Copenhagen, Denmark · Venture Capital2150 is a Copenhagen and London based climate fund focused on technology that makes cities more sustainable. Backed by real estate operator NREP, the fund invests in Construction Tech, Energy Efficiency, low carbon materials, and urban infrastructure startups. 2150 provides both capital and pilot access through its built environment network, helping startups validate solutions in real world projects. It is one of the most prominent climate tech funds headquartered in Denmark.
Venture CapitalSeed to Series AClimateBuilt EnvironmentUrban Tech
County Offaly, Ireland · AcceleratorIreland's first sustainability accelerator backed by Bord na Móna, providing access to live test beds and infrastructure across Bord na Móna sites. Supports renewable energy, waste upcycling, and sustainable products with mentorship, field trials, and stipends. Scope: National.
AcceleratorClimateSustainabilityCircular Economy
Amsterdam, Netherlands · IncubatorLaunched 2013 by Amsterdam Center for Entrepreneurship. 12-week program for science and high-tech ventures from local universities; provides mentorship, workshops, and up to EUR 25K pre-seed. Notable spinoffs: Skytree, Knowingo. Scope: Regional (Amsterdam).
IncubatorHigh TechScienceClimate
Zurich, Switzerland · StartupClimeworks is one of Europe's most important climate-tech companies because it is building commercial direct air capture systems that remove carbon dioxide from ambient air. The company operates in a category that sits beyond emissions reduction alone: carbon removal infrastructure intended to address legacy emissions and hard-to-abate sectors. Its plants use modular collectors and specialized filters to capture CO2, after which the gas can be permanently stored or used in industrial processes. That combination of chemical engineering, energy systems, project execution, and long-term offtake sales makes Climeworks a very different kind of startup from software-led climate businesses. It is a capital-intensive industrial platform that depends on trust, scientific credibility, and customer willingness to commit to the future carbon-removal market. In the European ecosystem, Climeworks matters not only for its own category leadership, but also because it shows that globally significant climate infrastructure can be conceived, financed, and scaled from Europe. It serves as a benchmark for founders and investors interested in hard-tech and climate infrastructure companies where the technical ambition, funding requirements, and operational complexity are far greater than in conventional SaaS.
StartupGrowthClimateCleanTech
Berlin, Germany · AcceleratorEuropean cleantech accelerator offering a three-stage program with grants, mentorship, and industry network access. Notable projects include carbon management and sustainable agriculture startups. Support: non-dilutive funding, expert coaching, EU network. Scope: International (EU-wide).
AcceleratorClimateAgriTechSustainability
Lisbon, Portugal · IncubatorLaunched 2013. Seed fund focused on AI, data, and climate tech across Iberia.
IncubatorSeedAIDataClimate
Vienna, Austria · Innovation HubImpact Hub Vienna is a leading center for social entrepreneurship and innovation, part of the global Impact Hub network that spans 100+ cities. Founded in 2010 in Vienna, it provides coworking space, incubation programs, and a vibrant community for startups addressing social and environmental challenges. Impact Hub Vienna runs several tailored acceleration initiatives – for example, RE:WIEN (supporting urban sustainability startups in partnership with the city) and Better Mobility Accelerator (for green mobility solutions). These programs typically offer mentorship, workshops, and occasionally grant funding or prize money to selected ventures. The Hub has a strong convening power: its corporate and NGO partners include Vienna’s public agencies, energy companies, and organizations like WWF. Startups to come out of Impact Hub Vienna’s ecosystem include Refugeeswork.at (job platform for refugees), Kiweno (at-home health tests), and EET (solar energy storage solutions). In addition to formal accelerators, Impact Hub offers its members year-round benefits – from “Connect” meetups to an Investor Circle that links impact startups with socially-minded investors. The facility itself, located centrally in Vienna, hosts numerous hackathons, pitch nights, and community events that cross-pollinate ideas between sectors. Uniquely, Impact Hub is structured as a social enterprise: it’s mission-driven to amplify impact, and revenue comes from memberships, partnerships, and consulting. Over the last decade, Impact Hub Vienna has supported hundreds of impact innovators. It emphasizes cross-border collaboration too – many ventures it accelerates tackle problems applicable across Central/Eastern Europe. For example, its “Climate Ventures” program (with Climate-KIC) has cohorts from multiple countries. By providing a nurturing home for impact startups, Impact Hub Vienna has solidified Vienna’s status as a hub for social innovation. It demonstrates that entrepreneurial solutions to societal issues – whether in climate, inclusion, or education – can be scaled successfully with the right support network.
