The Great Climate Opportunity

Report by Space Capital with support from Silicon Valley Bank

®

The Great Climate Opportunity

2The Great Climate Opportunity ®

Executive Summary

Temperature extremes, droughts, wildfires, and destructive weather events have become more frequent and severe.

Satellite data enables us to understand, address, and solve the most pressing challenges, but also takes advantage of the greatest opportunities of our time. Earth science today is best measured from space and is responsible for 99% of accurate weather forecasts1.

1 World Economic Forum, Six Ways Space Technologies Benefit Life on Earth, www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GFC_Six_ways_space_technologies_2020.pdf

2 “Major Risk or Rosy Opportunity.” CDP, 2018, www.cdp.net/en/research/global-reports/global-climate-change-report-2018/climate-report-risks-and-opportunities.

Businesses estimate that $970 billion in assets are at risk, with over half of these losses likely to materialize the next 5 years2. Nearly every major industry today will need to understand the climate risks associated with business assets, operations, and supply chains. Large public and private businesses are increasingly motivated by customers, competitors, and shareholders to establish an environmental governance strategy and monitor their emissions. Companies that are able to lead through this changing climate may find a significant market opportunity and a new competitive advantage.

The commoditization of launch services, satellite components, and cloud computing have lowered the barriers to entry for entrepreneurs. A wave of companies have emerged to provide services to organizations for the monitoring and management of their emissions footprint. With a growing satellite data infrastructure, entrepreneurs can focus on building highly specialized applications without having to develop their own hardware. As advancements in space-based technology make access to climate-relevant data more widely available, early warning systems will help to detect and manage risk.


3 Silicon Valley Bank, 2021, A Climate Tech Path to Sustainable Growth, www.svb.com/trends-insights/reports/future-of-climate-tech

Investment in space technology is essential in formulating a climate thesis and provides a unique vantage point across adjacent industries including agriculture, energy, finance, insurance, logistic, IT, and weather. In the same way that every company today is a technology company, the need for persistent global monitoring and coordination will see every company of tomorrow be a space company.

Space technology plays a foundational role in identifying climate markers and deploying a global network to support a transparent, measured, and accountable global climate market.

Climate tech investing is on track for a record year with companies potentially raising $50+ billion in equity financing in 20213.

Executive Summary

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Image: SVB Climate Tech 2.0 Investment 2Q 2021


Building the Foundation

Investing in Emissions Mitigation

Accelerating Open Innovation

Unlocking Adaptation Solutions

Conclusion

Primary Research

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Contents

The Great Climate Opportunity



“As we walk its surface, it seems solid and substantial enough, almost infinite as it extends flatly in all directions. But from space there is no hint of ruggedness to it; smooth as a billiard ball, it seems delicately poised in its circular journey around the Sun, and above all it seems fragile.4”

The first time humanity looked back at the Earth, our perspective of our home changed. Apollo 11 Astronaut, Michael Collins, reflected on his experience while orbiting the moon:

4 Kettley, Sebastian. “Michael Collins’ Touching Description of Earth from the Moon: ‘Fragile above All’.” Express.co.uk, Express.co.uk, 29 Apr. 2021

Image: Earth from the International Space Stations

From the beginning of our explorations beyond Earth, scientists recognized that space provides a unique vantage point to study our planet.



The United States launched Vanguard 1 in March 1958 and became the first satellite to produce upper atmospheric density measurements.

The Landsat constellation began with the launch of Landsat 1 in 1972 and continues to this day, providing the world’s longest continuously acquired collection of space-based land remote sensing data6.

5 “Taking a Global Perspective on Earth’s Climate.” NASA Science, NASA, 4 Feb. 2020, climate.nasa.gov/nasa_science/history/.6 The National Academies Press, Assessment of Impediments to Interagency Collaboration on Space and Earth Science Missions, https://www.nap.edu/read/13042/chapter/4#17.7 The National Academies Press, Assessment of Impediments to Interagency Collaboration on Space and Earth Science Missions, www.nap.edu/read/13042/chapter/1.8 Straub, Crista L., et al. “Economic Valuation of Landsat Imagery.” Open-File Report, 2019, doi:10.3133/ofr20191112. https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/article/usgs-report-updates-

economic-value-landsat-archive.

