Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

Third Derivative, the Rocky Mountain Institute’s global climate tech accelerator, has welcomed 18 new start-ups from six countries across four continents this week — including the accelerator’s first-ever start-up from New Zealand.

“From scalable bamboo building systems to modular green hydrogen, recyclable wind turbines to zero-emission cooling, these start-ups represent the cutting edge of global climate tech innovation,” said Rushad Nanavatty, Third Derivative Managing Director. “Our class-leading portfolio continues to stay ahead of the emissions – by focusing on the industries, sectors, and geographies that are going to be the most consequential for our planet in the decades to come.”

The start-up and their focus are as follows:

1. Aris Hydronics: Delivering fully integrated heating, cooling, and hot water systems that intelligently adapt to each building’s unique thermal needs.
2. Carbon Signal: Accelerating building decarbonization with scalable, high-fidelity energy intelligence that cuts analysis time from months to minutes.
3. ChemFinity Technologies: Creating new sorbent-based ways to efficiently refine more than 20 critical minerals, projecting lower costs and a 99 percent reduction in energy use and carbon emissions compared to traditional methods.
4. DTE Materials: Accelerating concrete decarbonization through low-cost, low-capex bioaggregate solutions that directly reduce emissions by about 40 percent.
5. Dynami Battery: Enabling 5x faster charging and higher capacity batteries using patented micro-structuring technology that enhances battery physics.
6. EnKoat: Transforming building envelopes with adaptive coatings that cut HVAC energy use by up to 30 percent, extend roof life, and reduce emissions across climates.
7. Enzinc: Delivering high-performance, safe, recyclable, and cost-effective energy storage globally using existing legacy lead-acid battery factories.
8. Greengine Environmental Technologies: Decarbonizing global industries and institutions through low-cost, modular, scalable, and sustainable microalgae-based carbon capture technology.
9. HYDGEN: Enabling industries to switch from fossil-derived hydrogen to on-site, zero-emission alternatives using anion- and proton-exchange membranes that enable faster deployment and lower cost.
10. Mirico: Giving unprecedented insight into the “what, where, when and why” of greenhouse emissions from industrial infrastructure.
11. NoPo Nanotechnologies: Enabling energy-efficiency in batteries, electronics, membranes, and polymers using single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), highly conductive materials with exceptional strength and thermal conductivity.
12. Ocean: Reinventing building materials with high-performance bamboo systems that cut emissions, preserve biodiversity, and scale sustainably around the world.
13. Octolife: Scaling low emissions cooling globally by delivering modular, energy-efficient air conditioning systems engineered for affordability and high thermal performance.
14. Oort Energy: Enabling scalable green hydrogen production for hard-to-decarbonize sectors like aviation and heavy industry using high-efficiency, low-cost proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzers.
15. Renkube: Using advanced glass geometry that harvests and delivers more light to PV cells, offering a 40% increase in energy yield from solar panels at a 20% increase in capital cost. This offsets 0.56 metric tons of CO₂ emissions/GW/annum.
16. Rewind Turbine: Enabling fully recyclable, modular wind blades that cut costs, simplify logistics, and unlock new markets for sustainable, scalable wind energy
17. Torus Robotics: Delivering ultra-efficient, compact axial flux motors and drives that drastically reduce energy use in industrial HVAC and mobility applications.
18. Zincovery: Enabling net-zero critical minerals with a novel hydrogen-based metal refining process that slashes cost, energy use, and carbon emissions without compromising performance.

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