While the pace of investment has adjusted this year, the underlying demand for Canadian cleantech innovations remains strong.
“Ten years from now, people will get over the AI bubble and start wanting assets that produce cash flow.”
Recent data from the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association showed that in the first three quarters of 2025, cleantech investment hit its lowest level since the pandemic.
But investor Darren Clifford models his investment approach on larger trends.
“I think there’s no better time to be investing in adaptation than today,” he said. “You’re early. The valuations are low. Ten years from now, people will get over the AI bubble and start wanting assets that produce cash flow.”
Adaptation technology is a category of tools and systems that address the impact of climate change, including things like flood protection, heat resilience, and infrastructure built for harsher conditions.
If markets reward solutions that solve real problems under real pressure, Clifford sees climate-driven demand as a current strong enough to reshape entire industries.
He isn’t surprised to see that cleantech investment has dropped this year as AI crowds most of the space. And he’s not aware of any LPs with a mandate to allocate into adaptation specifically.
But Clifford spent more than a decade at McKinsey, advising founders on sustainability ventures and helping expand the firm’s Green Business Building practice.
His work took him to boardrooms in more than 100 countries grappling with rising climate exposure, as well as to early-stage teams racing to build tools for a world under increasing pressure. The pattern he observed became hard to ignore.
Clifford left McKinsey and founded Adapt[us] Capital, intent on supporting technologies that people will turn to as climate crisis conditions intensify.
It’s a global market that’s forming in real time, still underserved by traditional cleantech funds, and underappreciated by mainstream investors.
But Clifford has long tracked the word of cleantech innovation and adoption accelerator Foresight Canada, an organization he sees as essential scaffolding for adaptation companies.
Foresight gives investors like Clifford access to curated opportunities through its Investor Matchmaking Program, and brings on these investors to help spotlight Canada’s most investable ventures through the annual Foresight 50 Showcase.
This year, they also launched a free, nine-month accelerator program called Earth Tech: Adapt, specifically designed to fast-track climate adaptation technologies across sectors. The program is run in partnership with SI Canada, and supports companies developing solutions across critical areas, including flood mitigation, wildfire prevention, water management, and bioremediation.
Clifford pointed to Foresight’s role in building key relationships within Canada’s cleantech sector, offering strategic guidance and connecting founders with early adopters across the country and globally.
Climate risk follows geography, not borders. Wildfire technology built in British Columbia must also serve California and Australia. Coastal solutions tested in the Atlantic provinces have relevance across Southeast Asia and Europe.
“There is opportunity in Canada, but it is where Canada faces these types of actual risks that are going to raise the incentive,” he said.
Clifford also spends a good deal of time thinking about why adaptation companies face commercial friction early on. Many founders arrive with strong technical expertise and less experience navigating commercial markets.
They must also try and convince CEOs to buy technology that might not pay off immediately.
“Commercializing loss-avoidance business cases is really hard,” he noted.
Cleantech founders also frequently target the groups with the largest theoretical upside, rather than buyers with the strongest propensity, which often leads to fewer sales.
These challenges are being remedied, he said, in part by accelerators like Foresight, who also offer technology validation services, and climate-focused tech networks.
“About five percent of all capital globally gets invested in climate. Within climate capital, another five percent goes into adaptation,” he said. “There is a huge gap in the innovation space to find the next disruptive technologies.”
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Foresight is building a more competitive, innovative, and sustainable economy. That work includes supporting the growth of adaptation technologies across Canada. Learn more.
Feature image courtesy Carbon Life Media.