Inside Lowercarbon’s apolitical approach to cleantech investing

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For decades, clean energy technology was framed as a moral imperative; a necessary strategy for saving the planet. Today, it’s just good business. 

Thanks to rapid breakthroughs in generation and storage, the unit economics of cleantech have reached price parity with — and in some cases even undercut — fossil alternatives. But despite the incentives, this shift away from fossil fuels continues to hit roadblocks. Broken project finance stacks, risk-averse underwriters, and political gridlock have all slowed down innovation and deployment.

In this episode of Critical Capital, host Alfred Johnson sits down with two champions of the capital-centric, apolitical approach to climate investing: Lowercarbon Capital’s Chris Sacca (co-founder and managing partner) and Caie Kelley (general partner). Built on the heels of Sacca’s Lowercase Capital, a powerhouse tech fund in the 2010s, Lowercarbon has quickly emerged as one of the most dominant forces in cleantech. Today they manage over $2 billion in assets across the sector.

During this in-studio conversation recorded at New York Climate Week, Alfred, Chris, and Caie unpack why the industry is ditching the word "climate," how technical-minded founders can bridge the gap from lab-scale science and prototypes to deployment, and how to rebuild the capital stack needed to help this new era of cleantech reach its full potential.   

Critical Capital is a co-production of Crux and Latitude Studios. Learn more about how Crux is financing the future of energy.