Digital financial technology (known as fintech) has already disrupted the global financial system. Recent improvements to banking, customer experiences, and investment decision-making do not always consider issues such as climate change or energy access, which is why New Energy Nexus is working to foster fintech solutions that can drive 100% clean energy for 100% of the population.

Together with the Yangtze River Delta Hi-Tech Park (Zhaoxiang), we announced 11 startups at our Climate Fintech Accelerator Open Day in Shanghai –  the first time our fintech accelerator has been hosted in China! 

Our 2023 Climate Fintech Accelerator aimed to accelerate fintech innovation by providing support services to startups such as commercial matchmaking, training, and networking.

The 11 startups accepted into the first batch of our 2023 cohort come from six countries – China, United States, Singapore, the United Kingdom, India, and Nigeria – and are focusing on Web3 and sustainability, carbon accounts, payments, banking, lending, investment, trading, risk analysis, insurance technology, and regulatory technology.

The 2023 Climate Fintech Accelerator is a rolling program and we’re looking forward to receiving applications from all over the world. Apply now and check out more information on our website.

SolarMoney Africa

SolarMoney Africa is dedicated to promoting solar energy adoption in Africa, providing accessible financing for households, communities, and small businesses to purchase solar products for their power needs. SolarMoney Africa collaborates with photovoltaic manufacturers to purchase solar products at lower down payments and sell them to African households through installment payment models. With the use of mobile technology, digital platforms, and innovative financial mechanisms, SolarMoney Africa has become an innovator in the African climate fintech sector.

BlockCarbon

BlockCarbon aims to unlock the global market for Asian carbon assets. The company uses multisource remote sensing technology and deep learning algorithms to develop a carbon asset management platform based on remote sensing and AI technology. This platform identifies potential high-quality carbon asset projects at low cost and verifies, monitors, and manages carbon offset projects. BlockCarbon serves carbon asset developers, traders, and buyers, making carbon assets more traceable, verifiable, and monitorable, encouraging more market participants to generate high-quality carbon assets.

Climatize

Through the Climatize platform, investors can directly invest in renewable energy projects such as community solar, energy efficiency upgrades, and electric vehicle charging infrastructure with a minimum investment amount of US$5. Retail, accredited, and institutional investors can browse Climatize’s project selection and participate in project investments for energy transition. Climatize stands out with its user-friendly product platform and quantifiable environmental impact.

Carbon Baseline

Carbon Baseline is dedicated to helping clients address challenges in achieving carbon neutrality goals through software products and consulting services. Their team utilizes artificial intelligence and other means to provide clients with climate and sustainable development management and green finance analysis tools with internationally advanced knowledge systems. Their core technology products include carbon emission and reduction calculation software, carbon reduction pathway optimization software, climate risk quantification models, and green finance risk and pricing models.

Climind

Climind is a Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) platform that focuses on complex climate data such as climate physical risks, transition risks, and nature-based solutions. Climind utilizes technologies such as artificial intelligence and knowledge graphs to extract value from climate data. By establishing data workflows, Climind helps users automate and predict climate risks of projects and businesses, providing customized sustainable strategic and scientifically accurate decision-making.

Nika.eco

Nika.eco aims to help carbon investors discover opportunities and risks before committing time, money, and effort to support a project through interactive reports provided by their software. The company develops a B2B SaaS platform and utilizes remote sensing and artificial intelligence technologies for automated due diligence of early-stage carbon projects. Nika.eco integrates multiple public and proprietary land classification data sources and trains AI models to align with existing methodologies for product iteration.

Tanbii

Tanbii connects the real world (Web2) and virtual world (Web3) by developing a Web5 application and innovative gamified approaches in carbon reduction. By utilizing advanced technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence, Tanbii accurately tracks, calculates, and rewards users for reducing their personal carbon emissions. Tanbii turns environmental actions into tangible benefits, presents personal carbon credits in a gamified manner, and supports reforestation projects in real-world environments.

Zero Circle Inc

Zero Circle provides an innovative green finance market aiming to offer convenient access to green loans for small and medium-sized enterprises while helping lenders track the usage of green loans. The Zero Circle platform automatically conducts eligibility assessments for enterprises based on their policy documents, certifications, provided metrics, and third-party data focused on sustainable development. Compared to manual processes, the platform simplifies the green loan process, saving time and resources.

CarbonNewture

CarbonNewture is a technology company focused on empowering enterprises to address climate change risks and undertake green and low-carbon transformations. They provide solutions, including enterprise carbon inventory, product carbon footprint, zero-carbon strategy consulting, and carbon asset management. They deploy IoT, big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain to provide comprehensive carbon neutrality digital solutions.

Continuous Regeneration

Continuous Regeneration is committed to building a carbon-neutral DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) network with a focus on digitization and decarbonization. Continuous Regeneration provides end-to-end services in creative planning, artistic presentation, product development, technological application, and project execution for major brands, institutions, and governments in China and overseas.

