Inside cleantech’s financial crisis

cleantech

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Today, we’re breaking down the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and what it means for the climate tech startups and community solar financers that depended on it.

Silicon Valley Bank offices in Tempe, Arizona. Credit: Tony Webster / Creative Commons

Silicon Valley Bank’s spiral began last Wednesday when it told investors it needed to quickly raise $2.25 billion to stay afloat. Clients quickly started pulling their money out of SVB, many of them climate and cleantech investors and companies.

Federal regulators stepped in on Friday, taking over and then shutting down SVB. The move essentially rescued the deposits of SVB clients — including at least 1,550 startups working on climate and clean energy projects.

“It feels like we just avoided the apocalypse,” Jim Kapsis, a former Treasury Department adviser who has advised dozens of climate tech startups, told the Washington Post. But that doesn’t mean climate investors and startups are fully recovered from their near-death experience.

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About half the startups developing and scaling up new clean energy technologies relied on SVB, and some had just raised millions of dollars before being locked out of their accounts. SVB also said it was involved in about 60% of all community solar investing nationwide.

So as startups and investors figure out how to pay employees and keep their cash safe, climate and clean energy projects will likely have to wait on the back burner, the New York Times reports.

More clean energy news

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? Air pollution’s disparate effects: An new analysis shows with “an unprecedented level of detail” how air pollution in the U.S. is concentrated in communities of color. (The Guardian)

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