Cli-tech special
The day when Donald Trump returned to the White House was a dark day for so-called climate investors and their investment targets. Federal money stopped flowing, legislation aimed at securing tax money for so-called climate investments was axed, and the budding “climate tech” industry was left on its own.
Before we dive into the topic, a linguistic note. There is no such thing as “climate investment” and “climate tech”. The definition of climate is “the general weather conditions usually found in a particular place.” Funnily enough, there are a lot of nonsensical phrases in the climate investment space, which tells me two things: first, that people active in this space don’t have good command of their language, which is regrettable and potentially risky, and second, what they’re selling is mostly hype.
“Khosla Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures and DCVC are among over a dozen venture capital firms and private equity funds [sic] announced on Wednesday that they have launched an initiative to help address the fundraising challenge of climate tech startups on the brink of commercialization.”
The quote comes from a Bloomberg report from early September that announced the creation of the All Aboard Coalition aiming to replace federal money for startups active in climate tech. Ignoring for the moment the falling linguistic standards at one of the greediest subscription mainstream media, the report says that the All Aboard Coalition was about to close a funding round of some $300 million by next month.
It was then going to start giving the money to companies that had not quit on developing “expensive climate solutions that take time to scale” — such as direct air capture, which is the example Bloomberg picked to illustrate the target industry. I’d say that was a rather unfortunate example, yet it gives you a pretty good idea of what sort of tech the members of the AAC, with their $40 billion in assets under management were going to support. With a measly $300 million. Let’s take that dive now.