Innovation HubImpactClimateMobilityHealthcare
Berlin, Germany · StartupModular vertical farming network bringing fresh, low-footprint produce into urban retail and hospitality.
StartupGrowthAgriTechClimate
Brno, Czech Republic · StartupMewery is a food-tech and biotech startup cultivating pork meat using microalgae-based processes. The hybrid approach reduces the cost and complexity of lab-grown meat by combining cell cultivation with plant inputs. This positions the company to deliver cultured meat products faster and at lower price points than traditional cellular agriculture methods. By 2026, Mewery is a notable Central European pioneer in sustainable protein.
StartupEarly StageFoodTechBiotechClimate
Paris, France · StartupNeoplants is one of Europe's most consumer-friendly deep-tech startups, known for engineering "plants with a purpose." Its flagship product, Neo P1, is a golden pothos that has been genetically modified to actively metabolize volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as formaldehyde and benzene—pollutants common in homes due to paint, furniture, and cleaning products. Rather than simply filtering air passively, the plant converts toxins into harmless sugars and amino acids, turning living organisms into functional indoor air purifiers.
The company began commercial sales in the United States, where GMO consumer regulations are more permissive, but 2026 marks a strategic pivot back to Europe. Neoplants is positioning itself to launch in the UK and select EU markets as the New Genomic Techniques (NGT) framework evolves. This regulatory shift is crucial: it could unlock a path for consumer biotech products to be sold in Europe at scale. Neoplants is actively engaging with regulators and policymakers to ensure its products meet safety and transparency standards, framing its technology as a climate and public-health benefit rather than a controversial GMO niche.
Neoplants is also a serious biotech company under the consumer-friendly brand. It operates a 12,000-square-foot R&D facility in Saint-Ouen, Paris, with capabilities closer to a pharma lab than a greenhouse. The 2026 R&D pipeline includes plants engineered to capture CO2 at orders-of-magnitude higher rates than typical trees, targeting corporate offices and commercial spaces where sustainability investments must be visible and measurable. That positions Neoplants for a dual-market strategy: consumer air purification today, B2B climate infrastructure tomorrow.
The company's ecosystem roots are strong. The founders, Lionel Mora and Patrick Torbey, met at Entrepreneur First in Paris, and Neoplants was an early resident at Station F. It also benefited from the Wilco healthcare and biotech accelerator. Its investors reflect the blend of deep-tech and consumer focus: True Ventures led the seed, Heartcore Capital and Collaborative Fund support the consumer angle, and angels such as Niklas Zennstrom and Xavier Niel provide strategic visibility. In 2026, Neoplants represents a "solarpunk" vision of European tech—advanced biology that is both functional and approachable, turning climate and health solutions into products people can live with.
StartupEarly StageBiotechConsumerClimate
Stockholm, Sweden · AcceleratorFounded 2016 by the Norrsken Foundation. Eight-week impact accelerator selecting 20 startups annually; offers USD 125K for 5% equity and mentorship from global tech leaders. Focus on climate, health, and education. Scope: International.
AcceleratorImpactClimateHealthEducation
Stockholm, Sweden · StartupNorthvolt is one of the most consequential climate-tech companies ever built in Europe because it attempted to establish a continental battery manufacturing base for the electric era. The company became a flagship industrial project by combining battery-cell production, recycling ambitions, and strategic partnerships with European automotive and industrial players. That vision mattered well beyond Sweden: Northvolt symbolized Europe's effort to reduce dependence on external battery supply chains and to anchor advanced manufacturing capacity closer to regional customers. Its story is also a reminder that deep industrial startups operate under very different constraints than software companies. Battery manufacturing requires enormous capex, long build cycles, complex procurement, and tight execution across energy, materials, logistics, and customer contracts. Even with that complexity and its later financial distress, Northvolt remains central to understanding Europe's climate and industrial-tech ecosystem because it reset expectations for how ambitious startup-backed manufacturing on the continent could be. In directory terms, Northvolt broadens the picture beyond software and marketplaces by representing the hardware-heavy, infrastructure-scale side of innovation that shapes the future of transport, energy resilience, and industrial policy across Europe.
