Australia is a land of pure wonders, from the Nice Barrier Reef and Daintree Rainforest to Kakadu Nationwide Park and the Blue Mountains. However due to the nation’s naturally dry and biodiverse local weather, it’s notably susceptible to excessive climate occasions which have been exacerbated by local weather change. All of these wonders have been affected lately by bushfires, excessive warmth waves, rising temperatures and floods.
Queensland is coping with the worst flooding in historical past within the aftermath of Cyclone Ilsa. That’s on prime of the aftermath of La Niña final 12 months, which introduced extreme flooding and record-breaking rainfall to Japanese Australia. And earlier than that, throughout the Black Summer season of 2019 and 2020, the nation lived by way of its most catastrophic bushfire that burned over 30,000 sq. kilometers of land and killed 3 billion animals. Add to this, around 90% of the Great Barrier Reef’s coral has been bleached white from rising sea temperatures.
Australia has skilled its fair proportion of a local weather catastrophes, which has solely fueled its local weather tech startups into motion.
The island continent is sparsely populated all through most of its flat, dry, sunny middle — known as the Pink Centre — and has the right circumstances to gather photo voltaic and wind vitality. Massive-scale photo voltaic and wind farms have unfold throughout the nation lately, inflicting renewable vitality technology to extend from 16% in 2011 to 32% in 2022. Australia’s authorities has set a goal of getting its grid to 82% renewable by 2030.
“Now there’s this perfect confluence of environmental issues, policy support and technological readiness that makes climate tech, particularly coming out of Australia, well positioned to really hit the next level of scale over the next five years,” mentioned Jack Curtis, chief industrial officer at Neara.
However lack of capital wanted to get startups to a scale-up section may block entry to Aussie innovation — a problem that’s making itself recognized throughout the startup sector.
Neara works with utilities firms worldwide. It not too long ago raised one other USD$24 million to assist its clients — like Southern California Edison — future-proof their infrastructure by creating 3D fashions to replicate and simulate how utility belongings behave within the real-world atmosphere in eventualities like drought or flooding.
The hype for local weather tech in Australia is actual, so long as it may be sustained. Native VCs are most excited concerning the sector this 12 months, with local weather and cleantech dominating in funding and deal depend in Q3 2023. Startups in that sector raised $116 million within the third quarter, a rise from the $60 million invested within the section in Q2 and $40 million in Q1, based on Cut Through Venture data. [Note: Numbers are in AUD unless otherwise stated.]
It’s been an upward development for the previous couple of years. In 2022, local weather tech in Australia raised $553 million in capital, in comparison with $338 million in 2021, based on a report from Local weather Salad, a group of Australian local weather tech stakeholders. The objective was to boost one other $1.5 billion this 12 months, however the sector has fallen brief attributable to delayed and unsuccessful capital raises, based on firm co-founder Mick Liubinskas.
“We have a large number of companies that are looking at a Q1 2024 raise and more capital from international investors,” he mentioned.
Startup founders say securing large checks is their largest hurdle, but it surely’s an important one to mount in the event that they wish to scale and survive.
