Airthium Heats Up the Transition to Renewable Energy

Mitigating Climate Change

Climate change is both one of the biggest threats humanity has ever faced and the biggest business opportunity of the century. The rapid pace of climate change endangers our ability to adapt to our changing environment. Its ultimate severity will depend on our ability to quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate-focused investments averaged $632 billion annually in recent years. They will surely grow, as we must spend $4 trillion every year just to mitigate climate change. To actually reverse climate change, we’d need to spend much more. But the growth in climate investments shows a growing awareness and support for the transition to a slower and greener economy. It’s also a tremendous opportunity for investors to profit on a better future. Some new technologies developed to dampen climate change can bring incredible returns. But since they’re also untried or unproven to varying degrees, they are often very risky investments.

Airthium is a Y Combinator-backed startup developing one such technology. But before we dive into its tech, I want to emphasize a positive sign that investors shouldn’t ignore. Being selected by Y Combinator is a big deal. It is one of the best startup accelerator programs in the US. It’s known for backing Airbnb and DoorDash, among other successful companies. Airthium has received valuable mentorship and early funding from Y Combinator.

Ok, now we can get to the really exciting stuff. Airthium is creating a heat pump that could help tackle up to 40% of greenhouse gas emissions. The pump can transform electricity to heat and heat to electricity. It should be able to replace fossil fuels burned for industrial heat, which represents 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Even better, Airthium’s heat pump is cheaper to use than natural gas. The technology can provide heat for many industries and applications, from paper creation to food drying.

Airthium can also become one of the best solutions to the energy storage problem for wind and solar farms. Unfortunately, wind and solar power are unreliable. They vary depending on the time of the day and the season of the year. It is complicated to produce reliable electricity based solely on solar and wind energy without proper storage. But current storage solutions are expensive and insufficient. Most batteries can only keep energy for a few days and are not suitable for long-term or seasonal storage.

Airthium overcomes this hurdle by storing heat in molten salt or sand for several months. When electricity is needed, Airthium’s heat pump can convert that stored heat into electricity and feed the grid. In this way, Airthium can help decarbonize electricity production by allowing the grid to rely on renewable energy. Its energy storage solution could help tackle 30% of global carbon emissions.

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