“If you can imagine something, it will be.” - N.K. Jemisin 

The rubber is finally hitting the road on climate policy.

The Biden Administration has taken an early initiative with a swath of executive orders, including rejoining the Paris Agreement, cancelling the Keystone XL Pipeline, creating ARPA-C, appointing John Kerry as a Presidential envoy for Climate, and putting climate at the center of foreign policy discussions. 

Climate policy is also showing up in some indirect and maybe unexpected ways, including supporting startups and ESG investments. In addition to increasing maximums for crowdfunding that may directly benefit climate tech startups, the SEC is introducing standardization for climate and ESG disclosures as considerations for investor risk. The Climate Tech VC newsletter does a great job unpacking how  climate risk is investment risk.

#good(long)reading

• The End of Silicon Valley as We Know It,Tim O’Reilly
• What Ended Indie, Bryce Roberts
• Seize the Means of Carbon Removal: The Political Economy of Direct Air Capture, Andreas Malm and Wim Carton 
• 7 Reasons Why Artificial Carbon Removal is Overhyped from Dr Jonathan Foley of Project Drawdown
• BNEF executive factbook on climate and energy 

#opportunities

• Drawdown released a new online curriculum on Climate Solutions 101
• Join Terra Incognita NYC event about Mapping NYC’s Digital Public Spaces during COVID next Tuesday 3/30
• Form for startups who are interested in being featured at the CUNY Greenlight Climate Festival on Wednesday, 3/31 & Thursday, 4/1
• NYC has put out a Call for Broadband Connectivity Solutions. Proposals due 4/19.
• Sign up to pitch at the Chemical Angel Network Expo
• Apply to Apple Impact Accelerator Program [pdf] for majority (51%) black and brown owned businesses working on environmental solutions
• Presidential Innovation Fellow Applications are due Friday 5/14
• The URBAN-X Application deadline for Cohort X is due Friday 5/14

#jobs

• Flair is hiring for multiple positions to make smarter HVAC and grids
• Sapient is hiring for 16 engineering/technical positions to make (super)power outlets
• Builders Patch is hiring an Engineering Manager / Head of Development to unlock more funding for affordable housing
• Xtelligent is hiring a DevOps engineer to make make more responsive traffic intersections
• Numina is hiring for a Program Manager and Head of Operations to solve problems like waste management
• Nearly 400 jobs at 72 portfolio companies: For many roles, you can work remotely. 

#urban us

• Google selected Varuna for promotion on the Google.com homepage as part of World Water Day
• Blocpower raised 100% of their goal for a Climate Impact Note 
• Kibbo won the Burning Man Fly Ranch competition 
• Feature on Ignasi Lluch, CTO and Head of Product at Near Space Labs 
• Swell Energy NYC Development featured in TechCrunch
• Bowery Farming featured in Eater
• Shilpi shares thoughts on her promotion to Partner at Urban Us

Finally, Urban Us was ranked as a top early stage climate investor in North America by Climate50. We ranked 7th overall after firms like Khosla Ventures (1st overall) and Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Partners (3rd overall). 75% of the rank is from fund performance and 25% of the score included other factors like social media followers and voting. Your votes certainly help, but even more important have been your introductions to great founders and offers of support to our portfolio founders. 

Thank you. 

Edited by: Shilpi

With support from: Stonly, Liz, Shaun, Mark, Zeev, and Anthony

P.S. Cohort X applications for URBAN-X close in a few weeks. If there are any teams we should meet, please introduce us. 

How do we create this newsletter? The content comes from our slack channels where we review contributions from people like you. So you can wait for this newsletter or join us on Slack.