We back early-stage ventures that have proven potential to deliver shared prosperity and climate impact. We want new approaches, technologies, or business models that create livelihoods, new sources of income, or reduced costs — especially those that reach middle to lower income deciles.
Land use accounts for about 26% of emissions but receives 3% of climate finance. Ocean-based solutions get 1% of climate finance but absorb 90% of human-generated heat and around 30% of carbon emissions — if the ecosystem is healthy. We look for solutions that tackle these gaps and provide sources of livelihood or income.
Less than 5% of energy generation in the UK has any kind of community benefit. Yet the distributive nature of renewables provides an excellent opportunity for communities to benefit. The revolution in energy technology also presents the opportunity for innovation to deliver wider benefits through new income or reduced costs.
There is a lot of excitement about replacing humans with machines. We are interested in how AI can be used as a tool to help people achieve what they could not before. Instead of power-hungry models chasing frontiers, we are interested in "frugal" AI — solutions that deliver as efficiently as possible and with local benefits.
Energy is shifting from commodities we burn to technologies like solar, wind, batteries, and digital solutions. These can be distributed, connected, and modular, and therefore built, owned, and run completely differently. This also means they can succumb to "enshittification" — the degradation of digital technologies as they prioritise profit over shared value. We look for solutions that ensure this does not happen.
We will be writing more about what we are looking for and what we are thinking about over the next few months.
Interested?