Climate Proofers

The climate start-up world is never easy. But the last year has made it harder.

Amidst the turmoil of President Trump's second coming, grants for small businesses and promising climate technologies all but evaporated. Indeed, the very word "climate" became politically radioactive in Washington.

Founders who'd spent years building companies around federal funding suddenly found themselves scrambling for cash, and pushing against unprecedented policy headwinds.

So where does that leave climate start-ups in 2026?

Stacy Swann has seen climate finance from just about every angle. She's spearheaded blended finance efforts at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), founded and sold her own climate advisory firm, and is now helping channel early-stage capital into the next generation of resilience companies as co-founder of Resilient Earth Capital — a community of angel investors doing, as she puts it, 'Shark Tank' with would-be climate entrepreneurs.

In this episode, Stacy takes us inside the pitch process, explaining what gets angels excited, what makes them nervous, and the mistakes founders make again and again. She also shares her thoughts on the shift in the start-up landscape in the two and a half years since REC launched — from an initial rush of energy transition companies to a growing army of startups in agriculture, water, extreme heat, and wildfire.

She also has a clear-eyed take on what 2026 holds — and why, whatever the political climate, the physical climate is still going to drive investment.

For founders looking for capital, investors trying to make sense of this market, or anyone curious about where early-stage climate money is actually flowing right now, this episode is for you.

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]

Scan the headlines, and you'll see the same climate-related story again and again.

It's the "uninsurability crisis".

This claims that America's insurance market is cracking under the weight of climate change. Premiums are soaring. Major carriers are pulling out of California, Florida, and other high-risk states. Homeowners who've lived in the same place for decades suddenly can't afford — or can't find — coverage.

And yet, paradoxically, the industry itself is still turning a profit.

So who is this crisis really for?

Kate Stein, Insurance Director at EDF+Business, has spent her career at the intersection of climate, insurance, and advocacy. In this episode, she explains why "uninsurability" is a crisis for policyholders long before it becomes a crisis for insurers — and what that distinction means for how we respond.

She also makes the case for a much more ambitious vision of what insurance could do, and how innovation — and greater collaboration with policyholders, developers, and banks — could save it from a climate death spiral.

For anyone grappling with what "uninsurability" really means, and how the industry could respond to climate-related stressors, this episode is for you.

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]

Pests, invasive species, and biological (PIB) threats are on the rise.

Why? You guessed it — climate change.

Higher temperatures are exacerbating the spread of crop-munching pests, waterway-clogging marine species, and disease-laden insects. Indeed, PIB risks are some of the fastest-growing and most costly in our climate-altered world. A recent paper in Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation even says they are on a par with storms, floods, and wildfires — increasing by 702% from 1980–1999 to 2000–2019.

And yet, PIB risk solutions are massively undercapitalized, and often overlooked in the adaptation investment universe.

Will Everill is on a mission to change this. He's the founder of UpRoot Capital, a new climate adaptation VC and angel syndicate targeting early-stage companies that help customers detect, monitor, and control PIB risks amidst the changing climate.

In this episode, he breaks down the emerging DX (diagnostic) and RX (control and remediation) technologies looking to tackle these threats and save agribusinesses of all stripes from biological catastrophe.

He also maps the climate mechanisms driving PIB explosions. These include warmer winters — which allow pests to overwinter and reproduce faster — and shifting wildlife migration patterns. He illustrates the impacts with vivid examples: mountain pine beetles killing 100,000 square miles of North American forest, spotted lanternflies spreading across US cities and orchards, beds of zebra mussels blocking waterways, and ticks expanding into Europe and the UK to spread lyme disease.

As one of the only investors explicitly focused on PIB as an adaptation category, Will also talks candidly about the challenges building a market that doesn't yet have a common language. This starts with educating investors on the size of the opportunity — and getting start-ups to realize "adaptation" is a category that can open wallets.

For those curious to learn about one of the great, overlooked investment frontiers in adaptation, this is a must-listen episode.

🔗 Learn more about UpRoot Capital HERE

📰 Read Will's newsletter, The Adapt, HERE

What's the investment case for climate resilience?

It's a question asked time and again here at Climate Proofers — and it's an important one. After all, if institutions can't be stirred to harden their climate defenses, the consequences will be costly: economically, financially, and societally.