When the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created in July 1958, it was given the role of developing technology for space observations5, but there was no specific mention of a focus on Earth science. The Weather Bureau (now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) had been conducting Earth science research since the late 1800s and were seeking new technology to push the field forward. In the 1960s NASA began to develop observational technology in partnership with the Weather Bureau and the USGS, focusing the underlying scientific measurement requirements to inform technology development.

Although it was initiated as a research activity, data from the Landsat system soon proved capable of serving a range of applications in areas including agriculture, forestry, mapping, geology, hydrology, coastal resources, and environmental monitoring7. Landsat monitors Earth’s carbon on land, such assessments can help governments set and implement land use and climate policies. It tracks the key indications of a warming climate, including the retreat of most of the world’s mountain glaciers and ice caps, the disintegration of polar ice shelves, and declines in coral reefs. It was also used to observe plant growth and harmful factors such as insect infestations, the erosion of coastal wetlands, and overirrigation. The decades of imagery Landsat produced not only reveals changes in the past climate and agricultural patterns across the globe, but they also offer a baseline to future change detection. The potential economic value of Landsat imagery led to a plan to transfer control of Landsat operations and data distribution from NASA to the private sector, but this approach proved premature given the infancy of the market and high costs associated with the data, storage, and computation. While the Landsat commercialization efforts were abandoned in the mid-1990s, the underlying data was leveraged by numerous businesses, governments, and scientific organizations.

Recent studies estimated the annual economic value generated from the Landsat archive at about $3.45B in 20178, growing from $2.19B in 2011.



GPS radio occultation (GPS-RO) is another example of Earth observation first tested in 1995 via OrbView 1.

The relatively small 68 kg satellite applied a technique that involved receiving a signal from a GPS satellite to provide an near instantaneous depiction of the atmospheric state. As the GPS signal passes through the atmosphere, it gets occulted or refracted along the way. The magnitude of the refraction is dependent on the temperature and water vapor concentration in the atmosphere. GPS-RO observations make routine weather forecasts more accurate and significantly improve predictions of natural disasters and other costly environmental events. In the case of hurricane prediction, experiments show that GPS-RO can play a key role in reducing average track and intensity errors and this would allow public safety officials to act earlier and with more precision to evacuate and protect coastal areas. GPS-RO has also shown the potential to enhance regional forecasts for heavy precipitation from non-tropical storms, especially downwind of areas where traditional observations are limited, allowing forecasters to better plan for severe flooding and related impacts. As demand for GPS-RO data has increased, public funding has declined, creating opportunities for commercial providers to step in. Government agencies including NOAA supported the development of the commercial market for GPS-RO data, awarding two-year contracts9 (each with a $23 million ceiling) to GeoOptics and Spire Global in November 2020.

Image: Comparison of Landsat imagery over time

GPS-RO is a great example of a space-based technology, designed to address a scientific need, that later became the foundation of the growing weather forecasting market.

9 “NOAA Awards First Commercial RO Contracts Supporting Operational Weather Forecasting.” Office of Space Commerce, 20 Nov. 2020, www.space.commerce.gov/noaa-awards-first-commercial-ro-contracts-supporting-operational-weather-forecasting/.



The legacy of Landsat and GPS-RO is that over half of essential climate variables fundamental to Earth science today can only be measured from space and over 99% of accurate weather forecasts come from space10.

Both Landsat and GPS-RO have provided us with a consistent space-based record of key climate change variables that details their impact on Earth’s landscapes, from the growth and loss of carbon storing forests to the influence of regional land use decisions.

Image: Landsat 3 being built by GE Aerospace

These observations have made our forecasts and predictions significantly more accurate and provided us invaluable context for planning and mitigation strategies.10 World Economic Forum, Six Ways Space

Technologies Benefit Life on Earth, www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GFC_Six_ways_space_technologies_2020.pdf.



Governments are taking a more active role towards climate goals with 54% of emissions covered by policy, regulation, or government-stated position.

Between 2005 and 2015, multiple countries claimed to remove significant excess carbon dioxide, which created uncertainty around the climate accounting system currently in place.

The pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has passed a key inflection point.

11 Eavis, Peter, and Clifford Krauss. “What’s Really Behind Corporate Promises on Climate Change?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 22 Feb. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/business/energy-environment/corporations-climate-change.html.

12 Paynter, Ben. “This $70 Million Fund Aims to Bring off-Grid Energy to Africa.” Fast Company, Fast Company, 17 Apr. 2019, www.fastcompany.com/90336454/this-70-million-fund-aims-to-bring-off-grid-energy-to-africa.

