Sam Laakkonen

In 2023, the largest segments in the climate tech vertical were low-carbon mobility, industry, grid infrastructure, intermittent renewable energy sources (solar and wind). 50 VC deals for climate tech companies in 2023 exceeded $150 million, and of these, nine exceeded $500 million. Companies that need a lot of capital to execute on a big vision can succeed today. #climatetech #climateVC #climate

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Great insights from Sophie Purdom and Sightline Climate (CTVC)'s latest analysis on the H1'2024 climate tech funding market. Tough economic conditions have continued to see a stagnation in ClimateTech funding and deal count - there is a sense of cautiousness among corporates, consumers and investors, reflecting broader trends of the venture market. ClimateTech deals are still happening but the challenges faced by companies funded 2-3 years ago (now at Series B+), who are taking longer to de-risk their technology and achieve scalability, have created an environment of heightened investor scrutiny, even at the early-stage. However, there are still positive signs from what I've seen locally: 📈 ClimateTech remains a high priority in Australia, with $344M from 10 deals, including some large rounds, as reported in Cut Through Venture's Q2 2024 Report. https://lnkd.in/g3CK5p2W 🔀 More flexible forms of capital, such as debt, grants, and philanthropy, are becoming more readily available. E.g. Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) received a funding boost in the recent budget. 💫 Growing founder pipeline with ClimateTech communities remaining strong (e.g. Melbourne Climate Network and Climate Salad). I'm keen to hear the insights from the Climate Salad team for their upcoming Aus Climate Tech Industry Report. Sign up for their launch here: https://lnkd.in/gPYsRqZw #climatetech #funding

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Very excited to share my latest piece in Forbes - "Adaptation and resilience in corporate climate agendas" If any of the below resonates, esp. with those working on adaptation + resilience and/or corporate climate + sustainability - our team at Riffle Ventures would love to hear from you! Main idea - climate adaptation and resilience can be an innovation driver for companies and we need to accelerate this agenda. 🏭 Most discussions around corporations and their climate agendas focus on if, how, and how quickly, big businesses are reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, as well as decreasing their own negative externalities on the natural environment. 💰 However, in parallel climate change is creating growing financial, infrastructure, health and other risks that could disrupt large companies, some of which is already happening. While the tools and strategies for decarbonization are fairly well-covered, we are only scratching the surface when it comes to building resilience and adapting to a warming planet. 🈺 Of course, emissions and corporate sustainability targets need urgent attention and commitment, but in parallel we need to make sure companies writ large are adapting to and building resilience against climate risks - e.g. droughts, floods, fires, grid instability and weakening infrastructure - are all a growing reality on a warming planet. 🆘 Corporations, regardless of industry and geography will require support across the board in navigating climate change's most pressing threats. The risk of not doing so could have near-term, material impacts on protecting critical infrastructure as well as access to necessary products and services - food and medicine - and could also negatively impact human's themselves - heat stress, job loss, etc. 🤖 There is a growing technology solution set focusing on climate adaptation and resilience, and we need to bridge the gap between between these climate tech startups and the corporate sector. In turn, corporations can have an enormous impact in helping to scale climate innovations and bolster the surrounding ecosystem. Many thanks to Jackie Roberts for providing time and insight for the article, Dhruv Jesrani for being the design wizard and to Suma Reddy Connie Bowen Abrar Chaudhury Alhan Fakhr Laith Kawar Madeleine Futterman Emmanuelle Palikuca Omar Saif Andrew Chang Hope Petraro Tom K. Deepa Lounsbury for their guidance along the way while we did the research for this, and for Dahna Goldstein for being the connection to Jackie! #ClimateAction #SustainableBusiness #CorporateResponsibility #SustainabilityGoals #ClimateLeadership #CorporateSustainability #SustainableDevelopment #ClimateInnovation #ClimateChangeAdaptation #ResilienceStrategies #SustainableSolutions #ClimateResilience #BuildingResilience #ClimateChangeResponse #AdaptationStrategies

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Climate tech investments in 2024 will outpace last year's total. As of July 2024, climate tech funding year-to-date reached $57.92 billion – a notable increase from the $47.69 billion recorded at the same point in 2023. This 21.4% growth underscores a robust influx of capital into the sector, giving prevalent economic uncertainties, reflecting sustained investor interest and confidence. https://lnkd.in/erkWuJtD #climatetech #climateaction Remarkable Ventures Climate

