The Brief

The Brief: Climate tech rides out the storm in San Francisco

ImpactAlpha · April 24, 2025

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In today’s Brief:

  • Climate tech rides out the storm in San Francisco
  • Apollo Global’s community solar play
  • Microbes for soil health
  • ‘Off the rack’ blended finance for replication and scale

Climate tech is counting on falling costs and rising demand to ride out the political storm. The onstage sign at San Francisco Climate Week captured the question on many people’s minds: “Are We F#cked?” “I love the subtlety,” cracked author and entrepreneur Paul Hawken as he took the stage at an event organized by climate venture firm Climactic. His answer to the question: “Maybe not – but if we keep going at the same rate we’re going, then yes, absolutely.” The actual title of the event, “It’s Go Time!” better reflected the prevailing attitude of climate tech founders and funders spread across the city, which has seen its share of booms and busts. The volatile political and economic backdrop helped make Climate Week feel less frothy than in recent years. But wherever they gathered, climate techies projected business-as-usual and called the low-carbon transition unstoppable.

  • Supply and demand. The supply is the pipeline of cost-effective solutions that are moving past first-of-a-kind demonstrations and into full commercial production. The demand is strong orders for affordable electricity, energy efficiency, domestically produced materials and local food. “Now is the time we have to lean in and make sure that these companies succeed,” said Dawn Lippert of Elemental Impact, which has a portfolio of dozens of startups and projects ranging from geothermal energy (Fervo) and electric airplanes (Ampaire) to climate-friendly goat cheese (Blue Ocean Barns). Among the founders on stage at Elemental Interactive, the nonprofit’s daylong showcase, was Garth Sheldon-Coulson of Panthalassa, which is harnessing wave energy for data centers that bob in hot air balloon-shaped buoys in the open ocean. Nico Pinkowski of organic fertilizer maker Nitricity said the company is ready to open a $12 million production facility near Turlock, Calif., to produce 8,000 tons of fertilizer a year. “This is a big deal,” Pinkowski said. “We’ve crafted a model to make a fertilizer factory – a profitable fertilizer factory – for millions of dollars, rather than billions of dollars.”
  • Carbon capture. Falling prices also mean that renewable energy now represents most new electricity generating capacity – for economic, not environmental, reasons. But the continued burning of fossil fuels means carbon emissions, and global temperatures, keep going up. That is making carbon capture an urgent necessity. “Our ability to sequester carbon in the natural world is going to happen sooner, bigger and cheaper than anyone, including me, expected,” said investor Tom Steyer of Galvanize Climate Solutions. Mati Carbon, which uses enhanced rock weathering, this week was named the winner of a $50 million X Prize for carbon removal (for background see, “How Mati Carbon is using the carbon markets”). Bangalore-based Boomitra uses satellites and sensors to inexpensively verify carbon sequestration in soil and compensate farmers. Founder Aadith Moorthy said the company can generate high-quality carbon-removal credits at under $40 per ton in Latin America. “There’s an opportunity right here at a price point that is reasonable for decarbonization to be done at the gigaton level today,” Moorthy told Steyer.
  • Messaging matters. Hawken, along with activist and CNN commentator Van Jones, took aim at the standard in-group climate tech lexicon and called for simpler, direct language. “The climate narrative has been a massive failure,” said Hawken, whose most recent book is “Carbon: The Book of Life.” Take “climate resilience”. “What does that even mean?” Jones asked. “Does it help reduce asthma? Does it make traffic flow better?” Or “regenerative ag”: “Why not just ‘be a better farmer’?” For his part, Hawken offered surprising praise for “greenhushing,” the practice of hiding environmental initiatives for fear of political retribution. “Companies should have just shut up in the first place,” he said. “Making claims was a real mistake.” Climate advocates had failed to land their message with a mainstream public preoccupied with kitchen table issues, Jones said. “We’ve languaged ourselves into irrelevance.”
  • Keep reading, “Climate tech is counting on falling costs, rising demand to ride out the political storm,” by David Bank and Clint Wilder on ImpactAlpha. 

Dealflow: Deploy!

Apollo Global commits up to $220 million for community solar. Private equity giant Apollo Global teamed up with Bullrock Energy Ventures, a Vermont-based renewable energy developer and financier, to develop community solar projects across New England. An initial $100 million will support 500 megawatts of solar projects in Bullrock’s pipeline. The investment came from Apollo funds tied to its Sustainability and Infrastructure Group, which aims to facilitate $100 billion in clean energy and transition-related projects by 2030. “Community solar represents an innovative solution to expanding local access to clean, efficient power across the energy grid, benefiting individuals, households and businesses alike,” said Apollo’s Corinne Still. 

  • Partnering up. The joint venture follows a $400 million partnership forged by Apollo earlier this month with Summit Ridge Energy to own and operate solar assets in a half-dozen states, mostly in the eastern US. Apollo had invested $175 million in Summit Ridge, one of the largest owner-operators of commercial solar assets in the US, in 2022.
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Corteva backs Puna Bio to expand bio-based soil health products. Up to 90% of the world’s soil could be degraded by 2050, jeopardizing food production. Puna Bio makes organic biofertilizers with microorganisms that have survived the extreme conditions of Argentina’s La Puna high-altitude desert, from which it takes its name. The “extremophiles” help rejuvenate acidic and salinated soils to boost yields for crops like wheat, barley, cotton and soybeans, and make them more resilient to environmental stress. Corteva Catalyst, the investment subsidiary of American agrochemicals company Corteva, invested an undisclosed amount of capital in the company.

