By Kirsten Mabry, Harvard Office of Technology Development

Already, the planet has warmed by more than 1 degree Celsius, and it’s inching ever closer to topping the 1.5-degree mark, which scientists say is a tipping point for the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

Society must rapidly and significantly reduce emissions to combat warming while developing a more sustainable future. Startups commercializing foundational research developed in Harvard labs have created various solutions to address climate and sustainability issues, tackling global challenges in industries ranging from cooling buildings to less resource-intensive agriculture and technologies powering our electric grid.

The following five startups brought technologies from Harvard labs to real-world solutions that are improving society. These companies serve as “clear evidence of the potential for Harvard’s climate-related research to realize commercial impact,” says Sam Liss, executive director of strategic partnerships at Harvard’s Office of Technology Development (OTD) and the manager of the Harvard Grid Accelerator and the Climate and Sustainability Translational Fund.

Kula Bio

Sustainable Farming with a Smaller Carbon Footprint

A startup launched with foundational research out of the lab of Professor Daniel Nocera in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard and with support from the Wyss Institute at Harvard, Kula Bio engineered a way to increase the energy held within the naturally-occurring microbe Xanthobacter autotrophicus. This allows it to survive longer when applied to soil and more effectively pull nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it into a form that is deliverable to plants, which need the nutrient to grow. Rather than spraying huge amounts of nitrogen-based fertilizer across a field, Kula’s product is delivered via irrigation system to the plant’s root zone, and much less is needed than when using traditional fertilizers.

Since the mid-1960s, global nitrogen fertilizer consumption has grown by nearly 6 times. All of that nitrogen comes at a cost; in addition to changing soil composition, nitrogen pollution can be detrimental to human health and harm biodiversity. Nitrous oxide — a gas produced from microbial reactions — can also warm the atmosphere, contributing to climate change. Meanwhile, manufacturing, transporting and applying traditional nitrogen fertilizer is an emissions-intensive process; the process for Kula’s products, which can be grown in a reactor, requires about 80 percent fewer emissions per kilogram.

Kula Bio’s foundational research was advanced while at Harvard with federal funding support from the Department of Energy, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the US Office of Naval Research. The company is now working to integrate AI and automation into its technology, creating low-cost and sustainable farming practices.

Tender

Alternative Meat for Meat Lovers

Meat and dairy production account for between 10 and 20 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions — an eye-popping amount. Tender, a startup launched with foundational research out of Professor Kit Parker’s lab at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), aims to undercut emissions from traditional meat production as part of a growing contingent of alternative meat companies.

Tender’s protein alternatives evolved out of an unrelated project in Parker’s lab with federal funding support from the National Science Foundation. The research group developed a novel technology designed to replicate tissue fiber for applications in medicine, such as for surgical implants. The process, called Rotary Jet-Spinning, pushes liquid plant-based polymers through a small opening, which causes them to elongate into fibers. Those fibers can be bundled together to produce tissue-like synthetic heart valves. The research team explored what else could be spun out of microfibers, which led to the replication of animal muscle.

Additional federal funding was received from the National Institutes of Health, as well as a donation from the TomKat Foundation, to support the early-stage research in tissue-engineered meat alternatives. To explore different applications and scale up the technology, the research team received business development support from OTD, funding from the Harvard Grid Accelerator, and was selected as an Institute Project from the Wyss Institute, receiving additional funding and resources. In 2020, Parker and three members of the research team (Christophe Chantre, Luke MacQueen, and Grant Gonzalez) co-founded Tender.

Thus far, Tender’s products are available at fast-casual chain Clover, which has more than a dozen locations in the Boston area, along with many other local restaurants. So far, the company has produced several offerings that create plant-based alternatives to pulled pork, shredded chicken, beef short ribs, and chicken breast. The company is also exploring applications for the technology across the food industry as consumers seek innovative products that have better nutritional profiles and cleaner ingredients to meet their dietary preferences.

Trellis Air

Disrupting the HVAC industry

Air conditioning and dehumidification are some of the most energy-intensive activities in the world: air conditioning alone accounts for more than double the global emissions of the airline industry. Trellis Air, a startup launched with foundational research developed in labs across Harvard, has innovated a dehumidification system that significantly amplifies the efficiencies of these systems, reducing their energy use and drastically drawing down their emissions impact.

