Israel’s climate-tech investments are showing a dramatic increase, even outpacing the global financing of companies related to climate change.
Those are the conclusions of an update to a joint report published last year by the Israel Innovation Authority and the Israel Innovation Institute’s PLANETech.
Climate tech includes companies that engage in technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions or work to mitigate global warming and adapt to climatic changes.
PLANETech, a non-profit innovation community, provided the updated numbers. They demonstrate a 340 percent rise in investments from 2018 to 2021, representing a growth rate of 2.6 times the speed of global investments.
Uriel Klar, director of PLANETech at the Israel Innovation Institute. Photo courtesy of PLANETech
“The report we published shows that Israeli climate tech investment growth is faster as compared to global growth, and of Israeli high-tech,” said Uriel Klar, director of PLANETech.
“Data from the report validates the reality we see on the ground; there is a shift of founders and investments from the classic high-tech domains to climate tech, a trend we expect to continue to grow in the coming year,” he added.
The alternative proteins field is leading the way with the highest number of investments in 2021. Carbon capture and removal with 12 startups and carbon management, risk and finance with 16 startups are also experiencing rapid growth.
The updated report identified 694 climate-tech startups in Israel, marking an increase of 57 compared to the previous year.
In terms of the overall high-tech ecosystem in Israel, climate tech is grabbing more of the market share with one out of every seven startups from the climate-tech field – an increase from 9% to 25% in one year. In the first half of 2022, 15% of total high-tech investments went to climate tech (nearly $1.5 billion), a 50% increase over the previous year.
The updated report also for the first time includes a list of climate-tech “unicorns,” private companies valued at over $1 billion: Veev, Wiliot, Augury, Optibus, Via and StoreDot.
PLANETech released the updated report ahead of its global climate-tech conference https://www.planetech.org/planetech-world on September 21 in Tel Aviv that will host 1,500 attendees and feature 100 climate-tech startups across five zones – built environment , materials and manufacturing, land use, nature and digital.
Klar said that the conference will advance the goal of “connecting Israeli tech to climate.”