Here’s what some leading climate tech investors had to say about climate tech’s highest growth potential areas.
Danijel Visevic – Co-founder of the World Fund
Energy
Energy consumption will increase until 2050. It will at least double and we have to get rid of oil and gas faster than we are now planning to. So of course, there’s a huge opportunity for everything related to renewable energy, and increasing efficiency.
Agriculture
There’s huge potential in the agricultural sector in regenerative farming. The way we farm today is basically releasing carbon to the atmosphere. I think it’s 60 gigatons of carbon that our topsoil is able to save, and used to capture, before we started to do farming as we do it today. Let’s go back to regenerative agriculture and then topsoil will automatically save humankind by reducing the equivalent of all emissions
Sarah Applebaum – Partner at Venture Capital Fund Pangaea Ventures
Decarbonisation and Plant-based Proteins
I think both decarbonisation and plant-based proteins are going to continue to grow. Looking at climate-related events, extreme flooding in parts of Europe, Germany, in particular, massive heat waves across Canada and in the U.S. – it’s going to dramatically impact how and where we produce food.
Agriculture is also a substantial emitter when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, so I think that’s going to be where we’ll see a lot of focus, both from a climate change, resiliency perspective, but also thinking about how we can reduce our footprint and how we feed the world.
Kevin Loo – Vice-President of China Hi-Tech Fund
Smartgrid and Microgrid
In terms of infrastructure, most metropolitan areas already have great energy and utility services in place, but as you move into more rural areas, there’s plenty of energy sources but not a lot of infrastructure in place.
Smartgrid is an area we are currently actively looking for portfolios in. In terms of cleantech, one aim is to make the energy source more clean, the other is to reduce the cost and energy used. A lot of buildings in New York have an energy efficiency rating of C, so there’s huge room to improve that.
Giancarlo Savini – Investment Director at Honeywell
Energy storage software
Typically, it’s about software for battery management systems or power plants. On the hardware side, it’s everything that can enable more long-term energy duration
Plastic circularity
To improve plastic recycling so it works better, enabling chemical recycling.
Green hydrogen
Specifically for industrial applications and we want to contribute here with the existing facilities that we already have.
