🌱 Climate tech is still green, but growing
The infrastructure opportunity and the funding challenge were key topics of conversation at a recent gathering of Australia's climate tech community.
Last week, in the lead up to COP28 in Dubai, the comparatively tiny Australian climate tech community gathered at the Sydney Town Hall for “the biggest climate tech gathering in the Southern Hemisphere.” It sounds impressive to overseas guests until they get a map out, but geography aside, the green (as in young) sector of climate tech in Australia is actually punching well above its global weight.
There are challenges facing the local industry, but they pale in comparison to those at COP28 which has been marred in controversy, including a BBC report that the CEO of Emirati state oil company Adnoc was attempting to use the summit to strike oil trades with foreign dignitaries.
In Australia, both the Cut Through Ventures report and the Techboard report showed that climate tech was the largest sector to attract VC investment, stealing the throne from fintech which has been struggling in the current economic climate (though Andrew Cornell reports the winter is thawing on that one).
Climate tech as a sector has not been immune to the turmoil across the VC and startup industry. A recent PWC report showed that for climate tech startups specifically, the total venture and private equity investment has not fallen quite as far as other sectors: 40.5%, compared to 50.2%. “But the drop still takes climate tech startup funding back to the level of five years ago,” says the report.
