Green Capital - June 24, 2024
Financial news in environmental markets.
Green Capital is a daily series dedicated to tracking capital flows and emerging opportunities in environmental markets. Notable events include green investment deals, start-up fundraising, and new public listings.
Deals/Fundraising
Aira, a Swedish clean tech firm, plans to invest €300M to transform a former Volvo factory in Wroclaw, Poland, into a facility capable of producing 500,000 heat pumps annually.
Yahua Industrial Group has secured a new agreement with Tesla to supply lithium carbonate, a critical material for electric vehicle batteries, from 2025 to 2027. This agreement builds on their existing contract where Yahua has been supplying Tesla with 63,000 to 88,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide from 2021 to 2025, valued at $880M, recently extended to cover up to 301,000 tonnes.
Heirloom has announced a major investment in Louisiana, planning to establish two Direct Air Capture (DAC) facilities. These plants will collectively remove nearly 320,000 tonnes of CO2 annually. The first facility will commence construction later this year and is expected to remove 17,000 tonnes of CO2 annually starting in 2026. The second facility, part of the U.S. Department of Energy's Project Cypress, aims to remove 300,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, with its first phase operational in 2027, and is eligible for up to $600M in funding.
O.C.O Technology and Petronor have announced a joint venture to develop a €20M facility in the Port of Bilbao, Spain. This facility will be the first in continental Europe to produce carbon-negative manufactured limestone aggregate using O.C.O’s Accelerated Carbonation Technology (ACT). Construction will begin later this year, with the plant expected to be operational by early 2026.
SolarEdge Technologies (SEDG) announced plans to offer $300M in Convertible Senior Notes due 2029. Additionally, SolarEdge plans to grant the initial purchasers a 13-day option to buy up to an additional $45M of the Notes under the same terms and conditions.
Macquarie Asset Management has finalized a $332M deal to acquire a 49.9% stake in Hydro Rein, the renewables development division of Norwegian aluminum group Hydro. Hydro Rein, which has 8.4GW of projects under development in the Nordic markets and Brazil, has already secured 5TWh of offtake agreements.
Australian miner Paladin Energy has announced its acquisition of Canada's Fission Uranium Corp for approximately $833.03M. The deal involves Paladin offering 0.1076 of its shares for each share of Fission Uranium. Fission's board has recommended that shareholders approve the transaction, which will see them owning approximately 24% of Paladin once the deal is finalized.
Start-Up Investments
Net Zero Company has secured $5.5M in Seed funding from investors including Oilinvest, VARO Energy, and SilviCarbon. The company uses blockchain technology to create Carbon Removal Tokens (CRT), which provide transparency, traceability, and security for verified carbon credits.
New Public Listings or M&A
BluSky Carbon (BSKY.CN), a startup specializing in carbon removal solutions is now public and raised $5.75M by issuing 11.5 million units at $0.50 per unit. BluSky Carbon's technology integrates biomass pyrolysis, carbon mineralization, and direct air capture processes into a single optimized system, featuring a pyrolysis unit named “Vulcan” that converts organic waste into biochar and surplus syngas for electricity production.
NANO Nuclear Energy (NNE) has announced the acquisition of novel annular linear induction pump (ALIP) technology from Carlos O. Maidana, PhD, of Maidana Research. This technology, crucial for small nuclear reactor cooling and heat transfer, will be further developed under an SBIR Phase III Award initiative.