Environmental sustainability is one of the most pressing needs of our time. With threats like global warming, rising sea levels and frequent wildfires, it’s no wonder so many of us feel unsure about what specific problem to address next.
Some companies in greentech are figuring out how to save and protect our environment. The work of sustainability-focused tech teams is quite literally shaping our future for the better.
Renewable energy makes up around 29 percent of global electrical consumption, and it’s expected to represent over 90 percent of global electricity growth between 2022 and 2027 as more people learn about the benefits of solar, wind and hydropower.
Whether they’re working on big projects, like sustainable city planning, or smaller ones, like helping families shop for energy-efficient appliances, these environmental companies below are helping make the world a better, and greener, place.
Environmental Companies To Know
- AECOM
- HDR
- Aurora Solar
- Uplight
- Watershed
- Redaptive
- Mosaic
- Mill
- Optera
- WeaveGrid
34 Environmental, Sustainable and Green Companies to Know
Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois
Invenergy develops clean energy solutions such as offshore wind farms, natural gas facilities, water treatment facilities and solar energy projects. The company has upwards of 200 global project sites that are either in progress or have already been completed. Invenergy's work generates energy that powers more than 9 million homes.
Headquarters: Oakland, California
Greentech firm GridX works toward large-scale decarbonization by providing analytics on clean energy options to utility and energy companies. It creates models for different migrations to clean energy and gives insights and advice on pricing, so that companies can understand the real-world dollar impact of a shift to a greener tech option. The suite of software GridX offers includes programs for billing analytics, customer service and bundling clean energy options.
Headquarters: Denver, Colorado
Tortuga AgTech makes and operates commercial harvesting robots that perform automated agricultural tasks on farms. Dangerous, difficult or labor-intensive tasks are outsourced to the robots to decrease the need for labor acquisition and retention and to improve worker safety. As they work, Tortuga robots also collect plant-level data that inform harvesting, forecasting and pest management practices for increased sustainability.
Headquarters: New York, New York
Greentech energy firm Air Company takes excess environmental carbon — the pollutant that drives climate change — and turns it into products. “Transforming CO2 into a never-ending resource” is the company’s mission statement, and it offers a sustainable aviation fuel made of ethanol and methanol, as well as consumer products like fragrance, vodka and hand sanitizer that are all made of CO2.
Headquarters: Fully Remote
R-Zero is a biosafety company born of the Covid-19 pandemic. It offers a range of UV air and surface disinfection devices to make buildings safer and healthier for the people who occupy them, while also prioritizing sustainability. R-Zero UV-C systems use sensor technology, AI and IoT-connected hardware to mitigate risk of infection in shared spaces without requiring people to substantially alter their behaviors. The company says its technology reduces waste and has a significantly lower carbon footprint compared to competitors.
Headquarters: Northbrook, Illinois
UL Solutions is a safety science company that works with clients to improve the safety and sustainability of their products and practices through testing, inspection and certification. It administers UL Marks, which are certification marks products can earn by adhering to UL’s standards for safety and quality. UL Solutions also consults on sustainability practices like responsible sourcing, circular economic strategies and climate change mitigation.
Headquarters: Los Angeles, California
AECOM is an infrastructure consulting firm that supplements engineering and architecture expertise with sustainable practices. The company’s environmental professionals collaborate with universities and trade associations, remaining up to speed with the latest green practices. As a result, AECOM helps clients meet the highest standards in air quality, natural resources management and other areas.
Headquarters: Omaha, Nebraska
Founded in 1917, HDR is a longstanding presence in architecture and design, but the company continues to innovate with its environmentally-friendly methods. With a focus on renewable energy, the company features a portfolio that includes hydro, solar and wind energy projects. The firm also prioritizes environmental sciences, paying attention to how structures impact their surrounding ecosystems and communities. Clients can then rely on HDR to develop buildings that cater to the unique needs of groups and their landscapes.
Headquarters: Fully Remote
Aurora Solar combines cloud computing technology with energy efficiency to create solutions that help energy technicians manage their workflows and deliver better results to their customers. The company’s software platform combines all aspects of the solar panel commissioning process under one umbrella, providing engineers the opportunity to manage financing, modeling, sales and permit compliance from a unified location.
