Capital Series: Temple Fennell, Clean Energy Ventures

Temple Fennell is the Co-founder and Managing Partner at Clean Energy Ventures, an early-stage venture firm that funds disruptive capital-light technologies and business model innovations that can reshape how we produce and consume energy. Temple has been investing in climate tech (or "Cleantech" as it used to be called) for a long time, and has the learnings to show for it. This episode covers the origin story of Clean Energy Ventures, their approach, the mix of limited partners that back their fund, and their criteria for investment from an impact standpoint and a financial standpoint. A broader discussion follows about the climate tech capital stack, some of the learnings from Cleantech 1.0, why Temple believes this time is different, the state of institutional capital as it relates to climate tech fund investing, as well as what it will take to get more capital flowing in this direction.