The News: At AWS re:Invent, Amazon announced the startups chosen to participate in the AWS Sustainable Cities Accelerator for Infrastructure. The selected startups span four areas developing groundbreaking solutions to help address infrastructure-related sustainability challenges, including real estate, manufacturing, power, utility, and transportation systems. Read the full announcement on Amazon’s blog.
AWS re:Invent News: Nine Companies Accepted as Part of Amazon’s Sustainable Cities Accelerator
Analyst Take: Launched in March 2022, the AWS Sustainable Cities Accelerator for Infrastructure aims to address the pressing need for solutions that address global climate challenges and the role clean tech can play in helping meet those challenges.
The United Nations estimates that infrastructure accounts for about 40% of global energy use and about 30% of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions.
“By working with AWS, we believe that startups in our AWS Sustainable Cities Accelerator will harness the power of the cloud to make global infrastructure more sustainable and efficient,” said Jeff Kratz, general manager of Worldwide Public Sector Partners at AWS.
The nine companies were selected for the AWS Sustainable Cities Accelerator from hundreds of applications and include a wide range of innovative sustainable solutions:
- Accelerate Wind, from St. Louis, Missouri, is developing affordable wind turbines for buildings designed to convert wind ⏤ that speeds up as it travels over roof edges ⏤ into energy; potentially meeting 25% of a building’s energy demand.
- BlocPower, from Brooklyn, New York, provides smart, all-electric heating, cooling, and hot water systems to building owners ⏤ helping energy customers save 20-40% annually.
- Conservation Labs, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, delivers technology that monitors water use and equipment to reduce costs, carbon, and risk through water flow estimates, leak alerts and water insights.
- Ecolibrium, from London, UK, uses internet of things (IoT) infrastructure and machine learning (ML) algorithms to deliver a snapshot of real-time energy performance and consumption across commercial and residential properties.
- ElectricFish, from Fremont, California, builds and deploys distributed, resilient electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure in grid-constrained sites ⏤ including charger availability and charging speed ⏤ to make EV adoption more equitable.
- hello energy, from Rotterdam, Netherlands, offers a SaaS solution to help building owners and tenants share their sustainability goals, track building data and receive tips on making positive changes.
- RUNWITHIT Synthetics, from Edmonton, Canada, shows the impacts of sustainability decisions by creating “digital city sandboxes” using synthetic weather, policy, technology, and infrastructure data to help measure predicted outcomes.
- VIA, from Sommerville, Massachusetts, offers a Web3 platform giving consumers more ownership of their private energy data and allows them paid opportunities for making positive changes, including turning down thermostats or selling solar power.
- Vutility, from Sandy, Utah, offers scalable, wireless energy monitoring that, in turn, offers insights into performance, fault detection and progress on sustainability goals.
Over five weeks, the AWS Sustainable Cities Accelerator program will immerse the selected startups in cloud education with hands-on tech training in machine learning (ML) and high-performance computing (HPC).
As part of the AWS Sustainable Cities Accelerator program, the startups can also receive mentorship from AWS sustainability experts and will be provided opportunities to connect with AWS customers, leaders, and members of the AWS Partner Network (APN) looking for sustainable solutions ⏤ partners currently including CBRE, ProLogis, AmFAM Institute, and Evergreen Climate Innovations.
Disclosure: Futurum Research is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum Research as a whole.
Other insights from Good Equals Progress:
Amazon’s Sacramento-based Same-Day Fulfillment Facility Pursues IFLI Zero Carbon Certification
Image Credit: Amazon AWS
The original version of this article was first published on Good Equals Progress.
Author Information
Shelly Kramer is a Principal Analyst and Founding Partner at Futurum Research. A serial entrepreneur with a technology centric focus, she has worked alongside some of the world’s largest brands to embrace disruption and spur innovation, understand and address the realities of the connected customer, and help navigate the process of digital transformation. She brings 20 years' experience as a brand strategist to her work at Futurum, and has deep experience helping global companies with marketing challenges, GTM strategies, messaging development, and driving strategy and digital transformation for B2B brands across multiple verticals. Shelly's coverage areas include Collaboration/CX/SaaS, platforms, ESG, and Cybersecurity, as well as topics and trends related to the Future of Work, the transformation of the workplace and how people and technology are driving that transformation. A transplanted New Yorker, she has learned to love life in the Midwest, and has firsthand experience that some of the most innovative minds and most successful companies in the world also happen to live in “flyover country.”
