7 SMEs making US cities smarter and greener
We are all working towards a shared future in which our cities are greener, smarter and more inclusive.
Some are helping us move across cities; others are improving our quality of life by detecting air pollution. Others are helping protect the environment by supplying clean and renewable energy.
Every month we will share companies with inspiring missions that are making city life better.
Today’s focus is on 7 ambitious US-based companies creating urban planning, air pollution, mobility and clean energy solutions.
Urban Planning
Urban Footprint
Urban Footprint aims to empower urban planners and designers to design a more equitable, efficient and resilient built world. They provide governments and enterprises with data about the urban and natural landscape. The company generates insights that map and measure risk and opportunity to prioritise investments and resources. Urban Footprint’s data can be used by energy providers looking to invest in infrastructure to address climate risk and community vulnerability, mobility companies, investors and insurers, and government distributing resources.
Air Pollution
Clarity Movement
Clarity Movement tackles the global air pollution crisis by leveraging their expertise in air sensing technology, IoT devices and data analytics to create innovative solutions. The company has developed the world’s most accurate low-cost particulate matter sensor and is now working on next-generation dense air quality monitoring networks, which will make cities smarter.
Mobility
StreetLight Data
StreetLight Data combine location data resources with industry knowledge to provide transportation behaviour insights and make them available to decision-makers and stakeholders, empowering them to make better transport decisions. Their data helps reduce greenhouse emissions, improve equitable transportation access, manage new mobility, and reduce traffic incidents.
Coord
Coord believes that streets should serve people, not vehicles and has set out to help cities manage their roads. The company’s extensive curb management platform helps cities price, allocate and manage the curb. The platform supports over 4.9M curb spaces across 15 cities and has the ambition to serve over 100 cities across the world by the end of the year.
Bestmile
Bestmile believes that as city populations continue to grow, the only way to accommodate this growth sustainably is with shared, smart, electric and autonomous fleets that can move people 24/7. Bestmile’s mission is to enable any types or brands of vehicles to work together as intelligent fleets to deliver the future of mobility services. The company’s solution can manage both autonomous and human-driven vehicles, integrate with different transport modes and provide end-to-end applications for travellers, drivers and operators.
Clean Energy
Heliogen
Heliogen’s mission is to eliminate the need for fossil fuels across all sectors of the economy. The company’s technology delivers a cost-effective alternative to fossil fuels. For example, it provides a carbon-free high-temperature heat for the power heavy industrial process industry. To power industrial facilities, data centres and mining operations, the company provides electricity made from sunlights using CO2 turbines. Heliogen also produces clean fuels like green hydrogen that can be used as fuel in transportation, heavy equipment and household heating. Last year, the company received the 2020 World-Changing Ideas Award for its technology.
Palmetto
Palmetto’s focus is on enabling consumers to choose clean energy. They provide proprietary technology, a marketplace model and a mobile application designed to simplify and democratise clean energy access. The company’s mission is to make it easy and affordable for homeowners to switch to solar energy and other renewable and smart technology offerings.