In collaboration with Texas Venture Labs and McCombs School of Business, the Austin Climate Hub is excited to be hosting this event at Crum Auditorium in Rowling Hall on Thursday, February 22nd.
Panel overview: Climate tech is entering a new epoch in which the next wave of unicorns and generational companies are being built. For decades, many have associated climate tech with altruistic but highly risky, capital-intensive, investments, dependent on regulatory support or challenging technology breakthroughs. But today, the landscape has fundamentally shifted: massively falling costs have made renewable energies cheaper than conventional fuels, with clean energies on pace to cover all the world’s additional new energy demand in the next three years; while maturing supply chains and standardization of financing have de-emphasized needs for technology advancement in wide-ranging business models and industries. These trends are driven by fundamental economic and social tailwinds: The acceleration of climate change has made carbon risk quantifiable and unavoidable in investment planning; consumer sentiment has driven major commitments and billions of investments by corporations toward emissions reductions. City, state and regional regulations have pre-empted national and international regulations. And ambitious policies in the US and EU are driving trillions of investment and innovation in the coming decade. In this panel we will bring together leading investors and founders to discuss the seismic trends driving opportunities in climate tech, near and longer-term opportunities, and challenges.
Meet our Panelists:
- Zeina El-Azzi, CEO & Co-founder, Gage Zero
- Colleen Konetzke, Principal at Ironspring Ventures
- Shri Freud, Climate-Tech Investor
- Scott Nguyen, Founder of Bodhi
- Peter Sopher, Investment Partner at Clean Energy Ventures
Event details:
When: Thursday, February 22nd, 5:30-8:00pm
5:30 pm – 6:15 pm: Drinks, appetizers, networking happy hour
6:15 pm – 7:15 pm: 45min panel discussion; 15 min Q&A
7:15 pm – 7:30 pm: Quick self-intros from Austin-based cleantech start-ups and VCs
7:30 pm – 8:00 pm: More happy hour, drinks and food
In addition to the panel discussion, this event will be an awesome opportunity to meet Austin-based climate-tech companies, founders, investors and other key members of the Austin climate-tech ecosystem, including renewable energy developers, corporate players, researchers, academics and policymakers. Drinks and refreshments are generously sponsored by Pillsbury Law.