13 Grassi, G., Stehfest, E., Rogelj, J. et al. Critical adjustment of land mitigation pathways for assessing countries’ climate progress. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11, 425–434 (2021)., https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01033-6https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01033-6.

Despite these positive social, political, and economic trends, the data underpinning this progress is self-reported and inaccurate.

Financial institutions are using their influence to drive change at the corporate level with the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, stating its ambition is to achieve net zero emissions across their entire assets under management by 205011. Carbon trading markets are forming to create financial incentives to reduce climate pollutants. Renewables and storage have realized economies of scale and technological advances that are now cost-competitive and provide a compelling solution across both developed and emerging economies12.

Scientists found a gap of 5.5 billion tons per year between individual nations’ inventory accounting and emissions calculated by independent models13. A lack of direct measurement is preventing climate markets from scaling. Today that is changing with more than 1,000 Earth observation satellites on orbit carrying sensors that measure different sections of the visible, infrared, and microwave regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Low cost tools now exist to capture, process, and interpret the vast amounts of data required to form a baseline set of observations to validate and coordinate mitigation efforts. A wave of companies has emerged to provide services that improve understanding, monitoring, and management of an organization’s emissions footprint. The market is supported by customer adoption in agriculture, energy, IT, transportation, and waste management, to name a few. Large public and private businesses are increasingly motivated by customers, competitors, and shareholders to establish an environmental governance strategy and monitor their emissions.


GHGSat14, a Montreal based company, provides broad-based emissions monitoring services.


Beyond the technical achievements, GHGSat has sought to build a solution in partnership with the business and scientific communities.

The company’s satellites are the first in the world capable of measuring air emissions from targeted industrial facilities.

The company’s data was shared with the Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling Group at Harvard University, from 2016 to 2018, to analyze and publish research on the underlying results. Their findings verify the potential of space-based monitoring of methane emissions from specific sources15. GHGSat is supporting the International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) to aggregate, analyze, and validate their data alongside the Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) MethaneSat, NASA, and others. The company is also working closely with the energy and mining industries to develop a commercially viable product. The Oil & Gas Climate Initiative (OCGI) is a $1+ billion fund created by the CEOs of Oil and Gas companies to take practical action on climate change. OGCI is a strategic investor in GHGSat. The underlying oil and gas companies supporting OGCI (Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil, BP, Occidental, Chevron, Shell, etc.) form the initial customers for GHGSat and provide key insights on how to drive customer adoption beyond regulatory requirements. Schlumberger, an oilfield services company, is also a strategic investor and supports product development within drilling, completions, and production. In October 2020, GHGSat launched its first product called PULSE, a free global map of methane concentration data that is updated weekly. In June 2021, the company launched SPECTRA, a platform to help customers optimize their methane emission management activities and accelerate decision-making using asset-specific emission indicators. Stephane Germain, CEO and Co-founder, ultimately envisions his work helping to shift the financial markets to account for a country or individual company’s emissions footprint in their cost of capital.

14 Space Capital portfolio company15 Daniel J. Varon, Daniel J. Jacob, Dylan Jervis, and

Jason McKeever. 7/16/2020. “Quantifying Time-Averaged Methane Emissions from Individual Coal Mine Vents with GHGSat-D Satellite Observations.” Environ. Sci. Technol., 54, 16, Pp. 10246-10253., https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/acmg/publications/quantifying-time-averaged-methane-emissions-individual-coal-mine-vents-ghgsat-d.



Restoring forests, applying land management techniques, and reviving our oceans are some undervalued solutions in responding to a changing climate.

16 Npr. “Planet Money: Emission Impossible on Apple Podcasts.” Apple Podcasts, 7 May 2021, podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?i=1000520721785.

To-date, financial markets have incentivized natural resource extraction over the latent value in preserving these resources. The rise of the voluntary carbon market has brought new attention (and funding) to forest preservation, but the technology utilized to verify and monitor natural carbon sinks including plants, the ocean, and soil has relied heavily on complex in-person assessments and certifications16. With a growing number of satellite constellations capturing optical, SAR, and multispectral data, entrepreneurs can focus on building highly specialized applications without having to build their own hardware.

“We work directly with sources of emission to understand pain points and solve the problem. There should be a return on investment for managing externalities, the financial motivation is critical from a commercial perspective.”