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International Carbon Mitigation has a clear path forward... I've literally been waiting on this for 6 years!!! The Kyoto Protocol CDM based private sector carbon offset instrument (version 1 of carbon credits), which was riddled with fraud and undermined the Kyoto Protocol, is finally being replaced with Paris Agreement Article 6.2-6.3 and the construct of Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs): https://lnkd.in/eX2R7qvE). I'm elated to see the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) driving the effort by building an ITMO Trading Platform since 2021 Glasgow's finalization of the Paris Agreement to deliver the first ITMO auction in April, and again in July, of this year. Both were a huge success, and signal a path forward to create an ITMO market that resides somewhere between $200B (IETA estimate) and $4T (Shell Oil Research estimate) annually by 2030 for government sanctioned international trading of carbon mitigation per Paris Agreement Article 6 guidelines.  First ever ITMO contract signing, representing the first ever sovereign carbon mitigation trading: https://lnkd.in/euDFeXG3 More details from the UNDP effort to drive ITMO project development and instrumentation forward: https://lnkd.in/edx9gF2K There are currently 137 pilot ITMO trading projects. For example, Switzerland and Singapore are procuring ITMOs from countries such as Ghana, Peru and Thailand. These projects range from climate-smart agriculture to electric-car manufacturing. Ghana has the highest number of such collaborations underway, while Suriname is currently issuing ITMO credits through forestry projects: https://lnkd.in/eB5nbhz3 What does this mean for Parisii? We will continue to evaluate ITMOs as the UNDP market matures, but we believe ITMOs will be able to augment the PARYS stablecoin reserve to deliver potentially a 10X treasury instrument over the next 6 years if current estimates hold. The EU Allowances are expected to provide a 50% per annum return through 2030 for PARYS, but the ITMOs are projected to deliver 170% return annually through 2030. Balancing investment into both carbon assets can deliver over 25x return annually through 2030 over Tether's current treasury yield (delivering 3.5-4% per annum as US Treasury note yield), which would make PARYS a far more profitable instrument for all involved, all while serving the greater good of cleaning up pollution globally under Paris Agreement and MiCA regulatory guidelines. All this and having the PARYS treasury managed by Blackrock sounds like a huge improvement on stablecoin design over USDT. What say you?

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Good to see more progress from colleagues at The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) in efforts to build end to end integrity in the VCMs. The helps the buyers VCMI focuses on identity high integrity credits. https://lnkd.in/dJMSNxus #carbonmarkets #integrity #climatefinance

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Monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) for carbon markets is confusing. There are 6+ organizations with 35 standards that cover different CDR technologies and have overlapping & different "rules" for the same technology. CDR.fyi, Tank Chen, and Nadine Walsh published a great guide to demystify the MRV landscape. They did a great job simplifying and clarifying the topic. Take a look!! #climatechange #climatetech #climatecareers #climateaction

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Today I dived into the state of climate tech funding. There are unique constraints for climate tech startups, particularly hardware and science tech, when it comes to access to growth capital. If you had not caught these two great reports yet, have a read. - Climate and deep tech specialist VCs and traditional debt (asset) funding from banks and other financial lenders lead the charge . - Mega rounds are driving Q1 increase versus 2023. Our soon to be released research on Australian climate tech has also identified the considerable role played by strategic funds and corporate VCs in filling the funding gap between startup and scaled. https://lnkd.in/g97kdcn7 https://lnkd.in/gPP2uBHu #scalingclimatetech

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Climate financing is going to the wrong places! Really insightful snapshot into the relationship between emissions and Climate tech VC by Daria Saharova (partner at World Fund) She states that: “85% of emissions receive only 52% of funding” And interestingly: - personal behavior change will reduce only 4.3% of emissions - technologies already in the market will account for 49.8% - technologies under development and in need of investment will need to fill in the rest. “46% of emissions will be reduced by technology that’s yet to be developed, and this is the tech we desperately need. Thanks for this Daria Saharova, really insightful.

