The Centre for Social Innovation and Foresight are joining forces to grow Climate Ventures with the mission to accelerate climate solutions. We are excited to level up our work supporting innovators through world-class programs aimed at developing their businesses and technologies, and attracting investment to scale their solutions.
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 who are running for-profits and nonprofits, working on high-tech and low-tech solutions, and engaging local communities as well as scaling internationally.
As Canada looks to build back better and to tackle the climate crisis, we know that there is little time to spare. Now is the time to build a more effective and inclusive climate solutions and cleantech ecosystem capable of supporting innovators at every stage. Much of the innovation required to meet climate targets has not yet been developed, and the solutions we do have need to be implemented rapidly and at scale.
Climate Ventures will provide foundational education to those new to entrepreneurship all the way to accelerators, industry challenges, and scale up programs. We will help to connect promising solutions to capital and commercialization opportunities, and bring stakeholders together for greater collaboration and impact.
Through this joint initiative, CSI and Foresight will work on national programs and challenges, and bring Foresight’s cleantech programs to Ontario. And we are quickly moving to action with a new national program, Accelerate from Anywhere, launching this summer. (We’re hiring a Program Coordinator to support this growth. Please help us spread the word!)
Thank you to our community – our members, partners, funders, and advisors – who have enabled our work so far. We know that there are so many people and organizations who also share our mission, and we’re excited to explore the ways in which we can work together, alongside the Foresight team.
With gratitude,
Barnabe Geis
Executive Director