Stephane Germain, CEO at GHGSat

Image: Oil and gas facilities in the Permian Basin captured by GHGSat-C2 - CH4 measurement


Pachama, a San Francisco based company, seeks to address these market inefficiencies.


Their technology is built using allometric equations estimating the biomass and carbon storage of individual trees.

The company is building a modern forest carbon market using machine learning and satellite imagery to quantify carbon captured by forests at scale while providing persistent monitoring of the underlying assets.

The company uses historical human verified data to train algorithms that they correlate to geospatial field plots and estimate the carbon storage from an image. One key indicator is the height of the trees and both Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and LIDAR play important roles in unlocking this information. There are now hundreds of satellite data providers with multiple sensors, high revisit rates, and more flexible pricing making Pachama’s solution viable. The company has raised capital from Amazon and Breakthrough Energy Ventures, providing early customer traction within the tech sector and tapping into an influential network for growth. Diego Saez-Gil, CEO and co-founder, ultimately envisions his work will unlock a $50+ billion carbon credit market17 and will help validate and underwrite new restoration projects.

17 Blaufelder, Christopher, et al. “A Blueprint for Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets to Meet the Climate Challenge.” McKinsey & Company, McKinsey & Company, 19 Feb. 2021, www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/our-insights/a-blueprint-for-scaling-voluntary-carbon-markets-to-meet-the-climate-challenge#.



Declining soil health is a global issue that is contributing to climate change and the food security crisis.

18 “Soil Fertility and Erosion.” Weltagrarbericht, www.globalagriculture.org/report-topics/soil-fertility-and-erosion.html.19 Robinson, D. A., et al. “On the Value of Soil Resources in the Context of Natural Capital and Ecosystem Service Delivery.” Soil Science Society of America Journal, vol. 78, no. 3, 2014,

pp. 685–700., doi:10.2136/sssaj2014.01.0017.20 “Natural Resources Conservation Service.” Soil Formation | NRCS Washington, www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/wa/soils/?cid=nrcs144p2_036333/21 Cho, Renee. “Can Soil Help Combat Climate Change?” State of the Planet, 6 Feb. 2019, news.climate.columbia.edu/2018/02/21/can-soil-help-combat-climate-change/

The annual loss of soil due to erosion is around 24 billion tons per year18 that calculates to $480 billion of financial loss each year19. Increasingly extreme weather events lead to greater probability of losing more top soil and in one rain event, the loss of an inch of topsoil can take 100 years to rebuild20. It is estimated that globally there has already been a 50-70% loss of organic carbon from agricultural soils21.

“This is the first time in humanity’s history, we can look back and see ourselves from space and understand the interconnectedness and interdependence.”

Diego Saez-Gil, CEO at Pachama

Image: On the left, a LiDAR point cloud where warmer colors represent height. In the middle, a point cloud generated by rendering 2D imagery in 3D. On the right, each tree has been segmented and assigned a unique color.


Regrow22, a New Hampshire-based company, provides monitoring, reporting, and verification tools for the agriculture supply chain.


These reports can be delivered through email, as an alert, as application files, with API access, and even as a macro-level report across an entire field, watershed, county, or region.

The company draws valuable insights from satellite data using proprietary crop and soil process models to provide customers with reports regarding crop trends, stress detection, Nitrogen Rx, sustainability practices verification, and soil Carbon/Nitrogen changes/stocks.

Critically, Regrow’s products have proven their value across the supply chain, assisting input providers, farmer & farmer orgs, co-ops & retailers, food processors, CPG’s, and consumers. The company raised early capital from the CSIRO Innovation Fund that supported the company with proprietary crop models developed by the Australian government. M12 Ventures backed the company as Microsoft expands its cloud services into the agriculture and space industries. Anastasia Volkova, CEO and co-founder, ultimately envisions her work will drive the next generation of sustainable, profitable, precision farming.

22 Space Capital portfolio company



Broadly accessible satellite data, low-cost cloud computing, and AI are creating compelling investment opportunities that help governments to address bad actors, businesses to improve operations, and the financial sector to price emission externalities. While tools to mitigate emissions are essential to slowing the effects of climate change, we need new tools to forecast and predict future climate outcomes and manage risk in an uncertain future.

“Transforming agriculture systems is the single most important thing we can do to combat climate change.”

Anastasia Volkova, CEO at Regrow

Image: FluroSense residue/tillage management over the last 10+ years from field to state level



For example, scientists know that forests will play a significant role in how we achieve our carbon goals. But no one can answer how many trees there are in the United States24.

