Climate Ventures fast-tracks the success of early-stage entrepreneurs and innovators developing and implementing solutions to the climate crisis. We also collaborate with innovators, investors, industry, government and academia to solve challenges and scale solutions.

Climate Ventures was founded by the Centre for Social Innovation (CSI), a nonprofit social enterprise based in Toronto.

Please note: In September 2022, we merged into a partnership between SI Canada and Foresight Canada. Our work continues to grow, not as Climate Ventures but through these two organizations. Read the story

Foresight is Canada’s cleantech ecosystem accelerator, bringing together industry, government, academia, investors and innovators to address today’s most urgent climate issues and support a global transition to a green economy.

Social Innovation Canada is working to provide the collaborative infrastructure to strengthen Canada’s social innovation ecosystem, empowering people, organizations and systems with the tools, knowledge, skills and connections that they need to solve complex problems.

CSI launched Climate Ventures back in September 2018 because we wanted to do more to accelerate climate action, and we’ve learned a tonne along the way. We’ve backed a diversity of people and tactics: supporting entrepreneurs of different ages, experience and backgrounds running for-profits and nonprofits, working on high-tech and low-tech solutions, and engaging local communities as well as scaling internationally.

WHAT WE DO

ACCELERATE

We provide an “acceleration ramp” with programs for every stage, meeting climate and cleantech entrepreneurs where they’re at, from ideation to impact. We help them reach the market faster and scale the solutions that work.

CONNECT

We help connect climate and cleantech entrepreneurs to each other, and to advisors, mentors, partners, customers, investors and funders. Our goal is to contribute to a more connected and effective climate solutions and cleantech ecosystem.

SCALE

We work with industry and government to identify challenges to meeting climate targets, and we match them with entrepreneurs, innovations and solutions to accelerate adoption and scale impact.

FUND

We leverage private capital through matchmaking initiatives that engage early and later-stage investors, infusing much needed investment into climate and cleantech startups.

With greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and other unsustainable practices, we are losing much of the Earth’s biodiversity, disrupting delicate ecosystems and creating a crisis in the form of global warming that threatens every aspect of society and the economy.

Yet, we have many of the solutions at hand. And we have the potential to develop those we need. We can stop and reverse global warming. By energizing innovation and collaborating across sectors, we can heal the environment and build a more just and equitable world.

Our vision is to turn the climate crisis into an opportunity to build the next economy – one that puts people and the planet first.

We believe that the UN Sustainable Development Goals provide us with a useful framework to work across sectors to build a better world.

We are inspired by the many people – entrepreneurs, innovators, investors, Indigenous peoples, farmers, designers, architects, engineers, policy makers, systems thinkers, journalists and thought leaders – some of whom have always led by example, and others who are now showing us that another way is possible.