Dozens of startups are inventing ways to keep LA cool with products and services that aim to avert environmental disaster and yield profits
Drought, floods, wildfires and heat waves climate change and extreme weather events are wreaking havoc in California, especially in Los Angeles. The city has recently baked in record temperatures with a long, hot summer still stretching ahead.
It is the new normal: climate models predict the number of extreme heat days, defined as more than 95F, will triple by the middle of the century.
Little wonder Hollywood is churning out desert dystopias in films such as Mad Max: Fury Road and The Bad Batch.
Reality, however, has an overlooked subplot: geeks are inventing ways to keep LA cool and possibly mint fortunes in the process.
Dozens of startups have turned the city and nearby regions into a laboratory for products and services which they hope will avert environmental disaster and yield business models replicable across the globe, even beyond.
We would welcome opportunities for off-planet growing, said Brandon Martin, vice president of business development of Local Roots, which turns shipping containers into hydroponic farms. Wed love to be the first company to grow food on Mars.
He was completely serious. Engineers from Elon Musks Space X have studied how the company uses sensors, algorithms and machine learning to transform 40ft containers into the equivalent of three to five acres of farmland while using 97% less water.
We want to be a billion-dollar company as soon as possible, said Kipp Stroden, another Local Roots executive. Wed like to feed at least a billion people in the next 10 years.
Time will tell if that is hubris but it reflects the confidence of startups which think solving some of LAs environmental challenges will open other markets in a heating planet.
LA is essentially a giant opportunity to demonstrate their technologies, said Mike Swords, vice president of government relations for Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (Laci), a public-private nonprofit which mentors startups. If you can demonstrate that your company can help solve problems here theres a good chance you will export it to other urban areas around the world.
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