Global climate tech accelerator Subak has announced the six not-for-profit startups joining its 2022 programme to fund and scale data-led climate initiatives

Subak has revealed that £110,000 in unrestricted non-equity grant funding will be made available to each new programme member, along with a 12-month curriculum provided by the accelerator, covering business fundamentals, tech, data, and impact.

The programme aims to help startups drive climate action through policy and behaviour change.

The new cohort of startups joining the Subak programme are:

• AimHi Earth — a startup developing accessible climate training to empower people to understand the whole picture of climate change, how to communicate this, and make a positive difference.
• Autonomy — a think tank dedicated to developing tools and research to tackle climate change, with the aim of generating data and policy solutions for sustainability of jobs and societal transitions.
• EnergyTag — creating an internationally recognised standard for hourly electricity usage certificates, in the aim to accelerate the shift to renewable energy on a global scale.
• Instrat — a think tank using open energy data to drive policy debate and a just transition to net zero, focusing on Poland’s energy sector.
• Project Canopy — a data hub for the Congo Basin, founded to aid and empower the region’s severely under-resourced environmental actors, and aiming to build a prototype that applies machine learning to satellite imagery to identify illegal logging activity in real time.
• The Green Web Foundation — developing tools and an open database to measure carbon emissions of websites and cloud services, with a mission to accelerate the transition to a fossil fuel-free Internet by 2030.

Amali de Alwis MBE, CEO of Subak, was keen to highlight Project Canopy as an example of what climate tech can achieve: “Project Canopy absolutely epitomises the work we have set out to do at Subak. Our core ethos is about harnessing and sharing data and tools to drive real, tangible change for the climate.

“Subak’s members are by definition not competitors – they’re collaborators. If one organisation that we support can drive policy change and empower activists across a land mass of 2.5million km2 – then imagine what’s possible if we can scale this impact to other regions and sectors.

“By working together and amplifying impact, we can truly unlock these organisations’ potential.”

Jules Caron, co-founder of Project Canopy, commented: “A few months ago, Project Canopy was just a couple of guys with a pdf. Joining Subak is really our watershed moment.

“Subak’s funding and support will allow us to put data at the heart of decision-making for the Congo Basin rainforest – the key to global climate change mitigation.

“We’ve seen the work Subak’s first cohort has already achieved. The emphasis on collaboration and sharing tools is crucial to our progress in the climate fight, and it’s why we are so excited to join Subak.”

About Subak

Founded in 2021, with Amali de Alwis MBE being appointed as CEO in October, Subak funds and scales a growing network of data focused climate tech organisations, to transform understanding of the climate crisis and drive change in policy and mass-market behaviour.

Its founding members have raised over £8.5 million in funding while delivering remarkable data-driven achievements.

Notable members of the accelerator network include Songkick co-founder Michelle You, and former DeepMind machine learning engineer, Dr Jack Kelly.

Related:

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Sustainable transformation: why climate change and the digital agenda are more closely linked than ever — Climate change looks set to be the biggest driver of organisational change over the coming decades, but Fergus Navaratnam-Blair of Source Global Research argues that this change will feel, for most businesses, like a natural extension of their digital transformation stories.