Since 2015, there have been a number of players who have donned the mantle of accelerators for the cleantech and climate change sectors. Such accelerators could bring forth:
Finance - venture and angel capital firms, for instance
Expertise - examples could be industry-specific, region specific, or even university specific incubators who provide access to industry or technology experts, or
Connections & visibility - sponsors or organizers of cleantech contests, multi-stakeholder events etc.
Accelerator profiles are diverse. These could be industry or domain-specific consortortia, government bodies, large corporates, universities, finance/investment firms, high net worth individuals and in some cases, even civil societies.
While there is no reliable count for the number of such accelerators, it could be in thousands worldwide, with prominent examples already visible for specific industries, countries (even cities) and technology domains.
Accelerators have the potential to significantly contribute to decarbonization through their customized efforts to seed, support, nurture and scale innovations from diverse segments, regions and innovator profiles - things conventional efforts may not be able to accomplish quickly enough.
Simply put, accelerators have the power to dramatically accelerate decarbonization by powering innovations.
It is said a good portion of the solutions needed for decarbonization are yet to be innovated. If that indeed is true, then a significant source for global decarbonization would be innovative startups that are willing to challenge the status quo and come up with disruptive innovations.
But cleantech being a capital intensive sector, many startups with high potential solutions will fail at commercialization without the help of accelerators. This is because of the inability of the traditional financing system (including traditional venture capital firms) to adequately service the vast number of startups springing up in their initial years.
The success of accelerators such as Y Combinator has proved that these can play an important role in commercializing the innovation value from small startups. Interestingly, Y Combinator itself now has a section focussing on low carbon innovation.
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Low Carbon Accelerators Decarbonization Avenue