  • Field results. The funding will support Puna Bio’s expansion to the US, Brazil and Paraguay. Dalus Capital also invested, alongside Builders VC, At One Ventures, SOSV and SP Ventures. Corteva’s Tom Greene cited Puna Bio’s record of enhancing “farmer profitability while promoting soil health and environmental sustainability.” Corteva Catalyst launched in 2023 to bring to market agricultural innovations like genome editing. Its portfolio includes UK’s biopesticide company SOLASTA Bio, French natural crop protection company Micropep, and US-based gene editing startup Pairwise. 

Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

  • Blue Earth Capital, AHL Venture Partners and family office Ceniarth extended a $25 million sustainability-linked loan to Robust International to source and process cashews and sesame seeds in West Africa for export. (Blue Earth)
  • Respondology, a Boulder, Colo.-based startup that uses AI to cleanse online conversations of toxic comments, raised $5 million from Iron Gate Capital and SJF Ventures in a Series A extension round. (AdWeek)
  • Aavishkaar Capital’s Global Supply Chain Support Fund made a $5 million investment in Poshs Metal to help the steel processing company improve its environmental, social and governance practices while building a new plant. (YourStory)

Signals: Catalytic Capital

‘Off the rack’ blended finance: Five models to replicate and scale. Clime Capital last month reached a $175 million final close for its early stage equity fund for clean energy ventures in Southeast Asia. Key to its success in a difficult fundraising environment: a first-loss tranche anchored by Allied Climate Partners to mitigate risk for senior investors. The simple two-tranche equity fund structure is among a handful of fund models that could make it easier to unlock and deploy blended finance, especially in emerging markets, according to a new report from British International Investment and BCG. “Scaling blended finance: Practical tools for blended finance fund design,” reviewed 65 blended finance funds and classified them into five basic archetypes, with the hope of making it easier for fund managers to replicate them. “The only way we can begin to meet the world’s development and climate challenges is by mobilizing private capital at an unprecedented scale, and blended finance has a key role to play,” write Leslie Maasdorp of BII and Rich Hutchinson of BCG.

  • Expensive and complex. Blended finance transactions in emerging markets amounted to $24 billion last year – far below what’s needed for global sustainable development and climate goals. “The main reasons for this chronic shortfall are the same reasons why most people don’t go into a bespoke tailor – too expensive, too complex, too time consuming,” Massdorp and Hutchinson say. Clime Capital’s second Southeast Asia Clean Energy Fund is classified as a “pioneering impact equity” fund for high-risk, high-impact equity investments. Two-tranche structures are common in the category. Concessional capital is primarily used for downside protection (see related, “Making subsidies smarter by targeting Africa’s farmers and the funds that support them“). “This type of fund is generally not relevant to institutional investors due to the high level of risk present even in senior tranches,” the report states. Clime Capital’s senior investors are all development finance institutions and other impact investors.
  • Fund archetypes. An example of a “pioneering impact debt” fund is BlueOrchard’s COVID-19 Emerging and Frontier Market MSME, which invests in high-risk, high-impact sectors and regions where access to affordable credit is limited. Such funds often feature senior, mezzanine and junior debt tiers, and attract institutional investors as well as impact-first investors. “High-yield mobilization” funds, such as Vivriti’s India Retail Assets Fund, make debt investments in moderate-risk geographies and sectors. “Targeted mobilization” funds, like Mirova’s Gigaton Fund, focus on moderate-risk debt and infrastructure equity opportunities in specific sectors or markets. “Diversified mobilization” funds, such as Allianz’s SDG Loan Fund, invest across a wider range of geographies and sectors.
  • Keep reading, “‘Off the rack’ blended finance: Five models to replicate and scale,” by Jessica Pothering on ImpactAlpha. 

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

⚡ PluggedIn: Building equity for underinvested business owners. Shared equity strategies can help low-wealth business owners buy the commercial properties where they operate.  On our next PluggedIn, Partners in Equity’s Talib Graves-Manns and Wilson Lester join ImpactAlpha’s Sherrell Dorsey to discuss how the appreciating asset value can then be leveraged for growth capital, building generational wealth. Tuesday, May 6 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm London. RSVP now.

IMPACT Community Capital promotes Andrew Zimmerman to managing director of investments… New Ventures Capital seeks a senior investment analyst in Bogota… Mission Driven Finance is looking for a managing director for its CARE REIT and other impact real estate initiatives… San Francisco Foundation has an opening for an associate director of program-related investments … Rally Assets is recruiting a market building manager.

Oregon Community Foundation has an opening for a director of corporate investment operations… Partners for Common Good is hiring a marketing and communications director in Washington, DC… Open Society Institute is on the hunt for an investment associate in New York… Triple Jump seeks a portfolio manager in Amsterdam… ESG data provider Novata launches “ESG Due Diligence,” a tech-enabled tool that allows investors to manage the sustainability of their deals.  

👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.

Thank you for your impact!

– April 24, 2025