The Climate Tech Pipeline

Innovation is, by its very nature, unpredictable—but it often follows a well-trodden sequence.

At Breakthrough Energy, we talk a lot about the stages of innovation—how each step along a technology's journey from inception to commercialization poses new problems that take new approaches to solve.

Discovery

Who are the most promising researchers and innovators out there? Often they're not where you would think, but working in a garage, or university lab, and the idea of a company is barely a glimmer in their eye.

Development

How can these innovators build companies and actually commercialize their ideas?

Deployment

How do we make sure those products find lots of willing buyers and users in the real world?

Policy

These steps have been broadly true for every major breakthrough in climate tech. But there's an additional twist in this sector: there's no natural market for zero-carbon products, no matter how exciting the technology is. So we also need policy and advocacy to help these products along at every stage.

Our organization mirrors this process. We’re built to  pull every lever required for decarbonization—from policy support to capital deployment.

One crucial reason is Breakthrough’s people: We’ve hired dozens of technical experts, operators, and entrepreneurs. Breakthrough is widely recognized as the best “technical underwriting team” in the climate space. While no one can truly predict if a given technology will work, our team can generally give a better assessment than most other other organizations out there. Just as important, we can spot the gaps in industries—from cement mixing to nuclear power—where more climate innovation is needed.