CarbonSense

CarbonSense assists enterprises in achieving zero-carbon transformations and provides an all-in-one carbon emission management and optimization platform for the manufacturing industry supply chain. They create an enterprise energy and carbon emission data platform using data and Internet of Things technologies, combined with enterprise carbon, green supply chain, and zero-carbon industrial park management systems. CarbonSense aims to provide real-time carbon footprint and carbon asset management systems, reduce operational energy consumption, and change energy-saving practices for enterprises.

Woman in rural Uganda using a solar-powered lamp

International Women’s Day is a time to celebrate the achievements of women and to recognize the challenges that women continue to face around the world. In Uganda, where more than 80 percent of the population lives in rural areas, the lack of access to energy is a major impediment to women’s economic and social empowerment.

Energy poverty in Uganda disproportionately affects women, who often spend hours each day collecting firewood, cooking on open fires, and using kerosene lamps for lighting. This not only puts their health at risk due to exposure to smoke and other pollutants, but it also limits their ability to participate in education, earn a living, and engage in other productive activities.

However, there are efforts underway to improve access to energy in Uganda, particularly through the use of renewable energy sources such as solar power. Distributed solar energy is particularly well-suited to rural areas because it is easy to install, low-maintenance, and does not require a connection to the national power grid. In Uganda, New Energy Nexus supports last mile clean energy entrepreneurs to deliver low cost and high quality entry-level clean energy technologies.

ENVENTURE helps women in northern Uganda to learn how to start a clean energy business.

Supporting woman entrepreneurs in Uganda’s last mile communities.

The majority of entrepreneurs we support at New Energy Nexus Uganda are women and 70% of the jobs created by our entrepreneurs are taken by women. Ultimately, the majority of these women have testified that their quality of live has improved due to access and use of these high-quality energy products in their households,, and those involved in Village Savings and Loan Schemes (VSLS) have increased their financial savings due to lower energy costs.

New Energy Nexus also teaches women entrepreneurs recordkeeping skills as part of its curriculum. We created the ENVision platform, an open-source web-based application to track inventory, sales, and orders in 2G and Edge networks for low-literate sales agents and micro-entrepreneurs. This helps women entrepreneurs to manage their sales and performance more effectively, and allows us to receive real-time product updates to help monitor and measure success. This also ensures that entrepreneurs don’t lose time and information on their businesses through cloud-based storage.

We put justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion at the heart of our work.

Efforts to improve access to energy in Uganda are still in their early stages, but the progress that has been made is encouraging. As we celebrate International Women’s Day, let us recognize the important role that access to energy plays in women’s empowerment and support the organizations and initiatives that are working to improve energy access in Uganda and the Global South. By doing so, we can help to create a more just, equitable and inclusive world for women and girls everywhere which is possible if we work with diverse clean energy entrepreneurs with a focus on women.

Energy storage is critical to help us unlock the full potential of renewable energy. Without energy storage systems, we would not be able to affordably reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. It is a key step to enable low carbon systems that will help fight climate change and make affordable energy more accessible to everyone.

New York is increasingly becoming known as one of the global energy storage hubs in the world, thanks to Biden’s Build Back Better Plan that will invest billions into climate and clean energy among other select industries. Our New York Program, The Clean Fight that was recently selected to manage US$10M Empire Technology Prize to advance building decarbonization brings you ten growth-stage companies in the latest cohort to accelerate New York’s position as a U.S. hub for energy storage.

The program will focus on battery and energy storage solutions, development and manufacturing. The goal is to help these companies to successfully and rapidly scale sales and manufacturing in New York. To facilitate this, each of the selected companies is eligible for:

• a range of tailored benefits, valued at up to $100,000 per company to support capacity building, deployments or manufacturing capabilities in New York;
• hands-on matchmaking with industry leading customer and capital partners;
  bespoke support services; and
• expert insight into navigating the New York State market.

Based in Europe, Australia and North America, and working across the value chain, listed below are the ten transformative companies. We’re excited to see how they work together and with our partners to aggressively advance the clean energy transition, while boosting economic opportunity and job creation for all.

Cells & Packs

Cadenza Innovation, based in Connecticut, makes novel battery packs designed to address one of the greatest concerns with Lithium-Ion batteries – fire prevention, making them safer, more reliable and affordable.

NY’s Electrovaya makes batteries with an exceptional combination of high energy density, safety and longevity, making them particularly well suited to heavy use vehicles such as electric trucks and buses.

Energy Storage Systems

Toronto’s e-Zinc makes battery cells that store electrical energy within zinc metal, storing hundreds of hours of energy at a significantly lower cost. This can dramatically improve the value proposition of intermittent electricity such as wind and solar.

Based in Australia, Glaciem Cooling’s heat pump technology provides heating and cooling to commercial and industrial customers, combined with a phase change thermal battery to provide integrated energy storage, for improved efficiency and cost.

Buffalo, NY based Viridi designs and builds distributed energy storage systems that are affordable, scalable and safe enough for use in occupied buildings, providing on-demand power for industrial, medical, commercial and residential applications.

Mobile & Mobility Systems

Sweden’s Elonroad produces dynamic EV charging solutions embedded into roads, allowing for charging on the go. This also enables battery sizes to be reduced by up to 80%.