It's also a question that Mike Williams, President of ClimateFirst, has bet his career on answering. With his company, ClimateFirst, he's gone all-in on quantifying climate risks to buildings and producing resiliency plans to mitigate against them.

In this episode, Mike shares how a decades-long engineering career provided a front-row seat to the emerging climate risk and resilience challenge, and explains how this inspired him to develop a scalable software solution to help real estate investors and owners take it on.

We also unpack ClimateFirst's first-of-a-kind case study, which illustrates the wisdom of investing in resilience at the building level. Mike walks us through his team's analysis of a single multifamily building "cloned" across nine US locations — each exposed to different hazards from extreme heat to flooding to hurricane-force winds. The results show that location is everything, with projected 10-year losses ranging from $70,000 to nearly $5mn for this identical asset.

He then shares the adaptive measures that can materially reduce these losses — without breaking the bank.

For all those in or around the real estate investment space — and indeed, all those interested in quantifying climate risk and resilience — this is the episode for you.

🔗 Read Investing in Resilience: Making Physical Climate Risk a Financial Priority for Real Estate HERE

📖 Read more ClimateFirst resources HERE

COP30 was billed as the adaptation COP. But did the summit live up to expectations?

In this episode, E3G Senior Policy Advisor Ana Mulio Alvarez returns to the Climate Proofers podcast to deliver a frank post-mortem on the Belém conference. She gets into the gory details on how the Brazilian presidency tried to center adaptation in the talks, only to have its own messaging derailed somewhat by President Lula's energetic push for a fossil fuel roadmap. The result: a COP defined by competing priorities and scrambled narratives.

Ana walks us through the summit's headline-making call to triple adaptation finance, and why it matters despite the ambiguous language used and lack of a clear baseline. She also comments on the supporting infrastructure of work programs, networking hubs, and financing roadmaps that may (or may not) continue to strengthen adaptation financing efforts heading into Bonn and COP31.

Then, she offers a forensic account of the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) indicator negotiations, which collapsed into a confusing — and controversial — mess at the conference's climax. She explains how the final set of 59 indicators now face a legitimacy problem that could haunt the adaptation agenda for years to come. Still, she sees a silver lining. With fresh scrutiny, new analysis, and a healthy dose of political pressure, the flawed indicators have the potential to be transformed into something more useful down the line.

Ana also touches on a range of other adaptation issues spotlighted at the summit, from the overdue assessment of National Adaptation Plans to the disappointments experienced by the cash-starved Adaptation Fund.

If you want the most honest, deeply informed readout of COP30's adaptation highs and lows — Ana's got you covered.

Sign up to climateproof.news for more news and insights on climate adaptation finance, tech, and policy.

Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]

Amid the heat, humidity, and high political drama of COP30 in Belém, adaptation finance and policy expert Sabrina Bachrach returns to the Climate Proofers podcast for a frank, inside-the-venue debrief on the summit so far.

She walks us through the fast-moving state of play on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), and the ongoing debate over a proposed set of indicators that could help countries speak the same language on climate resilience.

While the indicators — and the negotiations around them — are technical and complex, their purpose is clear: to give the adaptation process its equivalent of the 1.5°C temperature rise target for mitigation. Sabrina talks us through the obstacles in the way of a final agreement, and explains why these last few days of crunch talks are likely to make or break the adaptation agenda.

Sabrina also shares what she's been working on at COP30 — from helping launch nine "Resilience Must-Knows," a new qualitative framework for decision-makers, to unveiling FINI (Fostering Investable National Planning and Implementation) a major initiative aimed at making national adaptation plans genuinely investable. There's also insights on private sector engagement at this year's summit, particularly from insurers keen to protect their business models from runaway climate risks.

If you're eager to get up to speed on all things adaptation at this year's COP, this is the episode for you.

Sign up to climateproof.news for more news and insights on climate adaptation finance, tech, and policy.

Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]

What policy ideas could help catalyze the adaptation economy? How can markets be coaxed into supporting climate-proofing innovations? And what does a new, Swiss-based start-up have to do with all this?

On today's episode, Climate Proofers sits down with Simon Zadek, Co-Founder and Co-Managing Partner of Morphosis, a new company stocked with sustainable finance and business veterans looking to bring about an economy fit for a 1.5°C-plus world.

Simon traces his career from early work on labor rights and social auditing through to his leadership in green finance and nature-based investment, culminating with the insight that sparked Morphosis: that climate change is advancing faster than policy and markets can mitigate, demanding a wholesale rethink of how economies adapt.

