In a world where the urgency of climate action often clashes with the demands of industry and commerce, startups are increasingly stepping up to champion a more sustainable future. These innovative companies are addressing the pressing need for environmental change across various sectors, recognizing the significant carbon footprint left by industries such as travel and logistics.

Among these startups, SQUAKE, a Berlin-based climate tech startup, is championing a more sustainable future in the travel and logistics sectors. Founded by Dan Kreibich and Philipp von Lamezan, SQUAKE offers a suite of innovative solutions, including sustainable fuels and carbon removal technologies, aimed at empowering businesses to achieve their climate targets while revolutionizing their operations.

For this interview, we spoke with Dan Kreibich, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of SQUAKE, to delve into the company’s origins and the vision driving its impact. He also discusses the imperative of prioritizing carbon removal over offsetting, exploring the role of collaboration in driving meaningful progress, and much more. Join us as we glean wisdom from Dan’s experiences and chart a course towards impactful sustainability entrepreneurship.

Could you start by introducing SQUAKE and how it aims to revolutionize sustainability in the travel and logistics industries? Moreover, what inspired you and Philipp von Lamezan to found the company?

Having founded Compensaid – the first platform where passengers could fly on Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAFs) – it struck us that there is a much bigger problem worth solving beyond just aviation (at that time the main focus of media attention), for the environment but also for companies that are pressured from all sides to change. 

Travel and logistics – both areas that are essential for general welfare, but super-hard to decarbonise in the very short term – are responsible for 20% of global carbon emissions. So, with our solutions, especially around sustainable fuels, we knew we had something that could help many more companies.

This is SQUAKE: a solution suite that helps companies achieve their climate targets. The problems companies have are always unique. SQUAKE’s software, paired with our experts, helps in a range of ways – from calculating carbon emissions for literally any travel or logistics activity, to reducing and removing carbon impact through innovative and impactful technologies like sustainable fuels, direct air capture, and more. 

Can you share some examples of how SQUAKE’s technology has helped businesses in the travel and logistics sectors reduce their environmental impact, and what potential benefits do you see for other industries beyond?

First of all, the travel and logistics industries are ripe for sustainable transformation, all being still relatively new. The actions have quite immediate positive returns for the companies, which makes it exciting to work in this field. We’ve been fortunate to enable many of the largest organisations to have a real-world positive impact.

For example, we’ve supported Lufthansa in building products that help it to get closer towards climate targets. To facilitate building products around carbon emissions, we first enabled its business units to calculate CO2 emissions homogeneously – preferably via our API, but, as IT pipelines are usually full at those big corporations, we’ve also evaluated CSV-based data. Doing this gives us a transparent overview of what is happening in terms of CO2. 

Furthermore, we’ve given the company access to a large volume of carbon credits through a portfolio of high-quality carbon projects based in LHG locations. Overall, this allows Lufthansa to publish its pioneering solutions like SAF ticket fares, allowing passengers to fly with a lower impact while supporting Lufthansa in achieving sought-after SAF targets. This is one of many initiatives that run in parallel with each other.

In logistics, another great example is DB Schenker: drawing on SQUAKE’s extensive SAF experience, we extended our expertise to DB Schenker’s road business. Together, we’ve been working on a solution for hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO) fuel and electrified transport, allowing customers to purchase and claim accredited emissions reductions seamlessly.

With global warming on track to exceed the 1.5°C limit, you’ve emphasized the importance of prioritizing carbon removal over offsetting. Can you elaborate on why you believe carbon removal is a more effective solution for combating climate change?

Carbon reduction and removal are much more effective approaches than offsetting when combating climate change. There’s a hierarchy to follow: avoid, then reduce, then compensate.

When avoidance is not possible, reducing carbon emissions (for example, through Sustainable Aviation Fuel or SAF) directly decreases CO2 emissions for the same activity – for instance, operating the same cargo flight but with fewer new carbon emissions.

Regarding compensation or offsetting, this typically occurs outside the value chain, making it somewhat more abstract. However, it is a well-established practice, and some projects permanently remove CO2 – for example, through direct air capture with long-term storage. These technologies have the potential to reverse climate change, and we strongly support them.

Collaboration is a recurring theme in your approach to addressing climate change. How does SQUAKE foster collaboration among various stakeholders, and why do you believe collaboration is essential for achieving meaningful progress in sustainability initiatives?

Both the travel and logistics industries are highly fragmented, and it’s a given that companies usually have hundreds of suppliers. Without collaborating, many of those companies couldn’t exist today. As with many global problems and business challenges, collaboration is the best way to solve them – but companies need access to solutions and expertise. 

We work with many different companies around the globe connecting carbon partners like Neste and Climeworks with clients such as Lufthansa, Reed&Mackay and HRS, in ways that would be hard to achieve for each company in isolation. We work with different company sizes – from startups to Fortune 500 companies – to understand their individual challenges and address them with our solution suite, saving time for everyone and enabling businesses to go faster and better to market. 

