As Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito near the end of their time in office, the administration is launching a new fund aimed at advancing clean energy and climatetech solutions.
The Baker-Polito Administration has created a new $50 million fund through the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center to support early-stage startups advancing solutions to the commonwealth’s climate challenges. The new 2030 Fund will focus on entrepreneurs creating highly technical tools for decarbonization.
“By further supporting Massachusetts-based clean energy companies, our administration will be able to better position the industry in achieving critical technical, commercial, and manufacturing milestones here in the Commonwealth,” Polito said in a statement. “Investing in climatetech through the 2030 Fund offers tremendous potential to grow not only promising start-ups but the whole industry in Massachusetts, and we are excited to see this long-lasting, sustainable fund connect entrepreneurs to venture investors, furthering the Administration’s efforts in finding innovative solutions to our climate challenges.
The Baker-Polito administration said the 2030 Fund will help the commonwealth achieve its climate goals, including those laid out in the Massachusetts 2050 Decarbonization Roadmap and the Clean Energy and Climate Plan for 2025 and 2030.
MassCEC said it will focus investments from this fund in areas including net-zero grid, high-performance buildings, clean transportation and offshore wind. The organization said it plans to make commitments through 2030 on new investments, follow-on investments and venture debt.
“Early-stage funding is crucial to growing the Commonwealth’s burgeoning clean energy economy sustainably in order to scale solutions that will effectively address climate concerns,” said Massachusetts Clean Energy Center CEO Jen Daloisio.
The 2030 Fund builds on investments from MassCEC in climate solutions. Since 2014, MassCEC said it has deployed $16.9 million over 100 transactions. One of its recent initiatives was the Bridges Program, which was meant to step in and fund clean energy startups during the pandemic when investors were more cautious about deploying funds in this area. MassCEC said it helped fund eight startups who went on to have acquisitions or further rounds of funding.
