Can Tech entrepreneurs help fight Climate Change?

During Covid-19, Zoom-enabled tech workers are seeing the benefits of working from cheaper, less congested communities elsewhere.

This includes people like Elon Musk and big companies like Oracle and HP Enterprise, who are all leaving Silicon Valley in California. Working from home was intended to be a temporary measure for millions of workers in the early days of the pandemic, but a year later, little has changed. Workers across the world continue to move out of large cities and have started to rethink how they conduct business.

And as this happens, Climate Tech is quickly becoming one of the  greatest opportunities of the future.

 

Climate change is set to become the epicenter of the next entrepreneurial revolution, as this global crisis forges on. What is Climate Tech ? It is everything from Electric vehicles, investment in heating and cooling systems and the overhauling of our agriculture and manufacturing processes.

A recent PwC report found that climate tech investment increased from $418 million per year in 2013 to $16.3 billion in 2019. This growth is five times the venture capital market rate over the last seven years.

There is now a growing need to transform entire businesses and economies to net zero emissions.

We predict that there will be more billionaires created in this area over the next two decades than during the entire internet boom.

Who are the contenders (Apart from Musk)?:

China’s Zeng Yuqun, Huang Shilin, Pei Zhenhua, and Li Ping (electric vehicle batteries)

Li Zhenguo, Li Chunan, Li Xiyan, and Lin Jianhua (solar panels and films)

Wang Chuanfu (electric vehicles)

Germany’s Aloys Wobben (wind turbines)

Spain’s Jose Manuel Entrecanales (renewable power generation).

We like the story of Chris Sacca, the former Google special projects lead who built one of the best-performing venture funds of all time by investing in companies such as Twitter, Twilio, Uber, Instagram, and Stripe, so we figure he knows a few things! His new fund, LowerCarbon Capital, is focused squarely on the climate opportunity.

So far, advocates of climate change have tried to motivate political will through fear, but if we were to start pitching the huge economic opportunity, how much more successful could we be in getting real changes made?

But we need government to do some of the heavy lifting here. Waiting for the natural replacement rate on infrastructure will take too long and we simply do not have that time.

The recent pandemic has shown us that we will need everyone on board to complete a this massive transformation of our energy infrastructure.

So, this could be a real opportunity for investors and social entrepreneurs. Working on solutions to todays real problems and trying to make a difference, not only in peoples lives today, but for the future of our generations.

Header Image from Pexels / Rodolfo Clix

Thanks for stopping by. Greg G

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