What’s occurring? Subsequent yr, New Belgium Brewing will swap out one of many 4 natural-gas-powered boilers at its principal brewing facility in Fort Collins, Colorado, for an electrified model designed to chop greenhouse-gas emissions. The pilot boiler system was developed by AtmosZero, a startup additionally based mostly in Fort Collins and popping out of stealth as we speak.

Why it’s vital: Warmth manufacturing from business might account for round 10% of world carbon dioxide air pollution. The sector depends closely on steam to switch warmth, sterilize tools and items, and separate chemical compounds. New Belgium Brewing is working with startup AtmosZero to make use of warmth pump know-how, which may be much more environment friendly than the sorts of boilers the sector usually makes use of. 

However… The corporate’s merchandise might battle to compete in opposition to the very low price of natural-gas-fueled boilers in some markets. Learn the complete story.

—James Temple

This app helps staff reclaim thousands and thousands in misplaced wages

Reclamo, a brand new net app, helps immigrant staff who’ve skilled wage theft. It guides them by means of assembling case particulars, and in the end produces completed authorized claims that may be filed immediately. A course of that might in any other case take a number of conferences with an lawyer can now be carried out inside an hour.

A major quantity of wage theft targets immigrants, each authorized and undocumented, partly due to communication limitations and their perceived lack of energy or authorized recourse. However the app is already making a distinction—serving to staff to reclaim $1 million in misplaced wages because it began beta testing in October final yr. Learn the complete story.

—Patrick Sisson