PitchBook, which is releasing an expansive climate tech report on Oct. 27, defines “climate tech” broadly, including everything from electric cars to clean cement to carbon accounting for investment purposes.
Most of the VC money is coming from the United States, and fully half of the money globally is going into electric transportation and infrastructure supporting them, says Svenja Telle, a PitchBook analyst.
Although we still have another quarter to go, this year’s tally already surpasses the amount invested in Cleantech 1.0. That’s when investors put $25 billion into a narrower field of clean-energy technologies between 2006 and 2011 and “lost over half their money,” according to a 2016 report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Much has changed since then, including lower technology costs, more government policy and what Telle describes as a societal “zeitgeist” more favorable to climate action since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2015.