Trellis Air’s foundational technology involved a collaboration between research teams led by Professor Jonathan Grinham at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and Professor Joanna Aizenberg and Senior Scientist Jack Alvarenga at SEAS, along with initial research at the Wyss Institute. The research received grants from the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, as well as funding from Harvard’s Office of the Vice Provost of Climate and Sustainability, which led to the development of a new technology ready for commercialization and launched in late 2024. To date, prototypes of the technology have been tested in Boston, Cambridge at Harvard’s HouseZero, and in Miami. This year, the team plans to expand its pilot field studies on the path towards full commercialization.

Quino Energy

Reliable and Affordable Grid Energy Storage

Quino Energy, a startup launched with foundational research developed in the labs of Professors Michael Aziz and Roy Gordon, at the SEAS and the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard, is developing large flow-batteries. These systems store electrolytes in tanks filled with quinones, which are easily manufactured organic compounds that can store energy when dissolved in water. The system is water-based, meaning it avoids flammability risks and uses no rare earth metals, which are common in current large-scale batteries but are in short supply. As society considers decarbonizing the electric system, batteries are an essential component to make sure clean electricity can be stored and delivered around the clock.

As postdoctoral fellows at Harvard, Eugene Beh and Meisam Bahari worked with Professors Aziz and Gordon to develop the technology. They worked closely with the team at OTD to protect the discoveries made in the lab as they advanced their research and developed commercialization strategies. The office also engaged an Entrepreneur in Residence to review techno-economic models for early battery designs and introduced the team to venture capital firms that could provide funding. Quino Energy launched with Beh as co-founder and CEO, Bahari as co-founder and CTO, and Aziz and Gordon as co-founders and scientific advisors.

Last year, Quino Energy tested its technology in several pilots, including a 10 kilowatt/100 kilowatt-hour prototype. The startup was recently awarded a total of $15M in grant funding from the Department of Energy (DOE) and the California Energy Commission for a field pilot battery project at the High Desert Regional Health Center (HDRHC) in Lancaster, California which will provide much needed non-flammable energy resiliency to the HDRHC’s operations in a county that very recently endured some devastating wildfires.

Previously, Quino secured a grant from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Manufacturing Office. Part of Quino’s DOE award, through a subcontracting relationship, supported further studies to innovate on the flow battery chemistry at Harvard. The Harvard research enabling the innovations licensed to Quino Energy was supported by internal seed funding from the Harvard University Center for the Environment and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, as well as academic research grants from the DOE and National Science Foundation. The Aziz lab has also received funding for experimental research in this area from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and from the Innovation Fund Denmark through a European consortium.

Rarified Technologies

Exploring an Untouched Area of the Atmosphere

Rarefied Technologies, a startup with foundational research out of Professor Joost Vlassak’s lab at SEAS, focuses on monitoring a band of the atmosphere that today’s commercial satellites are unable to reach. Using extremely tiny and lightweight flying devices — each weighing less than a grain of rice — propelled by little more than sunlight, Rarefied will collect climate data from the “mesosphere,” an area that is too low for most satellites and too high for most airplanes. That data, previously extremely difficult to collect, would help predict storms and deepen weather forecasts and could also provide important information about how the atmosphere works and is changing amid climate change.

The research team in the Vlassak Lab was led by Ben Schafer, who recently completed his Ph.D. in Applied Physics at Harvard. Schafer teamed up with Angela Feldhaus, a Harvard Ph.D. candidate in Applied Mathematics, and the company launched at the end of 2024. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and support from Breakthrough Energy, Harvard Grid Accelerator, and Los Alamos and Argonne National Laboratories. The startup is fabricating its devices at Harvard’s Center for Nanoscale Systems and Los Alamos’s Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies. Schafer was named a 2025 Forbes 30 Under 30 in Energy & Green Tech.

What started with questions led to discoveries and grew into solutions that will benefit society. To continue to propel climate tech developed in Harvard labs toward startup formation, OTD joined forces with the Salata Institute and launched the Climate and Sustainability Translational Fund in 2024. The goal of the Fund is to advance promising climate and sustainability-related research towards startup formation. The fund provides crucial funding, mentorship, and business development guidance for Harvard research teams working to bring climate and sustainability solutions to market.

The fund bridges “the gap from fundamental research to a promising working prototype that could be the basis of a startup,” says Liss. “The intent is to accelerate that process, to get the flywheel of startup formation turning even faster."