‘Climate tech’ was never a great label, anyway
We'll build better climate solutions if we stop using it
Somewhere between Trump winning the election and today, ‘climate tech’ has been declared dead, then alive, then very surely dead…the cycle will continue, albeit with different wavelengths.
It’s been interesting to watch. 5 years in ‘climate tech’ has led me to the conclusion that we outgrew the term a few years back, the above debate is a delayed growing pain, and we’ll build better climate solutions if we stop using it now. Let me explain.
‘Climate tech’ was never a great label
~4 years ago Jamie Beck Alexander coined the mantra ‘every job is a climate job’. Since then, I’ve told literally thousands of job seekers that ‘all work is climate work’. It’s not an exaggeration, every single job and every single company on this planet has an environmental impact - some are net good, most are net bad. We quickly labelled the mindset shift we wanted to see as a sector, and it boomed.
For a while, ‘climate tech’ worked. We needed a label on the door! We needed a collective top-of-funnel to find others with a shared goal, centralise knowledge, drum up a moment and organise a movement. A singular term was hugely effective at this - cornerstone publications like CTVC launched, communities like Work on Climate and MCJ Collective were inundated, and more. During my 3 years building community at MCJ I supported the launch of ~15 local event series with ‘climate’ or ‘Climate Tech’ somewhere in the title. These became brilliant on ramps for folks waking up to what their career could be.
Then, ‘climate tech’ became less and less effective. Field builders know that ‘blossoming’ is what comes next. A heavily generalist umbrella will struggle to create productive density. A steady bubbling of smaller, more focused and more expertise-heavy communities rose up very quickly, each with more unique identifiers than ‘climate tech’ offered1. Carbon removal fanatics in climate tech communities found most value in speaking to other carbon removal fanatics. Same for the carbon accounting army, the biochar believers, the nuclear missionaries, it goes on. Like any good door, there were more behind it, and great communities are sustained by a deeper layer of shared interest and intimacy than ‘climate tech’ ever allowed - David Lang’s conversation with Tito Jankowski, who built AirMiners for the carbon removal fanatics, speaks to this.
There was another issue. As a term, ‘climate tech’ is everything. Are you talking about e-bikes in East Africa, or new ways to measure soil carbon in the surrey hills? I’ve spoken to hundreds of people overwhelmed by the task of learning about ‘climate tech’. As it’s literally everything, the label’s breadth is paralysing.
All up? Or all down? Or all wrong? With a singular term we paint the picture that the ‘entire space’ is in unison in its funding swings, or its popularity amongst policy makers, or its availability of jobs. This couldn’t be further from the truth - for example, in the US nuclear is having a moment, but ESG tracking not so much. Let’s avoid sweeping generalisations like ‘climate tech’, like any average it hides more than it reveals, and anyway….
We’ll build better climate solutions if we stop using it
Now we have to sell. The 2020-2022 ‘climate tech’ hey-day startups have grown up and spent a few years actually having to sell their products. They’re no longer adopting ‘climate tech’ terminology to attract VCs. Now, they’re selling into large corporations who only have so many purely-altruistic coins in their wallets and who want to hear their sector’s language (trust goes a long way). This is a good thing for us all! In Houston, you’ll find ‘energy tech’ - oil and gas wants their language. In the UK, ‘agri-tech’ is the less divisive cousin of climate tech for farmers isolated by the vegan-cliches of environmental activism...
What goes up can also come down. We can’t blame Big Industry for being allergic to ‘climate tech’. Ushering in the climate tech wave was the groundswell of environmental activism that I thank heavily for raising public awareness. In the UK, there’s no doubt extinction rebellion, good ol’ Greta and lots of dabbling from Sir David triggered a seismic shift. That said, few other tech sectors have been quite so polarising. The same environmentalism that helped kick a wave also weakened it at the knees. The ‘Us vs Them’ activism that brought us into this moment, now inhibits our desired outcome.
Be more greek. I think a LOT about how we need 1000 Trojan Horses to rewire an industry. Stories of startups or VCs quickly peeling the ‘climate tech’ language off their websites have been abundant, and (in some cases) criticism has been thick. What did we expect? I sure hope that an alt-meat startup chooses language that appealed to the priorities of its corporate buyers (not me) for it to have the best chance of being appealing in their eyes (not mine). Organisations need to build trust with incumbents, sell-in on the promise of financial returns, then create change through better products2. If they do a great job at that we all win - the planet included - but first they need to get through the gates.
It’s time for a language shift
We’ve grown up, and this is good. We’re finding denser communities quicker (good), championing a mindset shift further and wider than a single term will ever allow (great), and working with real customers to deploy technology in real life (the goal). The sooner we move past the sentimentality of ‘climate tech’ (trust me, it took me a while) - or whether you believe ‘it’ is alive or dead - the more effectively we can deploy climate solutions. ‘Climate tech’ was a helpful rallying cry, but what brought us together might now be holding us back - it risks obscuring what we’re actually building and who we need to reach.
What next? We’d be wise to learn from tech sectors like biotech, where the common identifier is the underlying technology, not the desired outcome3. Even emerging like ‘nature tech’ are a step in this direction - I have a better idea of who is involved. Alternatively, labels like ‘energy tech’ and ‘construction tech’ speak to the sectors they aim to transform, a more strategic approach.
We should:
Lean into the blossoming of new fields.
Be more Trojan Horse.
Speak the language of the industries you’re trying to change.
Pick clearer, sector or tech-specific, labels.
Do what will deploy solutions quickest.
Inspired by Jamie Beck Alexander - ‘all work is climate work’, so let’s get back to it.
Both accelerating this, and as a result, these smaller ‘sub’ communities were built better because they were for a more specific user. Fresh talent now bypasses top-of-funnel generalist groups and publications, the cycle continues. This is how we create more productive densities.
Love it or hate it, capitalism is alive and well. I personally don’t believe we have the time, nor the global political intention, prior to environmental breakdown to usher in a significant systemic change in our global economic system. We do, however, need to aim off at a better system for us all in parallel with retrofitting our existing one. I root for all those trying.
Another labelling option is to be more specific on what we’re trying to affect - ‘American Dynamism’ is one example, time will tell how long it sticks and how effective it is.
Great write up. These two lines stood out to me:
1. I’ve spoken to hundreds of people overwhelmed by the task of learning about ‘climate tech’.
2. I think a LOT about how we need 1000 Trojan Horses to rewire an industry.
I've been thinking about the same thing. There probably needs to be a faster way to get people from the high-level "climate" exploratory phase to identify something specific they can work on and have conviction in. Part of that might even be psychological, getting people to see the climate value of things that wouldn't be labeled "climate" jobs traditionally.