Climate Salad's 2022 ANZ Climate Tech Industry Report

Climate Salad's inaugural Climate Tech Industry report was released last week and identified a clear "Triple Win Opportunity of Climate Technology"

1. Solve climate problems

2. Develop research and innovation

3. Build the economy and create jobs

The ANZ climate tech industry is already strong, with breadth across sectors, companies at scale and diversity of teams. It will continue to grow and has the potential for significant local jobs and global impact.

Critical Takeaways

Investing in climate technology and the supporting ecosystem represents an enormous opportunity for a triple win:
Win 1: We will contribute to getting the planet back to sustainability
Win 2: We will elevate our research and innovation sectors
Win 3: We will create a strong economy and a million new jobs for the future

Priority Insights

• 2030 ambition is the reduction or removal of almost 1,000 gigatonnes of CO2 2
• from the atmosphere.
• 39.7% of companies have at least one female founder.
• 4,000+ jobs have been created, with 2,000+ more in next 12 months. Climate tech has in total raised $1.4B during the last 12 months.

Important Insights

• 38% of companies are headquartered in NSW, 22% in Victoria, 13% in Queensland and 7% in New Zealand.
• The largest sectors are Data and Finance, Circular Economy and Agri Food, while Biosphere is the smallest sector.
• There is a fairly even spread of companies across stages of growth, with 27% at prototype and 16% at scale.
• Impact goals are dominated by carbon reduction at 48%.
• 38% of companies are developing new IP with 31% using patents.
• 85% of companies are B2B, with a roughly equal secondary focus on B2C and B2Government (24% and 20% respectively).
• 83% of companies are at the pre-seed or seed stage, while 17% have raised Series A or B.
• Total valuations of all companies were $4.2 billion.
• Most companies are already operating in at least one international market or have plans to expand beyond domestic markets (90%).
• Market focus is evenly spread between North America, Asia and Europe.

We were fortunate to sponsor the report's growth section:

"Given the scale and urgency of change required to achieve net-zero by 2050, we need to place as many bets as possible on the people and businesses who are searching for and building solutions to the climate crisis.

Growth is not only about more customers and revenue. Growth also comes from crucial, yet harder to measure metrics like impact (increasing adaptation, mitigation, natural capital, or reducing the green premium), from soft benefits (improve mental health and CX), and importantly, learning.

For early-stage startups it is critical to focus on discovering what customers actually want and to prioritise learning over sales. Startups need to prove that there is demand for their value proposition before building a product.

Climate change is a huge problem and founding a startup is a huge undertaking, so the combination can leave many “like a deer in the headlights”, wondering where to start or what to do next.

We don't have time to build climate techs that nobody wants, so I started More Traction to help them get aligned and ready for investment. The more startups succeed, the sooner we’ll remove GHG and achieve our net zero targets.

More Traction helps these businesses align behind a plan, define a customer-centred product strategy and execute the activity required to demonstrate traction to investors and secure funding for growth. We’ve spent the last 15 years doing this across industries and are now focussed on helping climate techs succeed."

You can download the report here