Despite the progress to measure and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, the climate science community lacks the observations to further our understanding of, and ability to forecast Earth’s systems23.

A new era of scientific measurement and discovery is just getting started driven by the commoditization of launch services, satellite components, and cloud computing. Corporations, universities, philanthropic organizations, and public-private partnerships are developing space-based platforms to conduct scientific research and address the data gaps.

Atmosphere

Upper atmosphere, T, P, XH2O

Methane, O2, CO2

Physical human footprint (roads, buildings, ships

etc)

Limited data

Changes in/on the land surface: orography, land use, vegetation,

ecosystems

Changes in the ocean: circulation, sea level,

biogeochemistry

Land surface

Land-atmosphere interaction

Ice sheet

Glacier change

Clouds

Volcanic activity

Precipitation evaporation

Atmosphere-ice interaction

Biosphere

Soil-biosphere interaction Hydrosphere: ocean

Ice-ocean coupling

Hydrosphere: rivers & lakes

Atmosphere-biosphere interaction

Changes in the hydrological cycle

Changes in the atmosphere composition, circulation

Changes in the cryosphere: snow, frozen ground, sea ice, ice sheets, glaciers

CO2, CH4

Changes in solar inputs

Sea ice

Human footprint Terrestrial radiationWind stress

Heat exchange

Image: Earth’s complex coupled systems driving climate are under observed

23 Global Climate Observing System, 2016, The Global Observing System for Climate: Implementation Needs, library.wmo.int/doc_num.php?explnum_id=3417.24 Dan Jørgensen / Dr. Lucas Joppa. “Planet A - Talks on Climate Change: Dr. Lucas Joppa – How Can Data and AI Stem Climate Change? on Apple Podcasts.” Apple Podcasts, 14 May

2021, podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dr-lucas-joppa-how-can-data-and-ai-stem-climate-change/id1521997920?i=1000521728305.



NASA launched the Earth Venture program25 in 2010 to competitively select and fund low-cost innovative missions to address a variety of Earth science topics.

MethaneSat, a $100+ million subsidiary of the Environmental Defense Fund, is intended to enable and motivate faster action to reduce methane emissions.

The program includes orbital (satellites) and sub-orbital (aircraft, balloons, sounding rockets, etc.) missions as well as a dedicated program for instrument development. With three missions on-orbit and another eight in development26, the Earth Venture program has had initial success delivering measurable results and found more proof of new applications than previously expected.

It will cover a 200-kilometer (124-mile) view path, passing over target regions every few days. Along with a wide field of view, the instrument will provide highly sensitive, high-resolution methane measurements. With many oil and gas companies beginning to set methane reduction goals and a growing number of states and countries looking to strengthen methane policies, there is a clear need for accurate, high-resolution quantification of total emissions that can be tracked over time. MethaneSat plans to make its data available at no cost so governments, corporations, and citizens can directly monitor and compare progress.

Once on orbit, MethaneSAT will locate and measure methane emissions from oil and gas operations almost anywhere on Earth.

“Satellite data enables us to understand, address, and solve the most pressing challenges, but also takes advantage of the greatest opportunities of our time.”

Tom Ingersoll, Project Director at MethaneSAT & Managing Partner at Space Capital

25 “Missions: Earth Venture Class.” NASA, NASA, eospso.nasa.gov/mission-category/13.26 Kylie Foy | Lincoln Laboratory. “Pathfinder Satellite Paves Way for Constellation of Tropical-Storm Observers.” MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 6 July 2021, news.

mit.edu/2021/pathfinder-satellite-paves-way-constellation-tropical-storm-observers-0706.



Carbon Mapper, a non-profit planning to quantify and track emissions and other environmental indicators, is a private and public partnership.

The organization was designed to leverage combined expertise and resources to deploy operational decision support services to mitigate human impacts to Earth’s climate and ecosystems. To meet these objectives, Carbon Mapper plans to deploy a constellation of satellites and aircraft equipped with high performance visible/infrared imaging spectrometers with the ability to identify, quantify, and attribute global point-source emissions at the scale of individual facilities and equipment. The methane and CO2 data will be made freely available via Carbon Mapper’s global data portal. The State of California will maintain its own data portal and will independently review, ground-truth and validate the Carbon Mapper data to promote trust and transparency.

The partnership includes Planet27, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the State of California, the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, RMI, and philanthropic sponsors.

