Francesca de Quesada Covey’s Post

On October 12, the Urban Future Lab hosted the 7th annual Urban Future Summit at Dock 72. After an afternoon of pitches and panel discussions, the jury, comprised of industry experts from Fifth Wall, Energy Impact Partners, RA Capital Management, Aligned Climate Capital , and UFL, chose two winners that were awarded a $50,000 cash prize each and admission into the ACRE incubator. The winner of the 2023 Climate Finance Prize is Carbon Collective. Carbon Collective puts 401k's to work to solve climate change by divesting from CO2-producing companies, investing in environmentally clean companies and voting proxies to encourage even better corporate behavior. The winner of the 2023 Future Vision Prize is Cadence OneFive. Cadence OneFive is a climate justice-motivated public benefit corporation creating a market-transforming solution to accelerate building decarbonization and climate adaptation. Their software embodies half a century of building science expertise and construction management best practices. Click the link to learn more about Carbon Collective, Cadence OneFive and the Urban Future Prize. #NYUTandonMade

Taking a moment to reflect on the significant journey that Havenz Smart Communities has undertaken, I am thrilled to announce that after many years of meticulous engineering, planning, and design, we are transitioning to the next major phases of our flagship development AHI Red Deer - Sustainable Innovation Campus. This project, set to be a precedent as a template-based community, symbolizes our vision for sustainable, innovative, and carbon-neutral communities with the aim to be duplicated. This resilient, off-the-grid development transcends the confines of a regular construction project. It embodies our commitment to redefining how communities are built, offering an extraordinary blend of data-driven sustainability and technological innovation. Our mission to meet Scope 1, 2, and 3 mandates is not merely written on paper, it resonates deeply in our actions, plans, and even down to the last brick laid. What kind of future do we envision for our generations to come? The AHI Red Deer provides a landmark answer. With an impressive size of 1.3 million square feet, purpose-built to house Agritech and Tech-oriented businesses, this development authenticates our commitment to shaping spaces that resonate sustainability at every turn. We now find ourselves at a thrilling juncture in our journey, and we extend our invitation to leaders, investors, partners, tenants from both public and private sectors around the globe. Engage in this groundbreaking initiative, perfectly in sync with corporate mandates, and join us in shaping the #FutureOfSustainability. In the forthcoming weeks, we're eager to share detailed insights about our development, track our progress and discuss the far-reaching impact of our project on ESG+R (Environmental, Social, Governance, and Resilience) principles. Let's build together a legacy of environmental responsibility and forward-thinking innovation. This journey is ours, yours, and of the world. Join us. #HavenzSmartCommunities #AHIRedDeer #ESG+R #SustainableInnovation #OffGridCampus #Scope123 #ResilientFuture #GlobalSustainability #InnovationInInfrastructure

🏙️The battle for climate change will be won or lost in our cities. We unpack what's happening in the urban tech startup scene in our latest report 👇 Cities consume 3/4 of the world’s final energy, produce ~70% of GHG emissions, and already host more than half the world's population. Urban tech is a technology that improves broad urban environments to make them more sustainable, resilient and efficient. This goes from energy efficiency for buildings, sustainable construction materials and processes, clean urban mobility and energy, and adaptation solutions like air pollution monitoring & treatment and flood & wildfire management. 💡Key insights 📉 Urban Tech startup funding has already surpassed 2020 levels this year, with $26.6B raised so far in 2023, but the total is projected to be 39% lower than in 2022. The decline has been stronger at late stage, but also early stage is not fully spared. The Built Environment has finally hit mainstream recognition in the VC market. 🚀Funding for green building startups is already at record high levels, with $5.3B in 2023, projected to close the year 3x in respect to 2020. This is mainly driven by sustainable building materials (mainly steel and cement) and building operation decarbonization (driven by building energy management and residential solar). Check out the full report by Dealroom.co and 2150 for more insights on the urban tech financing stack, building policies worldwide and deeper insights into the key urban tech sectors: https://lnkd.in/edhfuSYd #climatetech #builtenvironment #constructiontechnology

