Climate Tech VC: 2.5GT GHGs Reduced + Seed-Stage Impact

Learn how Clean Energy Ventures backs climate startups that reduce gigatons of emissions, scale rapidly, & deliver measurable environmental impact.

Led by managing director David Miller, Clean Energy Ventures is catalyzing investment in seed-stage climate tech companies with the potential to drive a 2.5+ gigaton reduction in carbon emissions. For more detailed show notes read the interview transcript here.

Below are two excerpts from the podcast. 

Speaking to Clean Energy Venture's approach to venture investments Miller said, "Clean Energy Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm. We are often the first institutional capital to invest in a company, often at the seed stage. We are always looking for companies with transformative potential that might not receive capital otherwise. In fact, we have created a metric to define the type of transformative impact that we are looking for. We aim to invest in companies with the potential to reduce 2.5 gigatons of GHG emissions by 2050. We recognize the importance of climate change and the limited time at our disposal. Nonetheless, as early-stage investors, more than anything else we invest in people. As a consequence of our people-first approach, we believe we are able to add substantial value in the form of mentorship and a hands-on investment approach from our entrepreneurial team members and venture partners."

Miller highlighted the importance of the firm's screening methodology, saying, "My initial partners and I have been investing in climate tech companies for 16-17 years. These days we are seeing potential investments in hundreds of companies every year so the importance of screening is greater than ever before. Our screening process is simple and focuses on impact. We ask two questions. The first is how much emission reduction impact does one unit of your product drive, and how does it drive it? We recognize that the definition of the unit will vary across companies but we want to understand the impact on this granular level. The second question is how many units do you expect to deploy at scale? From there, we map the answers to these questions to an S-curve of adoption and calculate the area under the curve for comparison against our 2.5 gigaton benchmark."

Here is the transcript summary of the podcast.

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