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The D3 Insights Blog

Insights from the front lines of climate innovation

35 Graduating Startups Driving Innovation: Cohort 23-2 and First Gigaton Captured

Today, we celebrate a major milestone with the graduation of 35 startups from Cohort 23-2 (our second cohort of 2023) and Third Derivatives' First Gigaton Captured (FGC) program...

Pioneering Clean Energy at Netflix — and Across the Entertainment Industry

When you sit down on the couch to stream your latest show, climate change and the urgency of the energy transition may be far from your mind — even when the latest season of Love..

RMI, Deep Science Ventures, and Third Derivative Team Up to Launch Mark1, Developing First of a Kind Climate Tech Projects

Nonprofit RMI, its climate tech accelerator Third Derivative, and deep tech venture creator Deep Science Ventures, alongside founding partner Builders Vision, created Mark1 to..

Navigating Innovation in Electrochemistry-Based Carbon Dioxide Removal: Key Insights From D3’s Latest Deep Dive

In 2019, there were only three companies using electrochemistry for carbon dioxide removal (CDR). As of March this year, that number had grown to at least 24, with some companies..

Ecosystem Spotlight: Reeddi’s Clean Energy-as-a-Service Solution

In Third Derivative’s “Ecosystem Spotlight” series, learn about the people, ideas, and companies that are—together—accelerating the rate of climate innovation to address the..

Third Derivative and RMI Launch Industrial Innovation Cohorts to Accelerate Decarbonization of Steel, Cement, and Chemicals

RMI and Third Derivative are launching the Industrial Innovation Cohorts initiative supported by a $2 million grant from The Lemelson Foundation.

Why Aren’t More Grid-Edge Startups Investable?

In today’s era of energy transition buzzwords, “decarbonization” is the belle of the ball. But increasingly, so is “decentralization.” Nowhere is this more apparent than within..

Driving Window Innovation to Combat Climate Change

From urban construction trends to aesthetic appeal and the many benefits of natural light indoors, windows are dominating more wall space in buildings than ever. And this global..

Powering the Future of Entertainment

Third Derivative announces our newest cohort alongside Netflix and the Walt Disney Company in the Clean Mobile Power Initiative, aimed at accelerating the deployment of..

Introducing the Clean Mobile Power Initiative

Entertainment industry leaders, including Netflix and The Walt Disney Company, have made a bold pledge to approximately halve their carbon emissions by 2030. This commitment will..

Climate Tech’s Four Valleys of Death and Why We Must Build a Bridge

For such technologies, it’s an especially challenging path from idea to first product to broad deployment. Solar PV, wind, or electric vehicles experienced long and arduous..

The Clean Mobile Power Initiative Adds Key Entertainment Industry Equipment Supplier Partners

We are excited to share that entertainment industry equipment suppliers, The MBS Group, Sunbelt Rentals, and Quixote by Sunset Studios, have joined the Clean Mobile Power..

Introducing Third Derivative’s Cohort 24-1

About Cohort 24-1 RMI’s global climate tech accelerator, Third Derivative, was built to accelerate the rate of climate innovation. Cohort 24-1, our tenth cohort to date, helps us..

The Power of 83: A Beacon of Hope for Climate and Humanity

The past year was, at times, a rollercoaster of emotion related to climate progress and pitfalls. Every week seemed to bring conflicting messages of, somehow, both hope and..

Really cool roofs: How breakthrough materials can save lives, carbon, and money in a warming world

As this year's scorching northern hemisphere summer comes to an end, we cannot let it recede from view. With every possibility that the summer of 2024—and each summer beyond..

Top Entertainment Leaders Come Together to Develop Zero-Emissions Power Through Clean Mobile Power Initiative

Denver, CO – June 22, 2023 - Today, entertainment and studio leaders Netflix and The Walt Disney Company launched the Clean Mobile Power Initiative with the participation and..

