UK Climate-Tech Ecosystem Mapping
The Climate-Tech Ecosystem is growing fast right now across the UK which is exciting and important. But it is also fragmented and can be hard to navigate. We believe that we need a greater sense of urgency and coordination to ensure a habitable planet for all.
This became crystal clear to us earlier this year when we were involved in seven events in one week - each involving different people and using different terminology, metrics, and processes - and we realised that we really need to work better together.
Of course ecosystems can and do evolve over time but they are best when they are fostered. And we’ve seen this and done this before e.g. London Tech Ecosystem, Glasgow Climate Action Initiative, Exeter City Futures and in many other places.
So we spoke to over 100 organisations and published our research findings here in October 2022 which identified gaps in three areas: narrative, knowledge and investment.
The next step is mapping the ecosystem of who is already here and involved. So we hosted a session on 25th November 2022 together with Zinc.VC and Systems Innovation with a diverse range of people to capture 130 organisations and tag them by type of organisation and sector focus. You can also see the video of the session here and the slides here and we captured and tagged organisations on this Miro board (though please don’t add to this board now but rather add to the map via this form).
Since then we have reviewed, analysed and visualised that data as you can see below. We hope you find this map helpful and interesting and are now actively looking for partners to update and improve the map and then identify gaps and opportunities for entrepreneurship and cross-sector collaboration. Please see three different ways in which you can participate and support at the end of this post.
The default visualisation above shows the ecosystem connected by type of organisation. You can access and play with the visualisation here (created using a tool called Kumu) where, amongst other things, you can change the visualisation to connect by sector as well which might be more interesting and relevant. To do that follow the two steps and images below.
Step 1 - Select ‘Settings’
Step 2 - Go to the ‘Connect By’ option and select ‘Sector’.
By following those two steps you should now see a version of the map connected by sector (the grey circles) which is currently a bit more messy, partly because there are currently many more sectors than types which makes it harder to navigate. But it does allow you to click on one or more of the sectors and see which other organisations are currently tagged in that sector, as per the image below.
Organisations in the current UK Climate Technology Ecosystem map focussed upon the Food sector.
In summary, ecosystems evolve over time but they are best when they are fostered.
We’ve been doing this work to date because we know there is a huge need and also a huge opportunity in the UK right now. But of course this is only useful if it leads to action, and so we are actively exploring ways, tools and datasets to make this more useful. We now have three specific requests as follows:
ADD TO THE MAP - Please help us improve and build the map by editing the tags and description of an organisation you are part of, or by adding a new organisations. To do so please add your details via this short form (60 seconds).
IDENTIFY OPPORTUNITIES - Please help us to identify specific gaps or overlaps in the current ecosystem which could lead to opportunities for innovation, collaboration and investment. We’d really like to host some targeted sessions around this in early 2023, including around specific sectors or places (including outside of the UK).
PARTNER WITH US - Please get in touch if you are able and are interested in partnering with us or able to support - either financially or non-financially - to further develop the map, and further help to convene and activate the Climate Technology Ecosystem.
Please get in touch or book a call if you have any questions, comments or ideas.
Thank you.
