By Riley Kaminer
Have you got your feet tangled in some sargassum seaweed recently? If not, it’s only a matter of time.
But sargassum is not just vexing for beachgoers. Rather, it can also cause respiratory problems and release toxic gasses.
In July, we reported that the Miami-Dade Innovation Authority launched a public challenge, in partnership with the Office of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and the Nature Conservancy, to find creative ways to use South Florida’s sargassum surplus.
Now, the MDIA has announced four winners, who will each receive a $100,000 equity investment and the opportunity to test and validate their solution in collaboration with Miami-Dade County during this year’s high season for the seaweed. And two of them are based in the Miami area.
Chemergy, which launched in 2011, has developed a solution to convert wet organic and plastic wastes into green hydrogen. Their platform claims to use 40% of the electricity of traditional methods while more than doubling the amount of hydrogen produced. President and CTO Melahn Parker studied at MIT, Caltech, and Stanford and worked at Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and McKinsey.
“We’re developing a long-term solution for community sustainability and resilience by utilizing local waste streams to produce future-proof fuels and integrating a flexible load with electrical energy storage to enhance the adoption of intermittent renewable power and provide a backup power capability to critical facilities and the grid at large,” Parker commented.
Algas Organics, led by CEO Johanan Dujon, is on a mission to help farms increase profits by increasing crop yield and quality while reducing input costs. They have developed a plant amendment – a substance applied to plants or seeds which is intended to improve growth – that is made completely out of sargassum. This enables farmers to reduce fertilizer costs by up to 20% while also correcting micronutrient deficiencies. Dujon launched Algas in 2014 from his home island of St. Lucia, which suffers similarly from sargassum.
“This is the beginning of a paradigm shift, which will turn Sargassum seaweed from a problem into a new, multi-billion dollar industry for Miami while creating jobs and protecting the environment from heavy metals,” Dujon said in a statement. “It’s execution time.”
The two other winners are X-MET, a British company developing tech-powered solutions to generate renewables; and Carbonwave, a Boston company using seaweed to address regenerative agriculture, sustainable manufacturing, and scalable carbon sequestration.
“For us, success of this challenge looks like identifying startups that have solutions that actually address public challenges in Miami-Dade in a way that is sustainable and environmentally friendly,” MDIA president and CEO Leigh-Ann Buchanan told Refresh Miami.
So far, the MDIA has received $9 million in seed funding, which it will receive over the next three years: $3 million each from the Knight Foundation, Ken Griffin (CEO of Citadel), and the Miami-Dade County.
“The MDIA is an opportunity to address some of the most pressing challenges in Miami with tech and innovation in a way that actually has an economic development impact, but also helps our constituents,” Buchanan noted. “It’s a unique vehicle, and I’m excited to see it grow to a point where it becomes an important institution in our system – and also becomes a blueprint for other cities across the world.”
MDIA currently has another public challenge that is currently open for applications revolving around improving the passenger experience at Miami International Airport. The deadline for this second challenge is Monday, January 29th.
READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI:
- Miami-Dade Innovation Authority launches first project, seeks tech to rid sargassum from our shores
- Miami-Dade Innovation Authority opens 2nd $100K challenge: Improving the MIA experience through tech innovation
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- Seaworthy Collective charting new waters in BlueTech, from Miami to the seven seas
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