The Heat Is On.

Buckled roads, broken bridges, delayed trains, strained power grids that led to dangerous outages, and cases of heat illness were just a few of the effects of this week's oppressive heat wave, which brought the hottest day in over a decade across the US and Europe.

Like last summer, this heat wave comes as the odds of extreme heat events globally are growing steeply as the world warms, along with their severity and duration. Heat waves are the type of extreme weather event that scientists can most reliably tie to climate change caused by fossil fuel pollution.

Yet against this backdrop of climate reality, the G7 wrapped up with a stunning absence of climate focus. As Catherine McKenna, CEO of Climate and Nature Solutions and Canada's former Minister of the Environment and Climate, pointed out: "There was only one mention of climate change at all, in the Chair's summary, in the context of the discussions with a broader group of leaders including COP30 President Lula."

To put this in historical context: the G7 first discussed climate change in 1979, and in 1985, conservative leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and U.S. President Ronald Reagan, committed to cooperative climate action. That was forty years ago!

It's a strange moment. But here's the good news: solutions are being built, funded, and scaled to tackle these challenges. The work continues, with or without the G7's attention.

Good News: Funding Deals

Huge congratulations to the Pano AI team, who announced this week that they've raised $44M in Series B funding to scale their wildfire detection platform across the U.S., Australia, and beyond.

Co-founders Sonia Kastner and Arvind Satyam founded Pano AI, believing that real-time wildfire detection could become critical infrastructure, on par with energy, telecom, and emergency services. They saw wildland firefighters and emergency managers, some of the most dedicated professionals on the planet, facing increasingly intense fire seasons while operating without the necessary tools.

Drawing on their backgrounds in IoT products that integrate hardware, software, and AI, they set out to deliver actionable intelligence that would enhance firefighter safety while empowering them to safeguard the communities they serve.

This funding round—led by Giant Ventures and joined by Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures, Tokio Marine Future Fund, Salesforce Ventures, Congruent Ventures, and Initialized Capital—reflects growing recognition of the need for early action in wildfire response. When investors of this caliber come together around a solution, it signals that the market is ready for scale.

The Opportunity: The Climatebase Fellowship

Speaking of scaling solutions, here's an opportunity for the changemakers reading this. The Climatebase Fellowship is the climate career accelerator designed to help ambitious, mission-driven professionals supercharge their careers in climate, land their next job, or start their own projects and ventures.

The fellowship combines a 12-week industry-oriented educational program with ongoing community membership throughout the year. You'll get access to expert guest speaker sessions, career support, project-based work, and a supportive network of highly talented peers.

Join an ambitious collective of optimists, doers, creators, visionaries, disruptors, and explorers from a wide range of backgrounds and organizations. Applications for Cohort 8 are open. Apply by July 7 for priority consideration.

Apply here: https://climatebase.org/fellowship

Cool Climate Innovations

While politicians may be slow to act, innovators are moving fast. Case in point: researchers have developed a game-changing cooling paint that could slash building energy use. Ultra-bright white paints have long been the go-to for cooling buildings by reflecting sunlight. However, an international team has created a cement-based cooling paint that outperforms traditional white cooling paints.

Here's what makes it special: the paint doesn't just reflect sunrays—it also emits heat as infrared radiation that passes straight through the atmosphere into space (a phenomenon called passive radiative cooling). But the real innovation? It releases water to achieve cooling via evaporation, much like human skin does.

This combination of cooling mechanisms gives the paint super-cooling powers. In a pilot test in Singapore—one of the world's most humid cities—the paint achieved up to 10 times higher cooling power than commercial cooling paints. This translates to 30 to 40% electricity savings compared with standard radiative cooling. The results were published in the journal Science.

"This paint offers a practical and long-term solution for mitigating the urban heat island effect," write the researchers from China, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, the UK, and US.“

Why does this matter? Air-conditioning uses 7% of the world's electricity and has become one of the fastest-growing sources of building energy use in recent decades. Innovative passive cooling technologies that don't consume energy have become an urgent need to reduce carbon emissions. Passive cooling could have a massive impact and save lives, especially in developing countries where power infrastructure might be lacking or air-conditioning isn't affordable.

The heat may be on, but so is the innovation. From wildfire detection to revolutionary cooling technologies, the solutions our planet needs are being built, funded, and deployed. The question isn't whether we have the tools to address climate challenges—it's how fast we can scale them.

Stay cool,
The HOTHOUSE Team

At HOTHOUSE, we provide a home base of support, tools, and exclusive growth opportunities to help connect high-growth climate technology companies with the people and opportunities that will help scale their impact. Get in touch to learn how we can help your team reach its growth goals.

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