Image: Current California projects measuring methane and CO2 to create data products and analytics.




Amazon is uniquely positioned to expand its operations in space given the company’s Project Kuiper program and its arm’s length relationship with Blue Origin.

Cloud services coupled with AI and data science will be essential in understanding and simulating our changing climate. Google has a long history with geospatial data including the acquisition of Where 2 Technologies, Keyhole, and Skybox Imaging28.

Microsoft launched Azure Space in 2019 to build a marketplace that allows entrepreneurs and developers to create unique applications that fit specific needs within various industries. Microsoft also launched the Planetary Computer, a global-scale environmental monitoring capability for scientists, developers, and policy makers to support environmental challenges.

The combination of these government, commercial, and philanthropic initiatives are expanding our understanding of the current state of Earth’s systems and enabling continual improvement in the prediction of future changes. Organizations that are pioneering this new scientific frontier have found ways to partner that leverage the best of private markets, government scale, and philanthropic vision. In the next section we will dig deeper into the companies that are at the forefront of climate simulation working to provide answers to the most complex questions associated with climate change.

The challenge of analyzing and interpreting extremely large caches of data has significant implications for the tech sector.

“There’s a lot of data processing challenges required to make advances in space. We see a direct fit for the kind of approach we have across Microsoft to bring cloud capabilities, tools to particular industry verticals.”

Gregg Walsh, Business Development at Microsoft Azure Space

28 Sullivan, Gail. “Google Buys Skybox for $500 Million. The Deal Could Be about More than Maps.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 2 May 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/06/11/google-buys-skybox-for-500-million-the-deal-could-be-about-more-than-maps/.



One-third of all known species are at risk of extinction29 and by 2050 it is estimated that at least 140 million people will be forced to migrate30.

Muon Space32, a Menlo Park based company, is at the forefront of identifying key climate signals and building solutions to answer the big, important climate-related questions.

Temperature extremes, droughts, wildfires, and destructive weather events have become more frequent and severe.

Businesses estimate over $970 billion is at risk with over half of these losses likely to materialize the next 5 years31. Building on decades of climate science research, Earth observation data, and partnerships for open innovation, entrepreneurs are developing new simulation and forecasting tools to create preparedness and risk management services in the midst of an uncertain future. The market is being driven by lost revenue, unpredictable cost structures, and existential threats (ie California Camp Fire 2018, Texas Deep Freeze 2021). With a better understanding of future climate events, adaptation solutions can be developed and implemented to target disaster response, business/logistics decisions, infrastructure investment, and even geo-engineering. Early customer adoption is coming from construction, energy, insurance, and weather industries.

The current Earth observation satellite network is highly capable, but it only scratches the surface in measuring the complex interacting dynamics of Earth’s systems. By building highly-targeted scientific instruments to drive simulations of Earth’s climate systems, Muon can improve decision making for commercial, civil, and defense customers. The company will require multiple space-based platforms to experiment, iterate, and validate predictive signals capable of understanding and simulating Earth’s climate. Their approach builds on the scientific foundations developed at NASA while leveraging low-cost commercial satellite infrastructure to achieve higher sampling cadences and more rapid and responsive mission development. Jonny Dyer, CEO and Co-founder, ultimately envisions his work will provide data-driven tools to respond to the most complex questions associated with climate change.

29 Rice, Doyle. “One-Third of All Plant and Animal Species Could Be Extinct in 50 Years, Study Warns.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 14 Feb. 2020, www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/02/14/climate-change-study-plant-animal-extinction/4760646002/.

30 “Climate Change Could Force Over 140 Million to Migrate Within Countries by 2050: World Bank Report.” World Bank, 19 Mar. 2018, www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/03/19/climate-change-could-force-over-140-million-to-migrate-within-countries-by-2050-world-bank-report.

31 “Major Risk or Rosy Opportunity.” CDP, 2018, www.cdp.net/en/research/global-reports/global-climate-change-report-2018/climate-report-risks-and-opportunities.




“Now that the impact of climate change is starting to hit, people are asking what specific actions we should take.”

Jonny Dyer, CEO and Co-founder, Muon Space

Image: Using a combination of cloud data, such as this satellite observation of a tropical storm over South America, and “machine learning” could help to fine-tune climate models.33

Cervest, a London-based company, is building a climate intelligence platform to support enterprises, governments and financial services to adapt to climate risk at an asset-level.

