Evan raises his arms, palms down, over a collection of containers with the name, “Zila Bioworks” written on them.

New Material Sprouts From Fast-Growing Crop

It all started with the farmers. Jason Puracal, CEO of the materials startup Zila BioWorks, wanted to make something that could help increase crop value. The company’s new hemp seed-based plastic could combine two coveted features: durability and recyclability. The material is already zooming around slopes and roads in skis and bicycles. Now, thanks to the GCxN program, Zila is partnering with materials experts at the National Laboratory of the Rockies to evaluate its durability for energy infrastructure…

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Three men looking out over a laboratory

Startup Hygge Gets Cozy with the Future of Energy Storage

The story of Hygge Power starts with late Christmas presents, a whiteboard “aha!” moment, and one very lucky Uber ride.

Caleb Scalf, CEO of the startup currently working with NREL as part of the Shell GameChanger Accelerator Powered by NREL (GCxN), was a project manager working from his apartment in Boulder in 2016 who faced an ongoing problem: his power would regularly go out, sometimes for hours.

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