Everyone’s talking about AI as a growth tool. Fewer people are talking about what it costs the planet. Greenpixie just raised £4.7m to fix that. Digital sustainability is becoming a board-level conversation – and the founders who get ahead of it now will have a real edge…
Remember our adage that successful sustainability businesses focus messaging on Better, Faster, Cheaper? Greenpixie helps identify wasteful zombie resources as well as lower carbon alternatives.
Article link: startupsmagazine.co.uk/greenpixie-raises-4-7m-to-cut-cloud-and-ai-waste
Biochar has always had a financing problem – not because the technology doesn’t work, but because investors couldn’t get comfortable with the revenue model.
The Green Finance Institute’s new CDR Catalyst is trying to change that, and its first deal – £1m in finance from Oxbury Bank to a biochar developer in southwest England – shows how structured finance can unlock projects that wouldn’t otherwise get off the ground.
This matters beyond biochar. The same logic applies across nature-based and engineered carbon removal: the gap isn’t usually the science, it’s the bankability. Worth watching how the Catalyst evolves.
The Crown Estate’s third Supply Chain Accelerator round is open with £15m available, applications close 3 July.
The programme has already backed 26 projects totalling nearly £18m, from floating wind test centres to O&M hubs.
If you’re building in the offshore wind supply chain and haven’t looked at this, now’s the time. The match funding model (up to 50%, between £250k and £2m) is well-structured for early-stage businesses that need to derisk before going to investors.
There’s lots of talk (and rightly so) about early-stage climate funding. The harder problem is what comes next – the £25-100M commercialisation gap that’s pushing UK deep tech founders to look abroad. Innovate UK’s new FOAK Builder programme is trying to close it. Worth watching.
Article link: https://iuk-business-connect.org.uk/perspectives/unlocking-scale-for-uk-climate-tech/
The UK is leading Europe in clean tech investment – but dig into the numbers and there’s a warning sign for founders. Early-stage activity is falling even as the overall figures look healthy. That probably means more capital is concentrating at later stages, with fewer bets being placed on unproven ideas. For pre-seed and seed founders, that makes the job of standing out to investors harder, not easier – which puts even more weight on getting your story, positioning and go-to-market right from day one.
Article link: https://uktech.news/climate-tech/uk-leads-europe-in-clean-tech-funding-report-finds-20260501
Most climate tech coverage focuses on solar, EVs, batteries and residential heat. But industrial heat – the energy used to make whisky, ceramics, steel – accounts for a huge chunk of global emissions and has barely been touched. Exergy3’s £10m raise is a signal that investors are starting to take this seriously. Worth watching.
Article link: https://www.uktech.news/climate-tech/exergy3-raises-10m-to-shake-up-the-clean-heat-market-20260421
Exergy3 is a University of Edinburgh spin-out
I’m Richard Leader – a fractional CMO and marketing strategy advisor. I’m a Domain Expert at Carbon13 and a mentor at Draper University. I work with sustainability businesses and climate tech founders on messaging, positioning and marketing strategy.
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