StartupIndustrial Scale-upClimateIndustrialEnergy
Stockholm, Sweden · StartupStegra (formerly H2 Green Steel) is one of Europe’s most ambitious industrial decarbonization projects, aiming to rebuild steelmaking around renewable energy and green hydrogen. The company is building a fully integrated production campus in Boden, northern Sweden, where abundant hydropower and regional mining supply chains converge. The core innovation is the direct-reduction process: instead of using coal to reduce iron ore, Stegra uses green hydrogen, cutting CO2 emissions by roughly 95% compared with blast-furnace steel. That technical shift is the foundation for a new European supply of low-carbon steel, which is increasingly demanded by automakers, construction firms, and consumer brands. The company rebranded to Stegra in September 2024 to signal that it is more than a steel mill. Its long-term platform vision is to combine renewable power, hydrogen production, and mineral processing into a repeatable template for heavy industry. By 2026, the Boden plant is reported to be more than halfway constructed, with gigascale electrolyzers (supplied by Thyssenkrupp Nucera) being installed and key offtake contracts signed. Customers reportedly include Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Scania, and IKEA, and more than half of initial output has been pre-sold — a strong indicator that the “green premium” market is real. Stegra’s financing structure is as notable as its technology. Rather than relying solely on venture capital, the company blends project-finance debt with growth equity, totaling more than €6.5 billion in commitments. This makes it one of the largest private industrial raises in Europe and a flagship case for climate infrastructure funding. Its origins are tied to Vargas Holding, a Swedish venture-builder that also co-founded Northvolt and Polarium, acting as an institutional co-founder rather than a conventional accelerator. Early support from EIT InnoEnergy helped validate the project at the EU level. Stegra’s investor roster reflects its strategic importance: Altor Equity Partners, GIC, Just Climate, Temasek, and Porsche SE are among its backers. In 2026, Stegra represents the “Northvolt effect” done right: a proof that Europe can re-industrialize around clean energy and keep advanced manufacturing on the continent. If it succeeds, it will be a template for decarbonizing other hard-to-abate sectors, from cement to fertilizers, and a cornerstone of Europe’s green-industry competitiveness.
StartupGrowthClimateIndustrialEnergy
Dunkirk, France · StartupVerkor is the industrial champion of the French "Battery Valley" and one of Europe's most important energy manufacturing plays. While many battery startups emphasize chemistry R&D, Verkor's differentiator is execution at scale. Its gigafactory in Dunkirk, which began commissioning in late 2025, is designed to reach 16 GWh of annual capacity—enough to power roughly 300,000 electric vehicles. The facility is among the most advanced battery plants in Europe, built to supply automotive OEMs with locally produced, low-carbon cells.
The year 2026 is Verkor's start-of-production milestone. Its cells are the core of the new Alpine A390 and other Renault Group EV programs, giving the company a high-profile anchor customer and a direct path to volume demand. Verkor positions itself around "low-carbon performance" by combining France's low-emission nuclear grid with a highly digitized Industry 4.0 production system that reduces scrap rates and energy intensity. The company argues that its batteries carry a materially smaller carbon footprint than cells manufactured in coal-heavy regions, which is increasingly important as automakers track embedded emissions across supply chains.
Beyond production, Verkor is investing in future chemistry and process innovation. The Verkor Innovation Centre (VIC) in Grenoble is expanding its work on next-generation chemistries, including sodium-ion cells that reduce reliance on lithium and cobalt. This R&D focus strengthens supply-chain resilience and creates optionality for lower-cost, lower-risk storage solutions as electric mobility scales. Verkor's roadmap also includes tighter integration between materials sourcing, cell design, and recycling, positioning it to meet Europe's stringent regulatory requirements on battery sustainability and traceability.
Verkor is backed by a mix of strategic and infrastructure capital. Macquarie Asset Management and Meridiam provide long-term project finance muscle, Renault Group anchors demand and industrial validation, EQT Ventures provides growth capital, and Sibanye-Stillwater supports raw material security. It was co-founded and supported early by EIT InnoEnergy and has strong operational ties to Schneider Electric, which helped design its digital factory systems. With support from the Macron administration and the European Investment Bank, Verkor has become a poster child for European industrial sovereignty. In 2026, it stands as proof that Europe can manufacture critical clean-tech hardware at global scale—and do it with a lower-carbon footprint.
StartupGrowthEnergyManufacturingClimate
Stockholm, Sweden · AcceleratorEstablished 2002 by Jane Walerud. Family-run deep-tech angel fund and hands-on accelerator for planet-positive startups; invests up to EUR 1M and often provides interim operational support. 10+ exits including Volumental. Scope: National.
AcceleratorDeep TechClimateImpact