As we strive to spur the next generation of climate tech solutions critical for the energy transition, crowdfunding offers a unique opportunity to bridge the current $2 trillion private funding gap. Although private investing is typically catered to institutional investors, crowdfunding mechanisms can open investment opportunities to retail investors, i.e., individuals, while providing alternative funding channels to scale early-stage climate technologies.

Despite experiencing rapid growth, the spectrum of challenges and opportunities for unlocking crowdfunding’s potential to support climate tech startups has not been fully understood yet. In this new report “Crowdfunding for Climate Tech Startups: A Global Analysis and the Opportunity Ahead”, RMI’s Third Derivative analyzes global trends and identifies challenges in leveraging crowdfunding to create alternative funding channels for early-stage climate tech startups.

Through in-depth analysis of the crowdfunding landscape and conversations with leading stakeholders and platforms across the world, we investigated different types of crowdfunding, from equity crowdfunding to debt crowdfunding, recognized main drivers behind current investment trends, summarized key success factors, identified remaining challenges, and presented areas of opportunities to drive climate tech investments.

This report represents the first attempt to develop a comprehensive understanding of the crowdfunding landscape aimed at climate tech solutions. The analysis provides valuable insights to further grow the industry and helps climate tech startups harness the opportunity to leverage this innovative tool to secure funding and accelerate their growth.

We acknowledge generous support from the ClimateWorks Foundation to fund this brief.