Industry bodies – such as IATA, GBTA and VDR – are all critical to this conversation, too, as is opening up to startups and industry-agnostic compensations to spread learnings on carbon removal, reduction and avoidance.

SQUAKE’s inception within Lufthansa’s Innovation Hub is an interesting aspect of its journey. How has this initial environment influenced SQUAKE’s approach to innovation and collaboration, what were the biggest challenges you faced during your transition into an independent startup, and what were the main lessons you learned?

SQUAKE’s inception kicked off within Lufthansa’s Innovation Hub back in 2019. Our background – with me founding Compensaid and both of us having built several solutions in the market – meant we were able to develop a deep understanding of travel technology.

Lufthansa and surrounding companies, like Miles & More or Lufthansa Cargo, were great first customers. When the Covid-19 pandemic and financial crisis hit all aviation companies, we decided we had the chance to become an independent company, with the backing of independent venture capital (VC) funding. 

This enabled us to grow faster, which is key to the challenge our climate faces. One of the early main challenges we faced was that, while we had built up a great solution, the market and companies still needed massive education. 

You’ve recently achieved a significant funding milestone. Can you provide insight into how this investment supports the company’s growth and development, and what can we expect from SQUAKE in the near future?

Our main aim is to grow quickly, reliably, and at a great scale – exactly what we need to solve the climate challenge. In times of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), 2030 goals, and net zero commitments, companies realise the need for solutions like SQUAKE’s and meet our pace of rapid changes. We are using our investment to continue to hire the best people in the business, joining us from other industry leaders and bringing in the insights we need to help the market. 

Moreover, we massively invest in our product landscape, from recently maturing our tech by implementing ERP software and getting ISO 27001 certified to building new features that our customers desire.

Given the urgency of addressing climate change, some argue that individual lifestyle changes are insufficient and that systemic changes are needed. How does SQUAKE advocate for policy reforms and industry-wide transformations to accelerate climate action beyond individual consumer choices?

Good policies are key as they guide companies on what they do. These policies need to be properly implemented and we currently see companies – for good reasons – struggling with unclear guidelines and therefore also the implementation. 

We help those companies navigate through those challenges as we have experts tracking those policies and making them actionable – for example, around bio-fuel regulations or similar. We partner with the biggest players and bodies in this space to translate the requirements for our customers and give back market feedback to those bodies to adjust or similar. 

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have the potential to revolutionize sustainability initiatives by optimizing processes and predicting environmental impacts. How is SQUAKE harnessing AI technologies to enhance its carbon calculation capabilities?

Looking at our own technology, we have heavily invested in our API to make it the leading and best-performing API in the market, which was rewarded and is now trusted by some of the leading tech companies in the world. 

AI is obviously on our list; anything else would be negligent. We use it internally to improve work and have a few first trial cases that are currently tested in a very early beta mode. We continue to investigate, and we envision some forecasting models and project monitoring will be some areas where we can gain efficiencies through AI, as well as impact assessments with climate partners.

Looking ahead, what emerging technologies or trends are you most excited about in the sustainability space, and how do you envision SQUAKE leveraging these opportunities to drive positive change?

There are a lot of emerging technologies that we are excited about. As a developer myself, I love to see how we can leverage our own technology by distributing it around the world – having a comparably small but highly performant team working on it – helping positive change.

On the climate technology side, climate projects like more affordable direct air capture projects or SAF at larger volumes will continue to revolutionise the industry and go a long way to improving the environmental impact of travel and logistics. A little less exciting, but super-important, is standardisation, which is a great way to continue leveraging these opportunities to drive positive change. Better comparability in the industry will be another major way we can keep each other accountable and push forward together.

A combination of good tech-enabling businesses is key and we will continue expanding this, with great partners profiting from it.

Startup life comes with its own set of challenges and lessons. What are some of the most significant realities you’ve faced while building SQUAKE, and what advice would you give to other founders navigating similar challenges, especially those working at the intersection of technology and sustainability?

A significant reality we’ve faced is aligning sustainability and business. Educating the market while finding product market fit has been tough – especially in the early days. 

In terms of advice, keep your team as small as possible for as long as possible. Hire the right people who believe in the overarching purpose, and you’ll all be driving towards the same goal together.

Finally, creating B2B companies takes time, so ensure priorities are set straight and learn from everyone around you. For that, I’d always advise building in super-fast learning cycles: ship fast, learn from it and iterate. 

The intersection of sustainability and technology is an incredibly empowering place to be, and it’s exciting to create real change.

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• Source: https://www.eu-startups.com/2024/06/sustainability-in-travel-and-logistics-interview-with-dan-kreibich-co-founder-and-cpo-of-squake/