He then unpacks the company's debut report, "The Rise of the Adaptation Economy", which sketches out a broad policy framework designed to help adaptation markets scale — much like how feed-in tariffs and offtake agreements propelled the renewable energy boom.

Zadek argues that governments must learn to apply a "transversal lens" to policy areas like financial regulation, R&D strategy, and trade policy in order to make adaptation profitable and attractive to private capital. Without this, he warns, adaptation will remain stuck in pilot mode, dependent on dwindling public subsidies.

For those in the weeds of adaptation policy who want to understand how markets are being reimagined to support climate resilience, this is the pod for you.

🔗 Read "The Rise of the Adaptation Economy" report from Morphosis HERE

Sign up to climateproof.news for more news and insights on climate adaptation finance, tech, and policy.

Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected]

The Super Bowl of climate politics is almost upon us.

COP30, the UN Climate Change Conference, is about to kick off in Brazil — and expectations are running high for adaptation advocates. Brazilian leaders are fueling that momentum, with COP30 CEO Ana Toni calling the summit a "turning point" for adaptation and resilience.

Once again, the question of finance hangs heavy over the talks. This time around, it's focused on whether rich countries will commit to a dedicated adaptation finance target, one that would channel much-needed resources to poor nations struggling under a barrage of compounding climate shocks.

Which country groups are pushing for this target? What are the arguments against? And how has the adaptation finance landscape shifted over the last year between COPs?

On today's episode, Ben Abraham, Senior Consultant at Instituto Talanoa, a leading Brazilian climate policy think tank, provides the answers.

Ben explains why adaptation finance risks "falling off a cliff" without a new collective target, and unpacks the push by Least Developed Countries to triple current commitments to US$120bn a year by 2030. He outlines the political headwinds from donor nations, the tension between grant-based and loan-based finance, and the technical challenges of tracking whether countries are really delivering what they promise.

The interview also ranges into the debate on the role of blended finance and multilateral development banks in driving adaptation, and explores whether private capital will ever become a meaningful contributor to the cause.

Ben closes by sharing his and Instituto Talanoa's hopes for the summit, along with his vision of what a successful negotiated outcome on adaptation would look like.

Sign up to climateproof.news for more news and insights on climate adaptation finance, tech, and policy.

Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected].

There's no two ways about it: the US power grid is in poor shape.

Wildfires, floods, and hurricanes continue to harry electric utilities and take down grid infrastructure, all while the country is rushing frantically to build out additional capacity to meet the energy demands of the AI craze.

How can power providers expand and build resilience against extreme weather shocks at the same time — without blowing the bank?

Getting access to better data and risk modeling would be a good start.

Rhizome is a pioneer in the buzzy grid resilience tech market, and is already working with a clutch of big-name utilities to help them analyze and guard against climate-related risk.

On this episode, the company's CEO and Co-Founder — Mishal Thadani — takes us through his journey from wind and solar energy to the resilience space, and offers his perspectives on one of the hottest niches in adaptation tech today.

He also shares stories from the field: from Texas utilities swapping wooden poles for steel to Northeast operators raising substations above floodwaters.

He also reveals what's driving utilities to finally treat resilience as a core business function, and how his company is helping them stretch billions in adaptation spending further.

🔗 Learn more about Rhizome HERE

🔗 Check out Rhizome's 2025 Wildfire Investment Snapshot HERE

Sign up to climateproof.news for more news and insights on climate adaptation finance, tech, and policy.

Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected].

Old-school insulation is no match for our climate-adjusted world. With temperatures rising, we need a new wave of materials and technologies to meet the moment.

Enter NANOPLUME, a start-up working on super-insulating, super-thin, and super-light materials using bio-aerogels — free from petrochemicals and 100% biocompatible (meaning they don't harm those living around them).

Theresa Hoffmann, CEO at NANOPLUME, joins the pod to share the magic of bio-aerogels, and explain how they can transform the way we insulate our homes and transport goods around the world.

She also describes her personal journey to launching an adaptation start-up after stints at a top-flight consultancy and a deep-tech investment house, and offers insights on how to position adaptation hardware to cost-conscious consumers.

🔗Learn more about NANOPLUME's bio-aerogel tech HERE

Sign up to climateproof.news for more news and insights on climate adaptation finance, tech, and policy.

Questions? Comments? Email Louie at [email protected].