Financing climate tech

In our 13^th episode, Baris Efe and Danijel Višević discuss the financing landscape for climate tech. Danijel Višević is General Partner and Co-Founder World Fund, a Berlin-based climate tech VC (fund size € 300 M, 18 investments so far). Baris Efe is the Co-Founder and Head at Vali Berlin, the entrepreneurship hub of ESMT business school. We discuss why we need tech to tackle the climate crisis and the role of venture capital to finance it. Baris and Danijel analyze the state of European competitiveness and the what can be done to improve it. 

• The recent EU Commission report on the future of European Competitiveness (Draghi report) highlights that the EU faces barriers to innovation and that a joint plan for decarbonization is needed. Danijel and Baris believe investments into climate tech can address both the climate crisis and Europe’s competitiveness problem.
• Venture capital is an asset class that’s well suited to investing in young startups and companies that have disruption potential. The World Fund has developed an approach to assess the “Climate Performance Potential” (i.e. the emissions savings potential) of every technology the Fund invests in.
• Baris is a supporter of the proposal to create “Europe inc,” a new pan-European legal entity for startups, to make Europe more competitive in the clean tech space.

• The World Fund White paper on investing in climate tech
• Vali Berlin, the entrepreneurship hub at ESMT
• The Draghi report on the future of European competitiveness
• PwC’s report on the state of climate tech 2024
• The EU inc petition

Financing Impact is a podcast about funding and scaling societal impact. This podcast is brought to you by SciFi, the Societal Impact Financing Initiative at ESMT Berlin. SciFi is supported by the Gates Foundation, among others.

For feedback on the show or to suggest guests for future episodes, contact us at scifi@esmt.org