A look back & a look ahead at Startup Climate Action

Click here to get to the updated Startup Climate Action Map

Sweden Sustaintech Venture Day (SSVD), on February 11^th, featured many distinguished keynote speakers, who shared their knowledge and insights with 32 carefully selected pitching companies, 4 investors panels and close to 600 event attendees. Here are the top learnings:

• Niclas Holmberg, Nasdaq:
  There are more companies now than ever before that plan to go public. Of all companies in line to make their IPO at Nasdaq Stockholm, about 30% are from the sustaintech sector.

• Robert Andrén, Swedish Energy Agency:
  With the success of the companies pitching at event, there is a potential to save 1 Gton CO2e, which corresponds to 18 times Sweden’s emissions.

• Richard Youngman, Cleantech Group:
  2020 was a pivotal year that showed a continued increase of invested capital into the sustaintech sector, Q4 was record-breaking. The hottest areas are agritech, foodtech, energy and power, materials and chemicals, resources, environmental, transportation and logistics, and carbon sequestration.
• Europe and Israel taken together are the biggest in terms of invested capital.
• Consumers around the world are more committed than ever before and this represents the Green Recovery.

• Daniel Mes, Green Deal, EU:
  Sweden, which has always been very conscious of the environment, has proved that the more sustainable you are the more money you will make. The cost of climate actions is there – but the cost of no action is even higher.

• Dr Angela Wilkinson, World Energy Council:
  There will be a disruption in the demand for how energy is used – consumers will want demand-driven solutions. There is a need for acceleration of new energy ecosystems. In the World Energy Trilemma index – the three top positions are held by Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark. The question is now how can the Third World develop and still phase out the fossil energy? The answer is; by carbon neutrality and energy management.

• Andreas Kuhlmann, DENA:
  It is important to showcase technology-based solutions for politicians, so they know what is possible. Startups should integrate different sectors to enable the transition. Universities play an important role. The EU must follow the Paris accord – the sooner we do it, the more competitive our industry will be.  

Yet again, SSVD provided qualified information about the sector from the investors’ perspective. It identified trends, breakthrough technologies, and the mega-companies of tomorrow. SSVD constitutes the largest meeting place for the sector’s investors and entrepreneurs in the Nordics and has contributed to promoting Sweden and Swedish successful sustaintech solutions internationally.

To celebrate all the entrepreneurs that continue to solve our biggest sustainability challenges, we have updated our Startup Climate Action Map with even more startups and updated challenges.

Here you can find the most recent version of the Startup Climate Action Map.