As analysts, investors, journalists, and other experts offer up their predictions for 2025’s climatetech areas to watch, Greentown’s featuring just a sampling of our startup members innovating in these key categories. Learn about all of our 200+ startups here!

Advanced solar-cell technology

Included in Deloitte’s 2025 Renewable Energy Industry Outlook

• Active Surfaces’s flexible, lightweight solar panels can be applied to any surface—unlocking terawatts of dual land-use, next-generation deployment.
• Heliotrope’s innovative coating technology enhances solar panels’ performance by transforming the sunlight, delivering a power boost of up to 15 percent.
• Verde Technologies is building the next generation of lightweight, flexible solar panels for mass industrial and commercial adoption using the mineral perovskite, an abundant and high-performing solar material.

Alternative battery chemistries

From PitchBook’s 2025 Industrial Technology Outlook

• EarthEn’s efficient, cost-effective CO₂ battery can store energy for four to 100 hours of discharge
• Elementium Materials makes more powerful, longer-lasting batteries with a novel, carbonate-free electrolyte. 
• Form Energy’s iron-air battery is capable of storing electricity for 100 hours at system costs competitive with those of legacy power plants. 

Carbon tracking + management

Included in Sustainability Magazine’s “Top 10: Predictions for 2025”

• Decimetrix provides sustainability and energy-efficiency solutions for the energy industry by using data-driven, cloud-based, and AI-powered platforms to help its clients measure, manage, and reduce their carbon footprints.
• GigaDAC is meeting the need for lower-cost direct air capture (DAC) by fundamentally changing how DAC removes CO₂ from air—with a highly efficient spray rather than a filter.
• GreenIRR is a carbon-accounting platform for the trucking industry that enables users to measure real-time fleet emissions and generate regulation-compliant reports.
• This year’s Carbon to Value Initiative startup cohort: Ardent, CarbonBlue, MacroCycle, Maple Materials, Oxylus Energy, Phlair, Secant Fuel, RenewCO₂, and Seabound.

Decarbonized aviation

Shared by investors at a recent Greentown investor roundtable

• Haffner Energy enables the production of renewable energy via waste biomass thermolysis, with applications across sustainable aviation fuel, syngas, renewable hydrogen, and biomethanol. 
• VIA Biofuels offers drop-in fuels and chemical feedstocks for the international transportation, aviation, and chemical industries that don’t require engine modifications or expensive changes to manufacturing facilities or operations.

Clean hydrogen

Included in Deloitte’s 2025 Renewable Energy Industry Outlook

• Advanced Ionics’s novel electrolyzer, designed for heavy industry, uses up to 50 percent less electricity per kilogram of hydrogen than today’s standard requires. 
• Ambient Fuels is a “pure play” green-hydrogen developer for heavy industry.
• Thiozen’s chemical waste-to-hydrogen cycle removes hydrogen sulfide from gas streams and generates zero-emission hydrogen. This hydrogen is cost-competitive with gray hydrogen and carbon-competitive with green hydrogen, and the technology is applicable across the energy supply chain.

Curbing emissions from AI data centers

From TechCrunch’s “2025 will be the year climate tech learns to love AI”

• Provocative makes AI carbon-negative by building data-centers where the cooling system is replaced by carbon capture.

Farm automation + productivity

From PitchBook’s 2025 Industrial Technology Outlook

• AdaViv’s machine-vision-based solution helps growers maximize their profits by improving crop performance and minimizing the operational costs per cycle.
• AgZen’s feedback-optimized spray system, RealCoverage, uses AI to provide insights into how to reduce the amount of chemicals that farmers need to spray to achieve the desired coverage on their plants—saving growers significant money and water while decreasing pesticides’ environmental impact. 

Sustainable mining + recycling

Shared by investors at a recent Greentown investor roundtable

• American Battery Technology Company recycles lithium-ion batteries and extracts primary battery metals to produce domestically sourced, battery-grade, critical and strategic metals at substantially lower costs and lower environmental impact than those of conventionally sourced battery metals.
• Eden’s first-of-its-kind Electrical Reservoir Stimulation technology increases the recovery of natural resources and improves the economics of resource recovery with minimal environmental impact.
• Nth Cycle’s market-ready Oyster system uses a patented electro-extraction technology to recover critical metals from end-of-life batteries, scrap metal, and mined ore right where they’re sourced.

Tech for supply-chain challenges

From PitchBook’s 2025 Industrial Technology Outlook

• EcoForge, an ACCEL participant, develops affordable, high-performance building materials from local agricultural residues, replacing energy-intensive, fossil-based materials. This approach increases resilience to climate and supply-chain risks, while supporting local farming and job creation.
• Terralytiq is a “decarbonization copilot” for industrial supply chains. Its enterprise software platform helps manufacturers cut supply chain costs and carbon and spend less time on supplier engagement.