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# Climate Tech's Venture Capital Problem: Why Startups Chase Drones Over Energy
- URL: https://adjacent.media/signals/climate-techs-venture-capital-problem-why-startups-chase-drones-over-energy/
- Published: 2026-10-07T16:17:33.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-07T16:17:33.000Z
- Description: The climate tech sector has increasingly optimized for venture capital returns rather than actual decarbonization.
- Author: Jonathan Greene
- Tags: #signal, theme-culture, climate policy, energy transition, tech industry strategy

Source: [Intercalationstation](https://intercalationstation.substack.com/p/we-lost-the-plot-how-climate-tech)

The climate tech sector has increasingly optimized for venture capital returns rather than actual decarbonization. Investors funnel capital toward high-margin, scalable software plays (drones, AI monitoring, data analytics) while neglecting the capital-intensive work of replacing fossil fuel infrastructure. Hundreds of millions flow to companies measuring emissions rather than eliminating them, leaving the harder physics problems—grid decarbonization, industrial heat, cement and steel—chronically underfunded and starved of engineering talent. The gap between what venture money rewards and what climate science requires continues to widen.