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I attended the ClimateImpact Summit a few weeks ago. After finally finding time to get through 2000 words of notes, some of the key insights that stuck with me are below. There were so many other points I could have shared from this fantastic conference but that would have made this an unreadable length! I would strongly recommend attending future events by ClimateImpact with talks that explored topics in the perfect level of detail. 📚James Arbib: Co-author of "Rethinking Humanity" highlighted the massive shifts ahead. He thought we were too focused on creating and "shoehorning" new innovation into an old energy system rather than creating a new world with an entirely new clean energy system. On driving change, he said we think change happens because of top down of central player decisions but, in reality, it comes from the ground up. People will experiment with new energies and technology and find competitive advantages that will drive the change. In some positive closing words he said "we have the tech we need to decarbonise the economy - we just need to scale it". ⚡Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy, had some amazing insights on founding and scaling that business. He also didn't recognise me as a customer who hadn't submitted an energy reading in the last three months so win, win for me. He shared an inspiring journey of resilience and emphasised the importance of being ambitious and opportunistic. One audacious approach I loved was how they created new businesses to solve for gaps in the market inhibiting their existing businesses. He also called for more regional energy pricing which I think would be great to stimulate more investment into renewable infrastructure. 💡Neha Manaktala from J.P. Morgan and Erik Mostenicky from Fidelity Investments shared some corporate venture perspectives. They had great insights on how startups can succeed which included understanding corporate sales processes and knowing what to agree to in exclusivity agreements. JP Morgan had a very mature approach to startup portfolio management - something that Neha shared a lot at a roundtable I hosted the following week! 💬 Finally, a few insights from founders to founders: 1. Ruthless prioritisation is key. Focus on solving customer problems and everything else will fall into place. 2. Honest communication is crucial for a team to work at its best. Ensure your team knows how you are and what you need. 3. Founders need a strong, stubborn courage but must also recognise the importance of hiring a team, and have the humility needed to fill in those gaps. 4. A significant number of founders have considered quitting recently. It's vital to support each other and stay resilient. 5. Control the controllables. Focus only on what you can manage. Thanks to Stephen Murphy, Kendall Smith, Saoirse Kelders 柯莎莎 and all the rest of the fantastic team at ClimateImpact for a fantastic day... better late than never sharing these notes, right?!

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S2G Ventures’ new report, The Climate Finance Relay Race, highlights how asset owners have the opportunity to fill a critical funding gap for climate-focused innovations and how having a solid ecosystem can help them do so. I think this is an important read for anyone interested in #climate #finance. https://lnkd.in/gjtFhHPy Mike Wise Sanjeev Krishnan Jinchen Zou

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Labour’s recent £1bn commitment has put Carbon Capture in the headlines - which is a pretty wide topic. Let’s dive in. 🏊‍♂️ In principle, future-facing investment into new climate technologies should 100% be welcomed… but it depends on what signal it sends to industry and the economy about what the UK thinks is important. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) offers an interim solution for tackling the carbon emissions of essential but hard-to-abate industries like steel production, concrete, biogenic CO2 sources from ethanol and biogas production, and treating water and food waste. Because of a lack of action, CCS has a place in today’s economy helping dirty, but essential industries, become as close to carbon neutral as possible. But given Labour's focus on long-term growth, investment should be about creating the UK economy of the future — not keeping the status quo and locking our economy into enduring reliance on fossil fuels. This will take bold action and long-term thinking. For instance, the UK has an opportunity to be the dominant global force in offshore wind, build a future-proofed grid, and super-charge carbon-negative technologies such as DAC to return carbon atoms from the atmosphere to the geological formations they originally came from. I’d love to see more on these fronts. Before you jump me - let’s state the obvious: we also need to insulate homes, rewild our environment and maximise biodiversity. Everyone should eventually have a heat pump and drive electric cars. There is no silver bullet to climate change. Announcements like this must not be used as an excuse for the energy sector to delay the adoption of available decarbonisation technologies, despite the challenges they may present. We risk the latter if investment and policy focuses on singular solutions that do not force our industry and economy to evolve for the better - never mind that it’s the right thing to do for our kids. Just sayin’ https://lnkd.in/eMvfp9Ez Mission Zero Technologies #dac #pointsource #decarbonisation #labour #carbon #uk #billion #climate #climatechange #CarbonCapture #ClimatePolicy #Sustainability #NetZero #DirectAirCapture #LabourConference2024

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After years of thinking about it, I started publishing articles on all things Climatetech back in April. I want to preview a piece I've been working on with two friends and get your thoughts. Writing has been a humbling endeavor, but no small part of that comes from my desire to write and research a bit of everything. The inevitable development is that I have 30 articles in varying stages of completion. Given my work to build Offset Atlas, an effort to create more accessible on-ramps to carbon markets through insights and education, my thoughts and thus writing have gravitated towards writing about #Carbon and the #VCM. I'm excited to say that Mike Martinez, Kaden Gulamani, and I are nearing completion for an article on consolidation in the carbon markets. As we wrap up I want to hear your big questions. Drop your thoughts in the comments below, I will answer here and preview the questions that will be addressed in our piece! p.s. We want all the data so if you have a source you prefer or feel is overlooked drop us a link!

