With COP28 taking place in the United Arab Emirates at the end of the year, FEV’s managing partner and co-founder, Jan Lozek, shines a light on the critical voices missing from the debate – namely the smaller, innovative businesses and entrepreneurs that are the lifeblood of the energy transition.

In his article, published by Environmental Finance, Jan highlights the positive impact start-ups focused on the net zero transition and climate mitigation can have. The €250 million that FEV has invested, for example, into start-up and scale-up businesses that are pioneering new solutions in climate tech and the energy transition have the potential to save 11 gigatonnes of emissions by 2050. He also explains the value of connections and collaboration for these scale-up companies looking to work on bigger solutions, and gain access to large corporates with massive end-user markets that will utilise their technology – exactly the kinds of companies paying up to $6.5 million for a stand at COP28!

[Read about: Four Ds of the energy system of the future]

While building consensus and agreeing multilateral frameworks like those at the COPs are all very well, Jan argues that unilateral action – such as the US Inflation Reduction Act – has so far proven more effective in forging the path to net zero. But, as the UK Government has recently shown, these policies are subject to change. All this highlights a need to find ways to stimulate the start-up and scale-up economy – and focus on what we can do to support scaling up the technologies and businesses that exist to create a sustainable future.

Jan’s full article, which Environmental Finance has kindly made available to non-subscribers by clicking on this link!

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