1) How does Climate Investment source companies to invest? What are the criteria for a company to be considered?
Climate Investment sources investment opportunities through a wide range of sources, often a combination of global market screening, deep engagement with commercial customers, and listening to the voice of the entrepreneur. We are focused on identifying the “white space” where decarbonization solutions can scale in heavy-emitting sectors.
At its core, early-stage investing is a relationship business – relationships with our clients (investors), co-investors and prospective portfolio companies. We will often meet entrepreneurs who are not actively raising capital, and it may be years before the risk profile is a fit for Climate Investment. Our existing co-investors represent an invaluable source of deal flow, as they have seen firsthand (in the boardroom and on the cap table) the value we can deliver through our investment model and ecosystem. And of course, our investors, as current or potential customers, are an invaluable source of leads and ideas.
We focus on historically undercapitalized sectors with massive opportunities and few competitors, and we prioritize technologies that can underpin the next generation of global infrastructure.
In practice, we don’t treat sourcing as just deal flow — we treat it as deployment discovery: where the operational constraints are, what adoption barriers exist, and where innovation can translate into repeatable deployments and commercial contracts.
2) What challenges accompany investing in hard‑to‑decarbonize sectors? Many of these technologies require large early‑stage checks—how can that risk be mitigated?
Compared to traditional venture investing, decarbonization solutions can often require greater amounts of capital and longer timelines for commercialization. While that presents a challenge, it also creates an opportunity. The heavy-emitting sectors have historically been underserved by innovation capital relative to their emissions footprint — heavy industry accounts for >65% of global emissions, yet <25% of innovation capital targets the sector, creating a “white space” for early-stage capital.
Outsiders like to blame a lack of technology adoption or risk-averse customer profiles when describing heavy industries. The reality is that these are energy and capital-intensive systems where reliability, efficiency, throughput and safety matter. That does lead to a focus on risk management; however, it does not equal a lack of desire to adopt innovation. Long asset lifecycles, strict performance requirements, and high switching costs create opportunities for strong ROI from decarbonization solutions that also lower operating costs or reduce downtime.
CI mitigate these challenges by listening to the market and focusing on the path to adoption, not just technical validation:
• We invest across the innovation-to-deployment continuum through venture and growth strategies
• We closely partner with our investor-partners to accelerate adoption and actively support demos, pilots and commercial scaling
• We aim to deliver GHG impact, financial returns and operational value to our LPs
• We focus on under-capitalized ‘white space’ in heavy-emitting sectors
3) How does CI work to develop commercialization of technologies outside of investment (technical expertise, market analysis)?
Value acceleration is central to the CI model — we aim to deliver GHG impact, financial returns, and operational value by accelerating the adoption of portfolio innovations in real-world industrial settings.
We do this by (1) listening to customers to ensure we are focused on solutions and not just technologies, (2) leveraging the access and insights provided by our investor-partner relationships, (3) seeking solutions which can re-applied from other sectors or use cases, (4) using our network to create deployment pathways with advanced customers, (5) providing technical and operational support to make solutions work under real-world constraints, and (6) bringing market insight to our portfolio companies, grounded in how industrial buyers make decisions.
As evidence of this deployment-led approach, CI reports 302 deployments and >$600M in operational value to LPs from deployments, alongside >200 MtCO2e cumulative and 74.1 MtCO2e annual realized GHG impact (2025 GHG Impact figures)
4) What is the split between venture and growth equity capital in the investment portfolio? To what do you attribute this mix?
CI is built as a two-strategy platform investing across the innovation to deployment continuum: a venture strategy (“Catalyst”; primarily series A/B entry points) currently with 43 investments and a growth strategy (“Decarbonization Acceleration Fund”; targeting proven technologies at commercial-scale seeking to grow their businesses aggressively) with 5 investments to date. Our venture strategy provides visibility, relationships and pattern recognition for our growth-stage investments, and the growth strategy closes the feedback loop from the market in terms of what customers, investors and ultimately buyers need to see in terms of business model, technology de-risking, and scale.
5) What specific stages and geographies does CI focus on? Is there a push to expand investment into new markets?
CI invests globally, reflecting that emissions-intensive infrastructure and industrial systems, as well as deployment opportunities for decarbonization solutions, are global in nature. However, a majority of the capital has been deployed in Europe and N. America to date.
On expanding into new markets, we’re less driven by “new geographies for the sake of it” and more by where we see the combination of high emissions abatement potential, clear customer demand, and credible commercialization pathways.
Our growth strategy was created specifically to close the gap between validated technology and large-scale deployment, which often presents along with the opportunity to expand a business into new markets. CI can often help de-risk this growth strategy by identifying anchor customers.
About CI:
Climate Investment (CI) is an independently managed specialist investor that invests in decarbonization technologies that underpin the next generation of global infrastructure. CI manages $1.8bn of total committed capital between its venture and growth strategies focused on decarbonization of energy, industry, transport and built environment, to drive market adoption, create value for infrastructure owners and deliver measurable greenhouse gas (GHG) impact.
Operational since 2017, CI has invested in over 40 climate tech companies that have collectively delivered 208 MT CO2e of cumulative greenhouse gas reduction from 2019-2025, along with delivering more than $600M financial returns and operational value to its LPs cumulatively.
Climate Investment was founded by member companies of the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative (“OGCI”). Visit www.climateinvestment.com
