Mission and Impact - Elemental Impact

At Elemental

15 years of investing in companies and projects

When I started Elemental in 2009, there were few early stage investors and no accelerators for energy or climate. As more money has gone into the early stages and our portfolio companies have matured, our entrepreneurs have hit new roadblocks and now need different types of capital, like project finance for their first few commercial facilities. As our portfolio has grown, so have we.

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Our Approach

Through dozens of projects that went well – and many that haven’t – we have learned that there are three essential ingredients to building climate projects successfully. These will continue to be cornerstones of our work as we scale:

Catalytic capital

Deploying projects makes us better investors. It helped us characterize a $150B gap in funding that keeps technologies from scaling to their potential. Everything we do is designed to address this gap, including our inaugural GGRF fund and expanding to additional funds in the near future.

Project expertise

Entrepreneurs need much more than funding to succeed. The 900 hours of expert coaching we delivered in 2023 significantly accelerated companies’ ability to build projects and partnerships, like solar for low-income communities in Florida, recycled and domestically produced nickel and cobalt in Ohio, and infrastructure for zero emissions trucks to move goods throughout California.

Community partnership

As Jason Salfi, CEO of our portfolio company Dimensional Energy, reflected this week: “It’s only through local partnership that we’re able to build a sustainable aviation fuel facility in upstate New York. Community partners bring expertise and resources that help projects actually get built.”

Elemental CEO and founder, Dawn Lippert, explains the problem and how we are addressing it at Elemental Interactive 2024.

We’ve grown into a broader platform

with a family of funds working in concert to mobilize capital from philanthropy, government, and private investors. Our platform includes the original Elemental non-profit investment vehicle supported by more than $210M in philanthropy and government funding to date, as well as the $94M fund Earthshot Ventures launched in 2021.