removal company to join Amazon and Global Optimism’s Climate Pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2040. Learn more about CarbonCure CEO Rob Niven and why he started the company in this great micro-doc by Pique Action.
Our first overseas graduate of The Clean Fight, Malaysia-based iHandal Energy Solutions uses its proprietary technology to allow for hyper-efficient temperature control of buildings by capturing wasted heat and recycling it for heating or cooling. The team was recently recognized as one of the companies on Forbes’ Asia 100 to Watch list.
North Carolina-born Phase Change has created unique heat storage materials to keep buildings at a consistent temperature. Phase Change recently opened its first office in Brooklyn’s Newlab, a partner of The Clean Fight, which provides space for entrepreneurs, engineers and inventors to further develop their technology solutions.
Radiator Labs, Peak Power, Enertiv, Peak Power and 75F are also making major New York moves: Radiator Labs is doubling their employee base in New York, Enertiv is on a hiring spree for electronic technicians to fulfil its growth in orders, and both Peak Power and 75F made their first NY-based hires. And enVerid, who offers a unique energy efficient indoor air quality solution, has been directly integrated into market-leading cooling company Daikin’s systems.
Listen to 75F CEO Deepinder Singh discuss how and why he's making dumb buildings smarter.
We are excited to watch these companies continue to make their mark in New York and beyond!
What’s next?
We are soon to announce our second cohort, focused on decarbonizing New York’s non-luxury commercial and residential buildings. These growth-stage companies will be provided with tailored support services, high-touch matchmaking with our Customer and Capital partners, insider insight into the New York market, and the ability to apply for grant awards of up to $250,000 to fund resulting partnership agreements.
We’ll be announcing the members of Cohort 2 in the near future. We’re thrilled to continue supporting startups that are designing climate solutions to make New York a more sustainable and equitable city for all.