Hydrogen Produced from Methane Pyrolysis: Key Considerations for Investors

As we look to a net-zero future, we believe that clean hydrogen is a promising energy source. Traditionally hard-to-abate sectors, such as steel, petrochemicals, shipping,..

Reality Check: Silicon Valley Bank placed some risky bets, but climate tech wasn’t one of them

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has brought out the doomsayers. The demise of the bank, which counted hundreds of climate tech startups among its customers, has raised..

D3 Announces Its First Cohort of 2023

After a landmark year in 2022 for global momentum in climate commitments, legislation, and investments, Third Derivative (D3) is excited to start 2023 by welcoming 15 impactful..

Spotlight: TekUncorked Bringing Reliability and Resilience to India’s Grid

In Third Derivative’s “Ecosystem Spotlight” series, learn about the people, ideas, and companies that are—together—accelerating the rate of climate innovation to address the..

Low-Carbon Cement: Key Considerations for Investors

Concrete is one of the planet’s most used materials, second only to water. No other material can match its durability, cost, or flexibility — it plays an irreplaceable role in our..

D3 Announces Two New Cohorts, Including First Focused Group on CO2 Removal

As part of our effort to move the needle—and the market—on climate tech, Third Derivative (D3) is proud to announce Cohorts 22-2 and 22-3. Alongside a general cohort (22-2)..

Bringing Low-Carbon Cement To Market

Cement is quite literally the glue that holds much of the modern world together. It is the most widely used industrial commodity today, and the world consumes about half a ton of..

Celebrating Cohort 417: D3's Inaugural Startups Move On

Congratulations are in order for Third Derivative’s inaugural group of trailblazing entrepreneurs—Cohort 417—who recently became our first cohort to make the transition to D3..

Three Pathways to Innovation in Low-Carbon Cement

Concrete and cement have helped form the complex and varied built environment of the 21st century. The problem is, the process of producing cement also produces large amounts of..

Ecosystem Spotlight: The long-duration energy storage solutions we need now

Solar and wind energy may be practically limitless—but we’re still limited in the ability to decarbonize until we can effectively store surplus energy for use at night, and when..

Three Approaches to Ocean CDR

In the 200-plus years since the industrial revolution began, human-caused carbon emissions have raised the acidity of the surface layers of our oceans by a whopping 30 percent...

Announcing Cohort 22-1

Comprised of 16 startups working on some of the most important emissions categories, today we're welcoming Cohort 22-1 into D3's portfolio as our third official cohort.

How (And Why) We Measure Climate Impact

Many new and promising climate technology startups are emerging today, but investors do not yet have all the tools they need to assess the impact of those startups.

The Future Is Electric: BasiGo’s Vision for Bus Transit in Africa

In Third Derivative’s “Ecosystem Spotlight” series, learn about the people, ideas, and companies accelerating the clean future, together. Today, we’re featuring Jit Bhattacharya,..

Announcing First Gigaton Captured

We’re thrilled to announce that Third Derivative (D3) is joining forces with the preeminent Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust to find, fund, and scale the most..

Three Areas of Innovation for Direct Air Capture Startups to Seize This Decade

Direct air capture, or DAC, is a fledgling technology that essentially reverses that process—capturing CO2 out of the air so it can be used or returned underground to be stored..

A Look at the Philippines’ Clean Energy Ecosystem

The Philippines is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change. Sea level rise is three to four times faster in this island nation than the global average,..

Why Deploying Climate Tech at Scale Is So Hard

The science is clear. To combat climate change, we need to deploy trillions of dollars a year into new, gigaton-scale climate solutions. Some of these solutions involve existing,..

Why We Need Faster Climate Tech Innovation

In 2014, Reinventing Fire mapped a path to greater than 80 percent reductions in carbon emissions, at a cost $5 trillion cheaper than business as usual, while requiring “no new..

Innovating to Solve Two Crises at Once

COVID-19 is a cataclysm of epic scale that has disrupted life as we know it globally.