Headquarters: Fully Remote
Partnering with utility companies like National Grid and Unitil, Uplight delivers workflow software products to utility companies. The company’s Connect platform gathers utility data and other energy data in one location, making it faster to analyze customers’ energy usage. The platform also collaborates with a range of grid edge products and services, so providers and customers can customize their approach to energy usage.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California
Watershed assists businesses and brands in measuring, tracing and reporting carbon emissions. The climate platform is an all-in-one solution that starts off by analyzing emissions within every business practice; then, goals are set to dismantle the emission usage and fund carbon removal. Watershed also automates global investor-grade reporting and submits the CDP report with third-party auditors.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California
Companies that either rent or own their office spaces can find it difficult to transition their pre-existing environments to cleaner power. Redaptive lends a hand by helping companies deploy energy-efficient solutions across all their properties. It markets its services as EaaS (Efficiency-as-a-Service), helping clients plan and install clean energy solutions and maximize savings by charging for energy usage with a monthly utility bill.
Headquarters: Fully Remote
Mosaic is a solar and clean energy financing company that connects home improvers and families through its centralized point-of-sale application. The company’s platform allows contractors to reach out to customers, send credit applications and approve them with a few pieces of financial information. This approach streamlines the financing process while connecting homeowners with affordable financing options to support their green energy projects.
Headquarters: San Bruno, California
Mill makes and sells kitchen trash bins designed to reduce harmful waste. These specially made bins dry and grind down food scraps, turning them into compact grounds. Once the bin fills up, customers box the grounds up and mail them back to Mill, where they’re taken to farms instead of landfills. Mill’s membership program also comes with access to an app, so customers can track their personal environmental impact.
Headquarters: Boulder, Colorado
Optera’s software platform helps businesses track and manage their sustainability, with the ultimate goal of reaching climate neutrality by 2050. Some of the other tools within the company’s platform include the ability to assign organization-level targets to specific groups, validate data and streamline GHG inventory developments. Optera also offers services for assessing Scope 3 emissions, supply chain emissions management and more.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California
WeaveGrid’s Silicon Valley-based team develops infrastructural software solutions to support the deployment of electric vehicles. As a partner of electric vehicle (EV) companies, WeaveGrid offers enterprise software that finds EV drivers, gathers data on their charging habits and incentivizes healthier charging practices. Companies can then encourage EV usage while supporting the grid with responsible charging.
Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois
Rheaply is a company all about establishing a circular economy. Specifically, it manages reusable lab equipment and supplies, facilitating a market where surplus equipment, physical assets and other resources can be exchanged between people, organizations and teams. By using Rheaply, organizations and communities have a chance to boost their sustainability efforts while still saving money. Rheaply also offers sustainability consulting services to optimize how much sustainability an organization can produce.
Headquarters: New York, New York
Sealed provides a holistic service suite to homeowners looking to optimize their energy usage. Whether customers want to install insulation or implement smart technology, Sealed evaluates each home and creates a personalized plan before completing improvements with the help of contractors. Customers then repay Sealed in the form of monthly payments, but only during the months where the changes result in energy savings.
Headquarters: Boulder, Colorado
Wunder Capital focuses on the financing aspect of renewable energy, delivering a variety of construction and term pricing information to both individual and enterprise customers. Its goal is to help make energy financing more transparent, providing a web platform through which customers can submit loans, secure offers and document their projects to maintain regulations compliance. To jumpstart the process, customers can fill out an application that allows Wunder Capital to quickly connect them with customized loans and builders.
Headquarters: Fully Remote
In a world of waste, EcoCart is trying to make the online shopping experience more environmentally friendly. Its API integrates with e-commerce checkout carts, wielding a proprietary algorithm to calculate the carbon footprint of each product and sharing this information with customers. This approach creates more transparency, giving shoppers the opportunity to select carbon-neutral orders and earning their trust as well.
Headquarters: Seattle, Washington
LevelTen Energy provides opportunities for smaller companies to invest in cleaner energy by offering renewable energy in amounts and prices proportional to each company’s needs. The company’s platform comes with an automation tool that can help companies find developers, receive personalized offers and make faster decisions for investing in renewable energy assets. LevelTen Energy’s market technology also provides clients with a portfolio of energy providers and options, streamlining the networking and transaction processes between both parties.