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🌍 🌳 Last week was eventful and prosperous for many climate tech companies in terms of funding. Recent climate tech funding updates have covered sectors including renewable energy technologies, carbon capture and storage and solar thermal technology. Here’s the Climate Insider’s weekly report on funding: 👉 Dynelectro announces the successful closing of an €11 million investment round. 👉 280 Earth, a carbon capture startup originating from Google parent Alphabet, has secured a $40 million deal. 👉 Naked Energy Ltd announces £17m of new equity in the first close of their Series B, led by E.ON Energy Infrastructure Solutions. 👉 Carbon Limit, a climate tech company revolutionizing the concrete industry with its proprietary CO2-capturing technology, was named a grant recipient of the South Florida ClimateReady Tech Hub’s recent $19.5 million funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA). 👉 Germany grants €4.6 billion to 23 green hydrogen projects following EU approval. 👉 LevelTen Energy closes a $65M Series D funding round to scale transaction infrastructure for the next phase of the clean energy transition. 👉 Syntetica, a startup focused on nylon recycling, has secured €4.2 million in Seed funding. ​​ 👉 SHEIN launches a €200 million Circularity Fund in the UK and the EU, alongside a commitment to invest €50 million in broader ESG efforts. 👉 The Canada Infrastructure Bank/ Banque de l'infrastructure du Canada (CIB) has completed a $100 million investment with GDI Integrated Facility Services Inc. (GDI) to finance extensive energy retrofits in aging buildings across Canada, aiming to substantially decrease their environmental footprint. 👉 Beijing plans to invest $800 billion over the next six years to upgrade its electricity grid, addressing rising demand and supporting the transition from coal to renewable energy. 👉 Climate tech startup 44.01 secures $37 million to expand its solution for turning CO2 into rock. #ClimateTech #Funding #CarbonManagement #DataAnalytics #ClimateRisk #ClimateTechFunding #ClimateTechInvestment #ClimateInvestment #ClimateAction #ClimateChange #StartupFunding

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Take a look at our handy guide on different nature-based carbon projects and some key points to consider. Make sure you're following the Terra page for more explainers like these.

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"Despite repeated pledges of financial support from high-polluting nations, they haven’t delivered what they promised. And even if they did, it wouldn’t be nearly enough to support the urgent action that’s needed. That makes carbon markets a critical source of financing." Great article by Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). There is a right and a wrong side of the ideological debate around Carbon Markets. Yes, make no mistake - the debate is not scientific. It confronts people who believe in the private sector and markets as an instrument for positive impact, and people who believe in state-owned resources, and have a negative view of markets. It is an old debate - one where collectivists always (wrongly) assume they have the moral upper hand. I am on the pro-makets side, although I do not believe in 100% free markets - there is a role for states and multilateral organisations. Their key role is establishing fair playing-fields, regulations and acting as referees. But the driving force, if we are to have any hope of achieving scale in our fight against climate change, biodiversity loss and rural poverty, will always depend on private sector actors.

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Needs will go far beyond energy and decarbonization. Adaptation and resilience will be critical: everything from drought resistant seeds to stronger building codes, insurance and reinforced infrastructure, among many others, are all on the table. There are no guarantees, but these solutions can help improve livability in certain areas, at least in the near-term. These solutions can help ensure that fewer people lose their homes, but will also be critical as host communities experience an uptick in climate migrants. #climatechange #climatemigration #climatetech

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𝐀 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐨 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐀𝐝𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: 𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐟𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐑𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐬 𝐂𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 by Samuel Huckstep and Jonathan Beynon Climate finance is falling short of meeting the adaptation needs of those most vulnerable to climate change. What little is provided increasingly comes from existing, and already overstretched, development budgets. Development leaders emphasise their desire to mobilise more private climate finance, but struggle to do so— especially for underfunded adaptation. This is the first challenge. Remittances are already an important and effective source of income for households in climate-vulnerable countries. Many Global North countries rely on migrant labour to fill (often seasonal) labour shortages. However, they make little effort to maximise the potentially very large effects of this labour migration by targeting it towards those who would most benefit. This is the second challenge. In a new paper (https://lnkd.in/gVrkCi5e), the authors set out a proposal that addresses both challenges: incentivise the reorientation of migration opportunities towards communities highly vulnerable to climate change by counting a portion of their remittance flows as mobilised private climate finance. https://lnkd.in/gNfzGNeK

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#NetZero keynote at #RBEU w Peter Jelkeby Sarah Mukherjee MBE Douglas Lamont Lindsay Hooper Philip Moss - Are you an impact company? If yes, net zero transition is integral to your strategy - Issues are interconnected. You cannot solve child labor without addressing deforestation or other environmental challenges - Focus on your purpose as an organization: it's the key to strike the right people-profit-planet balance - structural changes of the system of incentives are happening, driven by regulation. Companies can collaborate with governments to show that the bar CAN be raised and remove the most important mindset obstacle: fear of change - the skills gap is one of the biggest challenges - but also a source of opportunity in terms of new jobs creation that are required by the net zero transition

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