Very excited to be coming back home to NYC for the next two weeks. Can't believe I haven't been back since August 2022 (too long)! 🗽 To all of my New York City friends in real estate, proptech, and climatetech, I will be attending CREtech NY (thanks to Michael Beckerman for his leadership on the climate agenda) and several of the NY Climate Week events happening around town focused on the built environment including: 1. Tangible's Built Environment Happy Hour 🍸 2. Newlab's New Climate Futures event ♻ 3. Several other events focused on biotech, climatetech policy, sustainable buildings, and nature based climate solutions. As you all already know, A/O is laser focused on backing built world technology companies positively transforming the largest, least digitsed, and most carbon emitting industry globally (real estate+construction 👀 ) so if you or someone you know is creating the next BIG idea to shake our industry, let's talk. #proptech #climatetech #nyclimateweek #builtenvironment #biotech #climatepolicy #sustainablebuilding #naturebasedsolutions #cretechnewyork2023

🌿 On a Brief Hiatus to Transform the Built Environment 🌿 Dear network, I'm taking a brief hiatus next week to retreat to the serene Veluwe region. My mission? To focus on preparing a series of grant applications for the European Innovation Council's Pathfinder Challenge. 🌍 Construction has to change. The built environment is a significant contributor to resource and energy consumption, as well as CO2 emissions and waste production—accounting for an estimated 10-50% in each category. The need for change remains urgent. 🛠️ What am I doing about it? For years, my mind has been brimming with ideas to leverage new technologies, rediscover traditional methods, and minimize material usage. The market for these innovations is still nascent, making grants and subsidies crucial for driving change and turning thought into reality. The EIC Pathfinder Challenge seems tailor-made for me: combine computational design, digital fabrication, and alternative materials, to face the challenge of climate change head on. So I have to take this shot! 🏗️ Summum Engineering Six years ago, I founded Summum Engineering, so I could work on projects with partners and clients, that each, in their own way, believed better ways to build and construct. I share these beliefs, and my EIC applications are built around Summum's key focus areas: • lightweight structures; • digital fabrication; • natural, biobased, and earthen materials; and, • circular, reclaimed materials and renovation. 🔮 The future as I hope for Whether these grant applications will be successful is uncertain, but my commitment is unwavering. I remain hopeful that through thoughtful use of new technology and age-old wisdom, we will not only make it, but prosper - I know many of you share these hopes. I hope that all our progeny will find itself in a sustainable, equitable future of our making, residing in a sustainable, built environment, living in a steady-state economy that is in balance and harmony with our planet. 🌱 A final thought I also advocate for a universal basic income, which would free up time and resources for everyone—civil servants, innovation consultants, and myself included—to focus on meaningful work that directly benefits society. To, instead of the inordinate amounts of energy spent on funding, business development and acquisition today, we might spend it instead on our own or humankind's betterment. Wish me luck, and if you need to reach me, please hold off until after October 18th, or contact Alessio and Anand Shah for urgent matters. Here's to a better future, built smarter and more sustainably. Here's to you, if you're trying to get there too. Best, Diederik "To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." - Carl Sagan 📷"Pale blue dot revisited" - a photo of Earth, taken by NASA's Voyager 1.

🌄 This #WorldEnvironmentDay, explore climate innovations to learn from the world we built and make wiser choices for the one we are building now. 🌱 Meet Firstplanit – a revolutionary digital tool aimed at rapidly enhancing the impact of buildings on both people and the planet 🌍 🌇 As part of the #BetterFuturesRetrofitAccelerator, the Firstplanit team is dedicated to serving the built and home improvement industry. This innovative tool provides designers, builders, developers, property owners, and manufacturers with crucial insights and opportunities for fostering environmental awareness and positive change. 👩🏻💼 What's next? Co-founder Ankita Dwivedi is eager to share: “We are developing a powerful recommender to scale and accelerate our mission. No product is perfect without factoring in its application. The recommender will advise on the context of a material - which part of the building, the type of the building and where it is being built - and this is how we can achieve sustainability.” 🤝 Would you support a business like Firstplanit in scaling up? Joined by 20+ SMEs in London's built environment, these businesses are working to reduce #London's greenhouse gas emissions significantly. Drop a 💚 to let Undaunted: Tackling climate change with innovation know which climate innovation are you supporting this year. 👣 In the face of climate change, together, we are Undaunted! . . . Imperial College London Grantham Institute - Climate Change and the Environment The Royal Institution Imperial Enterprise Imperial College Advanced Hackspace Green Business Action West London Business Mayor of London Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities . . . 📽 Filmed by Velvet Green Media during the Challenge Identification Workshop at Scale Space . . . #UKSPF #Innovation #CleanTech #BuiltEnvironment #FirstPlanit #GreenBuilding #Sustainability #SustainableBusinesses #WorldEnvironmentDay #Ourland #Ourfuture #GenerationRestoration