Headquarters: Los Angeles, California
Enervee is a web application that provides customers with the energy efficiency scores of household appliances, helping shoppers gain more control over their energy consumption and choices. Branding itself as the world’s first energy-smart, e-commerce platform, Enervee collects scores on electronics and appliances across the web, and its web tool provides customers with sustainability-focused advice on their purchases.
Headquarters: Santa Monica, California
Inspire offers a combination of mobile technologies and energy services to homeowners looking to transition to cleaner, more sustainable energy. The company’s wind energy services allow homeowners to personalize their pricing based on their needs and budgets, and the company offers a mobile app with which its customers can track and adjust their energy usage.
Headquarters: New York, New York
Offices, residential spaces and communal buildings all have one thing in common: Using up and wasting a lot of power. Prescriptive Data applies AI and machine learning to find ways for reducing emissions, such as automating lights and HVAC systems. The company also equips organizations with a cloud-based data warehouse, making it simple to store data in a single location and analyze a building’s energy levels.
Headquarters: Brooklyn, New York
Back Market’s team seeks to reduce the waste generated by device obsolescence by creating new technology that extends the lifespan of mobile and desktop products. The company accepts, restores and grades devices, ensuring each item on its website is fully functional, regardless of its grade. By offering refurbished products, the company aims to give customers more affordable device options and also prevent more used products from winding up in landfills.
Headquarters: Austin, Texas
Banyan Water is a smart water management company that uses software and hardware to conserve water. Clients can employ the company’s Banyan Water Central platform to analyze water usage, identify areas of improvement, single out any major issues and make suggestions. The platform can also track water usage after fixes are made, revealing how much each client is able to save based on environmentally-friendly practices.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California
Planet is an environmental tech company that produces imaging satellites capable of delivering complex data that scientists, governments and other companies can use to understand environmental conditions. With a cloud-based platform, Planet compiles geospatial data and provides insights that help organizations protect ecosystems and efficiently manage land.
Headquarters: Fully Remote
Encamp helps companies stay green and manage their environmental compliance by providing them with a centralized platform for managing risk, evaluating regulations and filing paperwork. Its platform gives companies insight into both local and federal environmental regulations so that they can always stay compliant, and automated agency reporting so that they can eliminate repetitive tasks.
Headquarters: Goleta, California
Much of the waste contributing to global food waste occurs during the shipping and transport stages in the food supply chain. Apeel Sciences is lending a hand in solving the food waste crisis by helping extend the longevity of perishable foods and developing edible, plant-based sealants that can help maintain moisture and freshness levels for produce. Its patented technologies lock in water and slow oxidation, making fruits and vegetables last for longer periods of time.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California
Molekule’s flagship product is an air purifier that removes toxins from the air to help sensitive groups breathe easily. Its product differs from conventional air purifiers, which trap particles in filters, by relying on technology that completely destroys pollutants, viruses, allergens and fumes on a molecular level. For larger office spaces, the company’s Pūrgo product provides an easy way for businesses to meet federal indoor air quality guidelines.
Headquarters: Pasadena, California
Heliogen’s main focus is developing solar energy solutions that are powerful enough to eliminate the need for fossil fuel energy. By leveraging AI and computer vision, the company can align mirrors to reflect sunlight to the top of a tower that generates carbon-free heat. Heliogen has expanded its offerings to include HelioHeat, HelioPower and HelioFuel, giving companies more options to reduce their carbon footprint and operating expenses.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California
Founded by the former product head at Tesla, Span is a startup focused on remodeling electric circuits for older homes, providing a digital alternative to traditional fuse boxes to help families better manage the flow of power to their appliances. Its easy-to-use interface helps families optimize their power usage and save more money by providing insights into how and where their energy is most expended, making adjustments where necessary.
Headquarters: New York, New York
Sidewalk Labs provides generative design services that analyze building factors via AI, determining the best options for a project. Multidisciplinary teams of engineers, technicians and city planners then create technologies and spaces that account for the future impacts of higher rents and climate change. In addition, the company offers parking lot and curve tools that support urban planning and college campus development.
Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois
Sphera delivers integrated risk management software to a network of companies across the globe. Its team maintains a strong focus on environmental protection and sustainability, delivering an integrated, cloud-based platform with which companies can centrally manage their regulations compliance. Sphera’s team has experience working with companies hailing from numerous industries, and the company serves enterprises in construction, life sciences, manufacturing and retail.
