Hoax this! Climate Week NYC showcases real solutions to real (really!) climate change

Climate entrepreneurs and investors have moved on from you-know-who. 

Across New York City’s Climate Week, initiatives were rolled out, funds were raised and solutions were showcased, all as if the real risks of climate change created real opportunities to address them. 

“There are real results to point to, in terms of Fervo, in terms of massive IPOs, in terms of creating new markets that don’t require compliance and regulation, in terms of using AI to drive all these changes in the economy,” Jahed Momand of the early stage VC firm Cerulean Ventures told ImpactAlpha. “In the last year we have had some seriously good results around energy and decarbonization and water” (see “Cerulean seeks ‘non-consensus’ in physical AI and nature tech”).

The more than 1,000 Climate Week activities demonstrated the parallel reality of climate action and even progress, in the same week that US President Donald Trump trashed climate science in an extended riff before global leaders at the United Nations. Trump called global warming a “con job,” wind, solar and other renewable energy sources a “scam,” and concerns about carbon footprints “a hoax made up by people with evil intentions.”

The get-things-done attitude of many of the more than 100,000 Climate Week attendees has produced something that has been too rare in the climate conversation recently: optimism. 

“It feels like there’s a lot of conviction that manifests in an optimistic way,” Robert Munson of the Sorenson Impact Institute at the University of Utah, told ImpactAlpha. The institute hosted a daylong program on nature-based solutions to climate challenges, including water treatment,  forestry and the co-benefits of carbon credit projects. “You’re hearing a lot of practical strategies, practical advice, and a lot of real talk about what has to happen.” 

McKnight Foundation’s Tonya Allen said the Minneapolis-based philanthropy has identified more 110 community-owned climate projects across Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa that are looking for a total of $450 million in funding. 

“Communities have real projects and real leaders and real community support,” Allen said. “The challenge now is making sure that capital flows to them so they can shape and build the future.”

Signs of life

Investment strategies these days are more likely to be couched in terms of energy sovereignty, resilience or adaptation. “Net zero” sounds so…2024. The underlying fundamentals, however, mean solutions such as distributed solar, mangrove forests and crop insurance for smallholder farmers remain compelling investment opportunities.

“Sometimes the upfront narrative changes in terms of how you get to an investment strategy, but the underlying asset that you end up investing in remains the same,” Colin le Duc of Generation Investment Management said at a panel at the Natural Capital Summit. “It’s just marketing.”

Institutional investors and high net-worth families may be returning to such opportunities after the cold climate fundraising winter of recent years. Fundraising by climate specialist venture funds “cratered” by nearly 40% last year, to $3.0 billion, according to a PitchBook tally. By mid-2026, just $546 million had been raised, much of that in Europe. 

On Wednesday, New York Comptroller Mark Levine, who oversees the city’s five major pension systems with a combined asset base of more than $325 billion, announced a “strategic expansion” of private market climate investments. Levine said he will propose $5 billion in capital to new private market climate investment opportunities to the boards of the New York City Teachers’ Retirement System, Employees’ Retirement System, and Board of Education Retirement System. Earlier this year, the city’s pension system made its first private-market climate allocation under Levine, with a $116 million investment in Sandbrook Climate Infrastructure Fund II.

At One Ventures, a San Francisco-based climate tech investor, is two-thirds of the way towards a $350 million goal for its third fund with participation from large institutional investors, high net worth individuals and corporate VC funds, the firm’s Tom Chi shared at the Natural Capital Summit. 

At One has invested in biodiversity-focused ventures, including Dalan Animal Health, which makes a vaccine to protect honeybees; marine carbon credit project developer

Gigablue; and Miraterra, which makes advanced soil sensing systems to manage soil health and biodiversity. 

At One is also backing the “de-extinction” company Colossal Bioscience, which has genetically engineered a woolly mouse on the way to bringing back the woolly mammoth, a keystone species during the Pleistocene epoch.

Power and Place

As one indication of the improved, er, climate, Oakland-based Candide Group has closed its Afterglow Climate Justice Fund at $70 million. The “catalytic debt” vehicle is intended to develop and expand climate solutions alongside communities.

Indeed, affordability and community resilience likewise remain good bets, even as the Biden-era Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund remains tied up in legal battles with the Trump administration. 

Just in time for Climate Week, a federal judge ruled unlawful the administration’s termination of $7 billion in Solar for All portion of the GGRF, potentially clearing the way for funds to begin flowing to help more than 900,000 lower-income take advantage of inexpensive solar power. 

The $2.7 billion McKnight Foundation said it would back a $150 million Power & Place fund to fill the gap in the Midwest for the kind of green, community-based infrastructure projects that the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Funds was intended to finance. The fund, developed with the Minneapolis Foundation and Third Coast Strategies, aims to back 8-10 projects in its first year. 

“Communities are actually places of power,” Allen said in a closed-door session hosted by Hive Fund and Communities First Fund that sought to mobilize funding for community-based innovators. 

“The local will save the national,” Allen said. “So how do we support those communities in a way to build the capacity that we need that will transform the country?”

One example: Enerwealth, a community solar and storage developer in the Southeast. Some of its projects interconnect with Roanoke Electric Cooperative. A small rural electric cooperative. The projects decarbonize the grid and, via battery storage, offer resilience. But the real impact, Enerwealth founder Ajulo Othow said, is the wealth creation the projects enable by lowering electricity bills, diversifying revenue streams for farmers and landowners, and now, through what she calls “Freedom dividends.” 

A  2.6 megawatt project that opened this week at a Charlotte waste treatment facility, for example, will earmark a portion of the revenue for a form of local guaranteed basic income, largely for single mothers, Othow says. The project was funded by the Hive Fund and Africa Glo Climate Justice.  

Separately, the Richard King Mellon Foundation made a $250,000 investment in Frontline Gig, a Baltimore-based venture that staffs local climate projects as a way to create pathways into the green economy for local residents. Frontline helps local residents who are underemployed, new to the trades, or may not be considering “green” careers find paid onramps. The company is operating in Pittsburgh, with plans to expand to New York City and New Orleans. 

“By bringing communities and project leaders together, we’re building the local workforce needed to turn funded plans into action,” Frontline Gig’s Kala Fleming said.

Matthew Flower contributed reporting to this article.