EarthScan, the company’s core product, aims to provide insight into how risks such as flooding, droughts, and extreme temperatures will impact the assets a company owns or manages. Iggy Bassi, CEO and Founder, believes that science holds the power to understand and break down climate risk for individual businesses.

Nearly every major industry today will need to understand the climate risks associated with business operations and how they could impact employees, supply chains, and customers to maintain their market position. As space-based technology makes access to climate-relevant data more widely available, early warning systems will help to detect and manage risk. Those companies able to adapt and lead in this changing climate may find a new competitive advantage.

The company utilizes statistical and physical sciences with modern scalable computing practices to model and analyze petabytes of data to extract the asset-level climate signals.

33 Nicola Jones • December 10, et al. “Can Artificial Intelligence Help Build Better, Smarter Climate Models?” Yale E360, e360.yale.edu/features/can-artificial-intelligence-help-build-better-smarter-climate-models.


Conclusion

The unifying goal across these programs is to identify a set of generally accepted scientific markers tracked by a network of global instruments that can be independently validated to form the foundation of a transparent, measured, and accountable global climate market. The challenges created by climate change require a global perspective and space technology is a key building block in the growing climate markets.

Climate Market Flywheel

Technology

Markets

Data

Direct, verifiable measurements of emissions sources and sinks

Rules and accountability

mechanismsSpace-based and terrestrial sensors targeting key scientific signals

Transparent quantifiable risk

management

Policy and Regulation

Image: Climate market flywheel, Space Capital

The combination of government, commercial, and philanthropic initiatives are expanding our understanding of the current state of Earth’s systems and enabling continual improvement in the prediction of future changes.


Conclusion

34 Dan Jørgensen / Dr. Lucas Joppa. “Planet A - Talks on Climate Change: Dr. Lucas Joppa – How Can Data and AI Stem Climate Change? on Apple Podcasts.” Apple Podcasts, 14 May 2021, podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/planet-a-talks-on-climate-change/id1521997920?uo=4&i=1000521728305&itscg=30200&itsct=podcast_box_link&ocid=AID3020457_TWITTER_oo_spl100002073013690.

35 Silicon Valley Bank, 2021, A Climate Tech Path to Sustainable Growth, www.svb.com/trends-insights/reports/future-of-climate-tech?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=organic-social&utm_campaign=us-2021-07-aw-tl-na-na-er-na&utm_content=na#.

Investors and entrepreneurs are sharing important lessons from the previous climate tech boom/bust and many see the benefit of a portfolio approach rather than ad hoc deployment across multiple sectors. This will require activating proofs-of-concept at a more accelerated pace, sharing insights, and validating which solutions are best provided by the public vs private sector. Space technology plays a foundational role in climate science and is a key building block in a transparent scalable climate market. Investment in space technology is essential in formulating a climate thesis and provides a unique vantage point across adjacent industries including agriculture, energy, finance, insurance, logistic, IT, and weather.

In the same way that every company today is a technology company, the need for persistent global monitoring and coordination will see every company of tomorrow be a space company.

“The two biggest priorities: measurements and markets. Without meaningful measurements I don’t think you get to scalable markets.”

Lucas Joppa, Chief Environmental Officer, Microsoft34

As a new wave of climate focused investing is underway, climate tech companies are on track to reach a record of $50+ billion in equity funding raised in 202135.


Primary Research

Tom Ingersoll, Interviewed on 6 May 2021LinkedIn

Dan McCleese, Interviewed on 28 May 2021LinkedIn

Jonny Dyer, Interviewed on 2 June 2021LinkedIn

Anastasia Volkova, Interviewed on 9 June 2021LinkedIn

Stephane Germain, Interviewed on 21 June 2021LinkedIn

Diego Saez-Gil, Interviewed on 24 June 2021LinkedIn

Managing Partner at Space Capital, Project Director at MethaneSat, former CEO at Skybox Imaging and Universal Space Networks

Chief Scientist at Muon Space, Science Advisor at MethaneSat, former Chief Scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

CEO at Muon Space Technical Advisor MethaneSat, former senior director of engineering at Lyft and Google, Chief Engineer at Skybox Imaging

CEO at Regrow, PhD Aerospace Engineering

CEO at GHGSat, Former consultant at Bain & Co.

CEO at Pachama, Former CEO at Bluesmart and WeHostels

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The Great Climate Opportunity

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Transcript of The Great Climate Opportunity