Rounding off a hugely exciting week at Bruntwood SciTech 🤗 Through our increased investment, we now have an enhanced potential to create city-wide innovation ecosystems, and effect growth within knowledge-based economies on a national and global scale. We can't wait to share more details soon about what's to come... For now, it feels particularly fitting to share a fascinating article from WIRED, which was released earlier this week. Focusing on the unique alchemy that makes innovation ecosystems work, and with an emphasis on collaboration across research, industry and government, the piece uses Scotland as a case study to look at the wider creation of such environments by careful design, rather than by accident — a huge feature of our new era! 🚀 With reference to the incredible entrepreneurial spirit of the University of Strathclyde and the commitment of The Scottish Government to supporting start-ups and scale-ups, the article draws out the detail of Glasgow's innovation ecosystem, and touches on our plans to redevelop the iconic Met Tower into a £60 million tech hub to galvanise the momentum of the tech sector. 🙌 This is a must-read for anyone interested in what makes innovation tick, and we've also provided a handy link below in case you'd like to find out more about Met Tower 👀 Have a great weekend all! 📖 Article: https://bit.ly/3Q0nFQ2 💡 Met Tower: https://bit.ly/46yRLBe #Investment #Innovation #Ecosystems #Scotland #Tech #Digital #LifeSciences #Glasgow

Darwin Fellow Professor Flora Samuel leads a team from the Department of Architecture which has been awarded one of four new £4.625 million Green Transition Ecosystem grants by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The grant will enable the team to create a Community Open Map Platform (COMP) for Future Generations to chart the green transition on the Isle of Anglesey/Ynys Môn. "Climate change cannot be addressed without revealing and tackling the inequalities within society and where they are happening," Professor Samuel said. "Only when we know what is happening where, and how people are adapting to climate change can we make well informed decisions. “The aim of this pragmatic project is to create a Community Open Map Platform that will bring together multiple layers of spatial information to give a social, environmental, cultural and economic picture of what is happening in a neighbourhood, area, local authority, region or nation.” https://lnkd.in/edFWhWh4

We are excited that the City of Sydney has supported a Greenhouse Climate Tech hub as we will develop research to commercialisation trajectories for our research results. UNSW Founders Australian Research Council Councillor HY William Chan #generativedesign #computationaldesign #ai #aiforaec #data #machinelearning #optimization #architecture #construction #computerscience #research #sustainabledesign #multiobjectiveoptimization #moo #designoptimization #buildingperformance #smartbuilding #datadrivendesign #co2reduction #zeroemissiondesign

💫 Thrilled to share with you that BlueBlocks Concepts is among the 15 semi-finalist of the inaugural global Built by Nature Prize!! 💫 🎗 This is the world's first prize initiative to recognise innovation and stimulate scalability in the use of biobased materials in construction, focusing on carbon emissions reduction and benefits to nature and local communities. 🌿 With SeaWood Materials - a 100% natural board material made from seaweed and green residual streams - we aim for positive climate impact for a bright future for all. 🌍 It is great to see the other nominated #biobased #materials for beautiful, natural and healthy living environments. The solutions are all wonderful and give such a great outlook on how we can create a built environment in line with nature that serves both humans and planet. 💡 Read more about the prize and the complete list of semi-finalist solutions, their countries of origin and the materials submitted here: https://lnkd.in/e3w_nF-U #greenbuildings #biobasedbuilding #zeroemissions #sustainablebuilding #neweconomy #regeneration #nature #sustainablearchitecture #biomaterial Building Balance, Gideon - Building Transition Tribes, BlueCity (010), North Sea Farmers, Renewi Nederland, The Green Village, Biobased Creations, TBI Klimaattrein, The Seaweed Company, Climate Cleanup , Noorderwind, Rotterdam Partners