Portable Electric, based in Vancouver, makes portable, battery-based generators to replace gas and diesel generators, providing clean, silent power on demand. Their systems are used on job sites, for emergency EV and fleet charging, and as backup power.

Distributed Energy Resources

Canadian company eCAMION delivers a Distributed Energy Resource solution for customers looking to manage batteries, solar installations, and EV chargers to maximize efficiency while minimizing cost and strain to the grid.

OhmConnect, based in California, builds Virtual Power Plants by connecting to residential batteries, EVs and smart thermostats, reacting in real time to the needs of the grid, reducing reliance on high-pollution peaker plants and lowering GHG emissions.

Austin, Texas based Yotta Energy produces distributed energy products, including EV chargers and the first solar battery that integrates behind rooftop solar panels. The integrated battery significantly reduces installation costs, along with its plug-and-play design that means if you can install a solar module, you can install their battery.

Learn more about our New York program, The Clean Fight designed to help the world’s best growth-stage startups significantly scale their business in New York State, while boosting economic opportunity and job creation for all. The Clean Fight is also a member of the winning New Energy New York coalition, who were awarded $113M as part of the Biden Administration’s Build Back Better Regional Challenge.

The managing, trading, and financing of more and more distributed renewable projects, such as rooftop solar and EV charging stations, is becoming exponentially more complicated. Current energy systems and financing models are increasingly no longer fit for purpose, but this is creating new opportunities for climate fintech startups.

Blockchain technology, for instance, can help solve some of these problems given its transparency and immutability. Power grids, energy providers, and end users can use distributed ledgers via blockchain to track electricity generation and transaction records without a centralized organization in the middle. Financial institutions can also use blockchain to verify the operational data of the distributed renewable energy projects they have financed and decide their credit line, while minimizing the risks of operating miss and fraud.

So, how can startups best exploit this opportunity?

To answer this question, we first need to look at the ecosystem. Take a rooftop solar project, for example: there are many stakeholders in the value chain, including project owner, equipment supplier, financiers, and other service providers with different bargaining powers. As the end users, project owners usually have the greatest bargaining powers, but for distributed project owners, their bargaining powers aren’t as great as utility scale project owners.

Major equipment manufacturers have strong bargaining power as well, since the market is now dominated by just a few players. Among all solar equipment, the most relevant and important one that connects the physical world and the digital world is the inverter, a device that converts DC (direct current) to AC (alternating current), while recording electricity generation data. Top inverter manufacturers, such as Huawei and Sungrow, controlled 44% of the market share in 2021. Therefore, it’s natural for inverter manufacturers to develop blockchain solutions for downstream clients. Financial institutions are also key stakeholders in the value chain. However, they lack the adequate industry resources and knowhow, and rely on industry players as intermediaries, usually equipment suppliers, to develop businesses.

Given this competition landscape, what are the implications for climate fintech startups?

1. Startups need to define their value proposition in competing and cooperating with dominant equipment suppliers.

Even though inverter manufacturers might have some aspiration to develop blockchain technology by themselves, startups that focus on blockchain still hold a technological comparative advantage. Expanding their business to cover inverter suppliers is easier than inverter companies starting from zero. If startups can define themselves as an enabler and help inverter manufacturers complement their current business lines, they may avoid direct competition with these dominant equipment suppliers.

Dipole uses blockchain to make renewable energy more easily accessible across in Asia.

2. Target small and medium-size markets as an alternative strategy.

These markets are usually served by scattered small players who don’t have the right technology, abundant capital, or enough incentive to develop blockchain applications on their own. This gap could be filled by climate fintech startups. For instance, Dipole, a startup in New Energy Nexus China’s Excel Cohort, develops blockchain technologies and applications for distributed renewable energy projects, and has secured an investment from Jolywood, a medium-size solar equipment manufacturer. This has enabled this startup to access its investor’s market.

However, those with the most need sometimes cannot afford expensive technological solutions. The key for startups is to develop standardized products that are cost-efficient to attract small-size clients.

3. Partnering with financial institutions could be a long-term winning strategy for climate fintech startups.

Ready-to-use blockchain-based products from climate fintech startups will allow banks to enhance their due diligence and credit management processes. Compared with taking a one-time deal with assembly or inverter companies, long-term partnership with banks and other financial institutions is considered a superior choice. New Energy Nexus is actively helping climate finch startups, partner with leading green banks, such as China Industrial Bank.

4. Startups can leverage their position in other more fundamental and influential public blockchain projects.

Proactively joining public blockchain projects like the state backed Bit Factory project will entrench startups’ positions. Startups, especially for those at the scaling stage, should  make themselves the base (or a brick of the base) of the whole industry supply chain, instead of narrowing down to a single point. For example, by participating in the Bit Factory project, Rivtower, another startup supported by New Energy Nexus China, was able to attract investment from China Merchants Bank, and further extended its business into other climate finance projects.

Yafu Zhao is the Climate Fintech Lead at New Energy Nexus and is based in Shanghai, China.