2025年气候技术的未来（英）

April 2025 3Letter from the Authors4Macro9Capital14Company Operations17AI, Electricity and the Grid21Exits There is no getting around it, US climate policy is weaker today. TheTrump administration has pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement,fired EPA scientists, defunded the National Oceanic and AtmosphericAssociation and initiated executive orders pausing climate-relatedInflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding. As a result of the changes, cost-effective climate technology must play a larger role to make up for thevacuum of weaker policy. Adoption of climate technology and solutionswill increasingly rely on economic imperatives. The slower-funding environment has pushed companies to focus oncapital efficiency and manage burn, which is ultimately healthier thanthe unbridled burn we witnessed in late 2021 and early 2022. Signs ofgrowth are emerging, with trailing 12-month (TTM) venture investmentincreasing, company formation remaining strong and early-stageactivity still vibrant. The climate techecosystem isgenerally healthy. The slower-funding environment haspushed companies to focus oncapital efficiency and manageburn, which is ultimatelyhealthier than the unbridledburnwe witnessed in late 2021and early 2022. Signs of growthare emerging, with trailing 12-month venture investmentincreasing, company formationremaining strong and early-stage activity still relativelyvibrant.” VC investment is a crucial part of new technology formation in climate.According to BNEF,1annual investment in the energy transition hasdoubled since 2020 and exceeded $2T in 2024. Of that, VC investmentin US climate tech was $20B last year. That investment drivesinnovations that improve energy storage, create cost-effective carboncapture and develop low carbon transportation fuels. Climate change isn’t a future event; it is happening today. We don’t justsee the warming climate in esoteric graphs but feel it in ourcommunities: severe fires burning neighborhoods in the West, morefrequent hurricanes in the Southeast and heat waves in Europe. We arepaying a high economic price. The number of billion dollar-plus disasterevents has increased five-fold since the 1990s when adjusted forinflation. Policy challenges remain, and it’s easy to be caught up in gloomyclimate model outlooks. Yet climate tech remains both a compellingand an essential sector for humanity. We look to the future of climatetech with enthusiasm and excitement. Existing climate technologies are expanding. Wind and solar aregrowing faster than any other generation source. Solar added nearly 600GW of installed capacity in 2024, up from just 250 GW in 2022. USstorage saw a 33% increase in deployments between 2023 and 2024.Wind and solar are still the cheapest levelized cost of energy (LCOE),despite seeing slight increases. Dan BaldiNational Head Climate Tech and Sustainabilitydbaldi@svb.com The success of those innovations not only serves as a foundation fornew climate technologies, but also shows the potential for currentemerging technologies. Jordan KanisManaging Director While venture capital (VC) investment in climate tech is well off its peakin 2021, it remains strong and in line with 2020 levels. Some companiesface liquidity challenges as capital is tougher to raise, but on the whole,the ecosystem is generally healthy and the long-term outlook is good. Climate Tech and Sustainabilityjkanis@svb.com “At Powerhouse Ventures, we believe that there will besubstantial advances in moonshot innovations likefusion over the next decade, but we are even morebullish on opportunities related to mature technologieslike solar, wind, storage, electric vehicles and gridoptimization. Technologies like solar and storage havecome down the cost curve much faster than analystspredicted and are competitive with legacy technologiestoday; and,there’s a tremendous opportunity toscale technologies that ensure reliable gridoperations as load grows and variable anddecentralized energy resources continue toproliferate.Since 2018, our focus has been backingstartups that are financing, deploying and optimizingproven technologies in established markets.” “The next few years will be a tale of two climateeconomies.Those companies deeply reliant onsubsidies and on tax codes and then those thatweren’t reliant on them but rather viewed them asadding some wind in their sails.I tend to think thatbusinesses based on hydrogen may not materialize orcome to fruition, even if some of those subsidiescontinue to exist. The same may be true for direct aircapture. All of those categories were precarious tobegin with. Then you have electric vehicles wheresubsidies were seen as an extra benefit. I don’t seethese companies going away because climate billswere reversed.” VC investment into US Climate Tech companies in2024 The percentage point outperformance of climatetech deal activity compared to the overall US VCmarket since 2022 The share of companies that need to raise in thenext year The cost of $1B or