Weak Quarter for EU Cleantech Investment Highlights Urgent Need for Political Action: our latest Quarterly Briefing

Today we publish our latest Quarterly Briefing – offering an overview of last quarter's cleantech investment news. We also cover the latest political developments in Brussels, including progress to-date on forming the new European Commission.

Investments

In Q3, just 1.4 billion euros were invested in cleantech equity deals, compared to 4 billion for the same quarter last year. Asia Pacific also faced a downturn, while North America showed signs of a stronger recovery. Early-stage deal volume decreased materially, and while late-stage deal volume grew somewhat, the total sum invested in EU cleantech through late-stage deals still dropped by 40% quarter-on-quarter.

Cleantech venture capital deals took place in 16 out of 27 EU member states, the most active ones, in order, being Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Belgium.

This quarter also saw one of Europe's most high profile and well-capitalized cleantech scaleups face difficulties. Northvolt’s canceled orders and layoffs highlight how challenging the path to scaling European cleantech is - from delivering major industrial projects from scratch to securing demand, funding, critical materials and machinery. Beyond the individual case of Northvolt, this raises a cultural question for Europe and our policymakers: in our quest to become a leader in the industries of tomorrow, are we ready to take the risk that some projects will fail?

In September, Cleantech for Europe Summit 2024 convened cleantech and policy leaders in Brussels. This year’s event focused on the collective mission: how to urgently scale up Europe’s cleantech manufacturing sector.

Read the full briefing here.

Policy

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has promised to unveil a Clean Industrial Deal within the first 100 days of her new mandate. This would set the stage for a political cycle focused on cleantech competitiveness, but time is of the essence. The EU has months, not years, to turn the boat around. This strategy will require focus and a comprehensive overhaul of policy areas such as finance and trade.

Alongside our partners at the Energy Resilience Leadership Group (ERLG), we co-published an open letter calling for the implementation of the Draghi report to unleash Europe’s cleantech potential. We published this on the back of a high-level roundtable joined by Breakthrough Energy founder Bill Gates, co-hosted by Breakthrough Energy , the ERLG and Cleantech for Europe, at which we discussed how the Clean Industrial Deal can help Europe regain its economic competitiveness. 

Read our briefing to learn more about the state of play in Brussels, including key takeaways from Mario Draghi’s landmark report on EU competitiveness, as well as the portfolios of cleantech-relevant Commissioners-designate.

Read the full briefing here.