Kicking off OxCT’s inaugural research on unlocking the full potential of the climate tech ecosystem

The Oxford Climate Tech Initiative (OxCT) exists to help close the knowledge, partnership, and resource gaps to accelerate the green and just transition towards net zero and build resilience while promoting relevant climate-tech solutions where they are needed the most.

With support from the Skoll Center’s Systems Change Accelerator Research Grant, OxCT is conducting research on climate tech globally, to help pinpoint the main trends, challenges and opportunities shaping this field as well as the priority areas that policymakers, investors and climate experts will need to concentrate on to ensure that climate-tech is a credible, impactful solution set for efforts to address climate change.

If you work in the field of climate tech, we invite you to take our short (5–10) min survey, which will be core to the research we publish later this year. You can read the background behind this survey below.

Climate tech is a fast growing field and is key to mitigating and adapting to climate change. Between H2 2020 and H1 2021, investors poured a total of US$87.5bn into climate tech, a 210% increase from the US$28.4bn invested in the twelve months prior. These investors, along with entrepreneurs, policymakers, and researchers, are conscious that the climate tech field has enormous potential for both social impact and economic growth.

However, we are still in the early days of building and scaling climate tech solutions, and the fragmentation and lack of coordination in this sector poses a barrier to its growth and impact. Early evidence suggests there is over-allocation of resources to certain technology solutions and resources, such as those in mobility and transport, while major white spaces remain neglected. These gaps encompass both investment opportunities and new partnerships that can have a large impact. The larger, more dire implications of these gaps are that, as climate change’s impact accelerates and worsens, particularly in the most vulnerable communities and countries, much-needed resources risk being misallocated, and the negative impacts of climate change that occur in the interim may be intractable.

We hope to gain insight on the following questions:

• Where are the biggest investment opportunities and challenges for climate tech in developing countries?
• What are the main investment, partnership and general resource gaps impeding the adoption of climate tech?
• What are the components of a robust policy environment for climate-tech?
• What new funds, organizations and partnerships are needed to improve the creation and transfer of climate tech solutions to the market?
• How do we ensure that climate tech are developed and deployed inclusively?
• Are there new organizational models that need to be created or engaged to help in scaling climate tech efforts?

As part of this research, we are surveying climate tech experts from across the finance, policy, research, tech, professional, and start-up communities. This survey will serve as the basis of the research we’ve described above, and will help equip the climate tech community with a deeper understanding of what actions they can take to improve the field.

We expect to share our findings later this year. If you have ideas, questions, or feedback you’d like to share on this research, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Curious for more? You can catch up on our April 2022 Skoll World Forum Launch event here or our new prototype Climate Tech radar development kicking off in parralell, in collaboration with Envisioning.io.

Who is leading Systems Change Accelerator research? Dr. Aoife Brophy (Saïd Business School, University of Oxford), Dr. Abrary Chaudry (Saïd Business School, University of Oxford), Jamil Wyne (Tech and Investment in Emerging Markets Consultant, Courtney Savie Lawrence (Climate Innovation Consultant, current EMBA, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford) and Minahil Amin (incoming MBA, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford).