Undaunted, the London-based hub for the UK climate innovation community, has today announced a new partnership with The Earthshot Prize, which for the first time creates a global network of organisations offering vital support to green innovators.
The new network is set to foster collaboration between accelerators, incubators, and other organisations who support climate innovation around the world, helping a wide range of climate start-ups to fast-track solutions to the world’s most pressing environmental challenges. It aims to speedily scale up 10,000 eco-innovations by the end of this decade.
The first 17 members of the network were named in Cape Town today, at the start of Earthshot Week. They include Undaunted – a partnership between the Royal Institution and Imperial College London – which has successfully supported nearly 200 clean-tech start-ups to raise over $1bn of investment since 2012. The survival rate of Undaunted start-ups is 93% compared to the industry average of just 10%.
Other organisations making up the Network’s initial membership operate on five continents including in all four Earthshot Prize host cities to date – London, Boston, Singapore and Cape Town – and include ASBhive at the Asia School of Business; India’s Climate Collective Foundation; and Boston-based Leading Cities.
Alyssa Gilbert, Director of Undaunted, said: “It’s brilliant to see that the number of hubs dedicated to supporting green innovators globally is flourishing; a world-wide web of action to create a sustainable and just future, at pace and at scale.
“However, what’s been missing is a way to harness the collective power of these hubs across countries and continents. Now, the new Network we’ve created in partnership with The Earthshot Prize will help to distribute opportunities and resources more equitably, channelling the vital expertise, infrastructure and funders that these accelerators offer, towards the right start-ups at the right time.”
Hannah Jones, CEO of The Earthshot Prize, said: “Like The Earthshot Prize, accelerators exist to speed solutions to scale. Scaling enough climate solutions across the world will require entrepreneurs to successfully take their solutions from one market to the next. This network offers new hope that we can collectively increase the speed and likelihood of start-ups achieving scale and global positive impact.”
Katherine Mathieson, Director of the Royal Institution, said: “Undaunted has already been hugely successful in supporting the UK-based climate innovation community, demonstrating just how much greater our collective impact can be when that success is replicated on a global scale.
“So we are delighted to be supporting this world-first network which will make it easier for stakeholders to find each other, transforming global access to resources, markets and capital.”
With the new network’s initial members already providing world-class support for green innovators in different regions worldwide, today’s announcement improves the likelihood of innovators scaling at speed by expanding their access to a larger pool of experts, technological infrastructure, customers, funders and markets, when they join any accelerator in the network.