Is Silicon Valley picking up on Clean Tech?
by Tim Thonhauser-Röhrich
It’s been an intense week. Three days after the US pulled out of the Paris Agreement, the world learned that America had elected Joe Biden, a leader who sees climate change not just as a challenge, but as an economic opportunity. He’s not the only world leader who sees tackling climate change as an economic necessity: Chancellor Merkel does too.
But change cannot come from policymakers alone. It must come from entrepreneurs too.
Last year, a record $270 billion was made in investments for wind and solar. That’s not nearly enough. To keep global average temperatures from rising to dangerous levels, we need about $3.5 trillion invested annually.
The leap from billions to trillions is a big one. Investments in climate tech have not always been successful. A decade ago, Silicon Valley poured money into promising climate tech companies like Solyndra, then lost billions. And a few years ago, it’s like déjà vu all over again, as LightSale Energy raised $80 million before going spectacularly broke.
But not all climate techs are Solyndras and LightSales. Today, a new generation of startups and innovators are dedicated to reducing emissions, pulling greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, and creating scalable technologies to meet our global climate goals.
Take Climeworks — the company already has its first facilities in place to capture CO2 from the air. They are not alone: globally, there are 43 more climate tech unicorns (many from the mobility space) as highlighted in the recent State of Climate Tech report.
Can new financing ecosystems, like the Salesforce Ventures Impact Fund or the famous Climate Pledge help us avoid the mistakes from the last boom?
This article was first published in the weekly FightBack Newsletter. Subscribe here for regular inspiration on impactful corporate innovation.
