⚡ 24 climate startups to watch from BloombergNEF (#188)

Welcome to my newsletter from Entrepreneurs for Impact (EFI).

I share lessons learned from working with 400 climate tech CEOs and investors—plus 25 years of meditation practice—to help people fight climate change profitably and maybe even lead a happier life.

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Four topics I’ll cover today:

1. 24 climate startups to watch from BloombergNEF
2. $35M for a machine learning startup in energy demand and price forecasting
3. Did you mess up your climate offtake agreement?
4. What is true liberation? (hint: not a national holiday)

1.

24 climate startups to watch from BloombergNEF

Here are the BNEF Pioneers (in four categories) for 2025.

Light industry:

• Airthium
• AtmosZero
• Circ
• Everdye
• Rondo

Energy storage:

• CMBlu Energy
• EExion Energy
• Hytzer
• Instagrid
• NEU Battery Materials
• Nordic Bio Graphite

Climate adaptation:

• AiDash
• Beewise
• ClimateAI
• InnerPlant
• Membrion
• SRI – Self Cooling Paint

Wildcards (heavier industries, hydrogen separation, low-carbon nitrogen fixing):

• Binding Solutions Limited
• Cambridge Electric Cement
• Coolbrook
• H2Site
• NitroCapt
• NitroFix

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🎯 Now what?

• Show these startups some love with a LinkedIn shout-out.
• Network your way to them and get a job.
• Discover their investors and learn how to fund your venture (e.g., Crunchbase).
• Understand how they’re scaling and do the same for your startup.

2.

$35M for a machine learning startup in energy demand and price forecasting

Sean Kelly, CEO of Amperon, was my recent guest on our Entrepreneurs for Impact (EFI) podcast.

Amperon is a Houston-based technology company specializing in AI-powered electricity forecasting and analytics solutions.

Founded in 2018, Amperon provides high-precision demand, renewable generation, and price forecasts to enhance grid reliability, manage financial risk, and support decarbonization efforts.

Their platform serves utilities, financial traders, and independent power producers.

In this podcast, you’ll learn these takeaways.

1. How to utilize AI and machine learning for accurate energy demand and price forecasting
2. The significance of automatic weighting in analyzing diverse weather data for energy predictions
3. Who said this wonderful quote: “I’ll build it if you can sell it”
4. How founders should not sell themselves short or sacrifice their long-term thesis when working with investors
5. Why building strong long-term non-transactional relationships with investors and early adopter customer prospects is crucial for company growth
6. Why he finds value in books like The Tao of Bill Murray and The Devil in the White City
7. How boxing keeps him sane and healthy on the founder journey

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🎯 Listen to the podcast and share your thoughts on my LinkedIn post.

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3.

Did you mess up your climate offtake agreement?

This article from the World Economic Forum and VC investor Extantia will tell you.

Summary:

• Not all offtakes are created equal — Meet the "Maslow Pyramid of Offtakes" and seek to move from the bottom to the top as quickly as possible.
• Partner > sale — Learn from Holcim and Sublime Systems. Find corporates eager to make both equity investments and sign offtake agreements. Create multiple ways for them to win.
• Diversify your offtakers — Secure multiple customers across the value chain in case you drop the basket with all your eggs in it.
• Find their rhythms — Align agreements with your offtakers' procurement, R&D, or seasonal cycles. Remember whose calendar matters more.
• Stay flexible (until you can’t) — As you move from “let’s partner to change the world” to “please sign these binding legal agreements that cost $200,000,” try to maintain optionality with cost caps, tiered pricing, and competitive bidding. The future is uncertain. (Thank you, Washington DC, for this Q1 reminder.)

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🎯 Learn more about climate offtake agreements in this report from our friends at CREO.

4.

What is true liberation? (hint: not a national holiday)

Instead, it is “the freedom from our own automatic responses.”

- The great spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti

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🎯 What does that mystic mumbo jumbo mean?

By analogy, Krishnamurti taught that our minds are running outdated software—loaded with cultural spam, family malware, and decades of subconscious junk mail.

These results are automatic "knee-jerk" reactions to challenging situations. Kind of like hitting “reply all” without checking who's on the thread. (I’ve been there!)

His genius insight: when we finally pause and read our own mental fine print, we can unsubscribe from our brain's old programming.

Instead of being a human pinball ricocheting between conditioned reactions, we become a mindful Jedi, calmly choosing responses with clarity and (gasp!) actual intention.

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That’s all, y’all.

Make it a great week. It’s usually a choice.

~ Chris

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