We expected the mood at this year’s San Francisco Climate Week to feel more somber. After all, the past few months have brought a wave of anti-climate policy moves from the U.S. administration. But rather than retreat into pessimism, the climate tech community showed up with a clear, collective mindset: let’s get it done.
The energy felt different from 2024—less hype, more focus. The team at CTVC, who probably attended many more events, had a similar takeaway. This year’s rallying cry wasn’t just “we must,” but “we can, and we are.” The conversations we joined reflected a deepening maturity across the sector and a growing recognition that building a climate tech company means building a real business.
Commercial Viability Is Not Optional
As investor Tom Steyer noted in a fireside chat with Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer, “No one adopts new technology because it’s nice. They adopt it because it’s better, cheaper, or faster at solving a pain point.” It’s a sentiment climate tech founders should embrace. If your product doesn’t solve a pressing problem better than the status quo, no amount of mission alignment will matter. The “green premium” is effectively gone; customers and investors alike are looking for value propositions that stand on their own.
This is why many startups are not leading with climate in their messaging. They’re focusing instead on what their solutions deliver—cost savings, speed, resilience, efficiency (not to mention energy security and dominance). Decarbonization is the bonus, not the headline. It’s a deliberate positioning strategy: if you can win on performance, then the sustainability benefits become a powerful “and” rather than a risky “but.” The mission doesn’t change, only the way we get there.
The Climate Tech Climb: No One Said it Would Be Easy
Even the most promising climate tech companies face steep challenges. We found company executives and investors to be frank about some of the hurdles they face. Tariffs, for instance, are doing little to incentivize domestic manufacturing. One founder said they’d love to scale their current manufacturing plant in the U.S., but tariffs on core inputs make it economically unviable. Instead of reshoring supply chains, companies are being forced to look abroad, undermining one of the major policy goals behind those very trade restrictions.
Uncertainty about IRA tax credits is also weighing heavily on CEOs’ minds, as many talked about the need for “optionality.” It seems everyone is focused on ensuring they have the flexibility to meet the growing uncertainty of funding, both private and public.
Startups continue to face the age-old problem of awareness. We heard this from multiple CEOs: it’s hard to get the word out to potential customers that there are better alternatives to the current way of doing things. One CEO gave another some good advice: don’t stay in stealth if you don’t have to. It’s better to start the education process early, because it takes time. Without being too self-serving, this is exactly where firms like V2 come in to support climate tech: launching with the right narrative and reaching the right audiences at the right time.
What’s Hot: The Climate Tech Ideas Turning Heads
Among the most exciting areas drawing attention at SFCW: geothermal energy. We can’t count the times we heard about a “geothermal renaissance,” so we made our way to the Geothermal House to hear how companies like Fervo Energy, Zanskar, Quaise, and Baseload Capital are leveraging the earth’s heat to unlock a new source of power. Advances in drilling and subsurface imaging are transforming geothermal from a niche into a viable, clean firm energy source with global potential.
The other most buzzed-about term is AI-anything. Unsurprisingly, AI was a hot topic, both for its power requirements and on the other spectrum—its power to provide grid relief with predictive maintenance, optimization algorithms and demand forecasting to unlock cost savings. Startup execs (and their backers) also realize they need to unlock productivity for their own teams.
Focused, Resilient, and In It for the Long Haul
Despite real challenges, from policy headwinds to capital constraints, the mood at SFCW was overwhelmingly resilient. Neither founders nor funders are backing down. There’s a shared understanding that we don’t have time to wait for perfect conditions. Climate tech companies are building under pressure—but they’re building. And that determination was perhaps the strongest signal of all.