Evergreen Climate Innovations

Evergreen Climate Innovations, a nonprofit venture accelerator with a mission to deliver climate impact and inclusive opportunity in the Midwest, makes seed investments and provides hands-on support to climate entrepreneurs. To complement its investment activities, Evergreen also provides programs to develop the climate technology support ecosystem, including grant and mentoring opportunities to women and entrepreneurs of color. Evergreen Climate Innovation’s work sits at the nexus of three critical challenges: a) addressing the early-stage capital gap for climate-relevant innovation; b) focusing on the importance of the Midwest within the context of the climate crisis; and c) supporting a more inclusive early-stage economy through diversity, equity, and inclusion. This award provides general operating support to assist Evergreen Climate Innovation in scaling up its work, thus helping to create a strong and stable foundation for the organization to manage its next phase of growth, and to support its mission to build innovative Midwestern companies that benefit the environment, create jobs, and drive inclusive economic development in the region.

Clean Energy Trust is a nonprofit venture accelerator that strives for positive environmental impact through the support of scalable, sustainable, market-driven solutions. It assists cleantech ventures in bridging the capital gap between general research and the traditional sources of high-risk financing such as venture capital. Together with its partners the PRIME Coalition, Rho AI, and Greenometry, Clean Energy Trust is co-developing an open-source software tool that will advance the field of climate impact assessment through a new metric – Emissions Reduction Potential – that defines the potential for an early-stage venture to reduce future greenhouse gas emissions. The development and wide availability of this metric will allow for the comparison of the potential climate impact for a wide variety of ventures. The tool advances the field of impact investment measurement and management for early-stage ventures focused on climate change mitigation, thus encouraging future catalytic capital investments.