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September 29, 2022

Green Opportunity: Yale-backed climate tech incubator to focus on addressing global warming, growing New Haven startups

PHOTo | CONTRIBUTED Josh Geballe is the managing director of Yale Ventures.
By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo

As troubling statistics about the Earth’s climate make headlines, a new Elm City nonprofit organization will help entrepreneurs who are working to solve the global warming crisis.

ClimateHaven will be a climate tech incubator and makerspace in downtown New Haven, according to Josh Geballe, managing director of Yale Ventures, which is in charge of translating Yale University research into real-world products and businesses.

Organizers say it will be a center where entrepreneurs, innovators, academics, corporate sponsors and investors can work together toward a common goal: to create technology and new ventures that will help reverse and adapt to climate change.

The plan is to launch ClimateHaven this winter.

“The big problem that we're all focused on is the development of new technologies that can help positively impact our climate crisis,” Geballe said.

The decade from 2011 to 2020 was the hottest on record, according to the United Nations, which predicts that global warming will mean more powerful storms, flooding, severe fires and drought. According to the U.N., moving away from fossil fuels to clean energy such as solar and wind power will help curb emissions that are causing climate change.

ClimateHaven will not be part of Yale, but will be a separate nonprofit, Geballe said. Yale is helping by bringing together a group of stakeholders who see a need for it and want to work together to make it happen.

ClimateHaven will provide space for these startups and help them as they develop climate technologies and grow. The startups will benefit from being part of a community of other startups that are working on similar challenges.

Through ClimateHaven, these initiatives will benefit from office space, a prototyping lab, and programming and training to help them be successful and scale their ventures, Geballe said.

The hope is that New Haven will become a hub for climate-related technology, a place where several companies are working toward a cleaner future for the planet, he added.

Another rationale for the effort is to ensure that climate-related startups that originate in Greater New Haven stay here for the long term, Geballe said.

“We have been seeing more climate-related technologies being developed at Yale and more startups being spun out of Yale to scale up those new technologies,” Geballe said. “We were seeing those startups leave New Haven to go to New York or Boston, where there is a bigger community of people working on climate startups.”

Geballe declined to identify local startups that decided to move elsewhere. He did say he asked their leaders if they would have stayed if something like ClimateHaven had already been in existence.

“The overwhelming answer was, ‘Yes, we love New Haven. We'd love to stay. But it's important to us to have a place where we can get started, where we can grow and where we can work side by side with other entrepreneurs who are focused on the same challenges.’ ”

That’s why stakeholders are eager to develop ClimateHaven in New Haven, Geballe said.

“We want to have a home for those startups to be able to stay here when they spin out of Yale and take root here and benefit from being close to their scientific founders,” Geballe said.

Climate change coalition

There are several stakeholders involved in creating ClimateHaven, and the number is growing. The list already includes Yale Ventures, Connecticut Innovations, the city of New Haven, Connecticut Green Bank, Collab, the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, CTNext, MakeHaven Inc., Purpose Built Ventures, SeeClickFix and Stanley Black & Decker.

Yale anticipates that stakeholders will serve on ClimateHaven’s founding board of directors.

Yale and Connecticut Innovations, the state’s quasi-public venture arm, were the primary organizations that came together and decided ClimateHaven was something that made sense to create, according to Geballe.

Organizers as of late September were still finalizing ClimateHaven’s headquarters location, but they anticipate it will be close to the nonprofit MakeHaven, a makerspace at 770 Chapel St., New Haven. MakeHaven provides space and tools for making projects a reality.

“Many of the startups in climate technology are building physical things that need to be prototyped as they're being developed,” Geballe said. “Much of the equipment that is commonly needed for prototyping exists at MakeHaven.”

PHOTO | COURTESY MAKEHAVEN
A group learns the fundamentals of soldering in the main fabrication lab at MakeHaven.

J.R. Logan, executive director at MakeHaven, said there is a global need for addressing climate change.

“We would like to see those impactful innovations incubated in New Haven,” Logan said.

MakeHaven, which has over $1 million worth of equipment, will be the workshop where prototypes are developed in its metal shop, digital fabrication lab, woodshop, textiles lab, electronics workbenches, biolab and more, according to Logan. MakeHaven can provide access to equipment such as 3D printers and laser cutters.

MakeHaven also will work with its network of partners to connect climate entrepreneurs to domestic manufacturing.

The creation of ClimateHaven will also mean jobs and positively impact economic development in the region, according to Geballe.

“It will mean more opportunities for our students — to stick around when they graduate and work on really exciting startups,” Geballe said.

Fundraising support

A search is currently underway for a full-time executive director to lead ClimateHaven.

In advertising the position, organizers said the person will “directly contribute toward the development of New Haven as a center for climate technology,” which will help speed progress toward a cleaner future.

Stakeholders will provide support to the new executive director, including help with fundraising, networking, mentorship and recruitment of companies and partners.

Organizers are also raising money to start ClimateHaven and are seeking corporate sponsors and funders.

“We expect the organization to be financially self-sufficient through corporate sponsorships and rent that the startups will pay,” Geballe said. “But to get started, we are raising startup capital to open it up. Any organizations that would like to support this initiative, we would encourage them to reach out to us.”

Geballe said he anticipates that several ClimateHaven startups will be based on Yale faculty research that gets licensed to fledgling companies.

However, ClimateHaven won’t be solely for Yale-affiliated entrepreneurs.

“This is an incubator that will be open to all climate-related startups,” Geballe said. “We expect to have startups there based on technology from UConn, or that aren't connected to an institution of higher education in Connecticut but are just being founded by other entrepreneurs.”

Entrepreneurs don’t need to be currently based in Connecticut either. ClimateHaven is geared toward any climate-related entrepreneurs from around the country.

In July, Gov. Ned Lamont announced that Connecticut Innovations, the state’s quasi-public venture arm, was launching a new ClimateTech Fund, with $100 million for supporting early-stage businesses focused on clean energy, environmentally-safe manufacturing and climate resiliency.

Konstantine Drakonakis, venture partner at Connecticut Innovations, said getting involved in ClimateHaven is a natural fit.

“ClimateHaven is the ideal intersection for CI’s ClimateTech Fund,” Drakonakis said. “Growing companies need office space, labs, talent, resources and access to capital. ClimateHaven will help to provide all of those things, and we are thrilled to do our part in building the ecosystem.”

“At the highest level, we want ClimateHaven to provide all the essential support to help promising green tech companies grow and thrive,” he added.

ClimateHaven’s website is at Climatehaven.tech. Follow it on Twitter @ClimateHaven.

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