Othersphere, the pioneering startup specializing in location optimization for zero / low greenhouse gas commodity infrastructure, today announced the successful close of C$3 million in seed funding. The round was led by Active Impact Investments, with additional contributions from Thin Line Capital, KDX, and Keiki Capital.
Othersphere has developed a patent-pending platform to identify ideal locations for commodity production assets based on economics, emissions, and fit with local surroundings. Othersphere initially serves project developers, offtakers, and financiers, beginning with hydrogen and expanding to other physical commodities over time.
Othersphere's core technology indexes the globe based on commodity, human, and environmental system variables, and was made possible by catalytic funding from Breakthrough Energy's Fellows program—a research and development fellowship focused on accelerating the commercialization of potential breakthrough climate technologies. Further support has been provided by Google for Startups.
"We believe that Othersphere will play a meaningful role in scaling the low-emission commodities that will drive the clean energy transition by addressing the massive project deployment bottleneck," said Mike Winterfield, Managing Partner at Active Impact Investments, Canada's largest climate tech seed fund. "Their platform lowers costs for customers while improving yields and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, all of which accelerates the development and adoption of low emissions commodities."
"Companies have to weigh a huge number of factors when deciding where to locate climate technology projects, from clean hydrogen production to direct air capture," said Ashley Grosh, VP of Breakthrough Energy Fellows. "Othersphere will make it easy for climate tech companies to evaluate where they can have the biggest impact, demystifying a complicated process with the potential to accelerate decarbonization."
Currently in closed beta development, Othersphere's initial SaaS product offers multiple benefits:
"Thanks to our investors, Othersphere is poised to accelerate scaling of zero / low GHG commodities, starting with hydrogen," said Othersphere CEO, Robert Murphy. "Our products are designed to reduce project risk and improve stakeholder alignment, to help unlock the trillions of dollars needed to deliver sustainable, equitable global prosperity. This funding allows us to grow the incredible team that will bring our first product to market. We are excited to hear from potential users and stakeholders as we move toward launch, and in particular hydrogen consumers interested in participating in our offtaker survey program."
For further information: press@othersphere.io, Phone: +1 (236) 428-4400
Source:
Original data source:
Spatial coverage:
Visibility:
Methodology:
Download:
License:
The data provided herein is made available on an "as-is" basis, without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. The provider does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of the information. By downloading this data, the user acknowledges that the provider shall not be held liable for any errors, inaccuracies, or omissions in the data, nor for any damages, losses, or consequences arising from the use, misuse, or reliance on this data. The user assumes full responsibility for the use of the information provided and agrees to use it with caution and at their own risk.
“Manage the millions, and the trillions will look after themselves” nicely paraphrases the key to industrial decarbonization investment.
We take this approach at Othersphere, modeling tens of billions of potential capital projects from the bottom-up, to help turn asset-level success into global-scale action. For each individual project permutation we assess key factors such as reachable offtake, site-specific grid fees and CAPEX, feedstock pricing / fundamentals, buffer storage requirements, real-world plant CAPEX and operating constraints, hourly optimization of electrolysis operations (if applicable), and much more.
This leads to hundreds of individual project permutations, which we assess at ~180 million individual sites across the globe 🌐, made possible by modern big data and AI.
A fascinating byproduct of this bottom-up work is a unique aggregated look into the fit of different technologies in different locations, which we’re excited to share today.
If you would like to access the slides directly, please click here.
Absolutely, as location-specific details on economics, emissions, and local human environmental factors make all the difference.
Typically project analysts must spend days/week/months gathering data and model projects one-by-one in order to assess the fundamentals of lower GHG #hydrogen, #steel, #datacenters, and so on. We make all of this available instantly, and constantly work with a range of leading energy and engineering firms to validate and refine our results.
This is a particularly charged molecule 🥁and we seem to be entering the latest down-phase of market sentiment on hydrogen—a regular cycle driven by high potential 📈grinding against difficult execution 📉.
For many focused on lower GHG hydrogen production, at first glance our results may appear daunting, as the average cost difference between new approaches and incumbent supplies can be significant.
But on a site-by-site basis the ‘green premium’ may be lower than the average, or not exist at all. In addition, as these lower GHG technologies scale their costs will tend to fall over time (all projects in the shared slides have a 2030 start year), while the stranded asset risks for incumbent approaches will rise.
Ultimately we hope to reduce these swings in market sentiment by focusing on fundamentals, revealing risks and opportunities early in project development processes, and helping reduce wasted time and development capital.
The example data summaries shared today underpins every search in Othersphere Explorer, part of how we help cut project siting, design, and diligence from months to hours. With this breakthrough technology enabled by Google Cloud, users can:
If you would like to learn more, please reach out for a demo!
Othersphere models tens of billions of potential capital projects from the bottom-up in parallel, to help turn asset-level success into global-scale action.
Equipment sizing and operating strategy LCOH optimizations for hydrogen electrolysis plants are cumbersome and time-consuming. It can take days to weeks to get the data, with each optimization run often taking hours. This limits analytical efforts to a handful of potential sites, leaving many opportunities unexplored.
The result — sub-optimal capital allocation and higher risks, with countless missed opportunities.The difference between initial cost calculations versus hourly optimizations can be dramatic, and highlights location as a critical element of project success.
Othersphere has revolutionized this process by combining the power of our underlying spatial economics platform with neural networks for dimensionality reduction and surrogate modeling.
Our global search engine now recommends pre-optimized projects in seconds, having already run an hourly optimization considering:
1) Hourly day-ahead wholesale power market pricing
2) Grid upgrade CAPEX (developed with a global leader in grid transmission engineering and equipment)
3) Grid fees associated with transmission connections
4) Variable stack efficiency by load, incorporating operational ranges
5) System economies of scale, as well as commercial and technical nuances between PEM and alkaline plants
6) Hourly carbon intensity data
7) Demand profiles and cost of storage
8) Co-located renewables CAPEX
9) High-spatial resolution hourly solar and wind capacity factor data
All of this is delivered through the Othersphere Explorer tool, which provides a novel, bottom-up view of potential hydrogen projects, evaluating key factors such as production costs, emissions, available offtakers, and fit with local surroundings.
Introducing the world’s first global optimizer for hydrogen projects
Please reach out if you would like to learn more about Othersphere, our products, and opportunities to partner in accelerating global industrial decarbonization.
