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Inside New York's Longest-Running Climate Tech Incubator
8 Plays1 hour ago
In this episode, Jeanette Williams and Frederic Clerc from the Urban Future Lab discuss their mission to support climate tech startups. They share insights on the challenges faced by these startups, the importance of customer discovery, and the role of incubators in fostering innovation.
The conversation also touches on the significance of equity in climate tech, communication barriers, scalling challenges, and the future of climate innovation, particularly in New York City.
Guests:
Jeannette Williams, Chief Operating Officer
Frederic Clerc, Interim Managing Director
Key Takeaways:
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➜ Urban Future Lab is the longest climate tech incubator in NYC.
➜ They have supported over 170 startups since 2009.
➜ Customer discovery is crucial for startup success.
➜ Successful startups leverage incubators for connections.
➜ Startups must consider environmental impacts of their innovations.
➜ Communication gaps hinder climate tech accessibility.
➜ Adaptation to climate change is an underserved area for innovation.
➜ New York offers a robust market for scaling climate tech.
➜ Equity and inclusion are vital in climate tech initiatives.
➜ The future of climate tech relies on collaboration and innovation.
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This podcast is proudly created by New Perspective Marketing, a dynamic growth marketing agency in Boston, MA, celebrating 20 years in business. We help sustainably focused B2B organizations grow their brands and scale up revenue. If you or your organization is looking to grow, visit https://www.npws.com for more info.
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Host & Co-Producer: Dunja Jovanovic
Executive Producer: Marko Bodiroza
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello friends, you are watching or listening, depending on the platform of your choice, a brand new episode of the Green New Perspective podcast. Hopefully you'll go to place when you want to find out more about innovations happening in climate tech and learn more about marketing strategies aimed at accelerating growth in this space. This episode of this whole podcast is sponsored by New Perspective, a Boston-based marketing agency working with climate tech clients for over 20 years now. So if you want to find out how we help our clients to grow, check out the links in the description of this episode. episode In today's episode, we are talking about a couple of biggest challenges climate tech companies face when they aim to grow.
00:00:40
Speaker
meeting the market demand and finding the funds to do so. My guests today are Frederick Clark and Jeanette Williams from Urban Future Lab. Urban Future Lab is this really cool innovation hub at NYU Tandon. They're offering mentorships and partnerships with climate tech companies all but while tapping into NYU's resources and talent.
00:01:01
Speaker
If you stay tuned to this episode, you're definitely going to learn on what it really takes to build an impactful and resilient climate tech company. So stay tuned and enjoy this conversation.
00:01:22
Speaker
Hello, Jeanette. Hello, Fred, and welcome to our Green New Perspective podcast. Hi, Junya. Thank you for having us. yeah hi danielnya nice to be with you ah For starters, can you tell us a bit more about yourself, your backgrounds, and then a bit about Urban Future Lab's em mission and how it came to be. Jeanette, can you start? Yeah, definitely. So my name is Jeanette Williams. I'm the COO of the Urban Future Lab at and NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
00:01:50
Speaker
um So in this role, I, of course, work with budgets and processes, but also work very closely with Fred and the leadership team to think about our internal and external goals and who we work with in the ecosystem to execute on those goals. So sometimes that output is new strategic initiatives, new business development, new partnerships.
00:02:08
Speaker
So I came to this space back in March 2020 after having worked in educational publishing and then in book publishing and then for the city health department. So a series of left turns to get me to climate. But I think all of that is really valuable because it is a space that sort of needs all perspectives. So, yeah, thank you for having us today to talk a little bit more about our work. Fred, do you have something to add? Can we learn a bit more about you?
00:02:35
Speaker
Yeah, my name is Frederick Claire. I'm the interim managing director for the Urban Future Lab and my attendant. I also run one of our program called the carbon to value initiative, which is one I lead since I joined UFL about four years ago. I have a background in.
00:02:51
Speaker
chemical engineering and management consulting prior to UFL. I was assessing different strategies to use ah waste biomass as a feedstock for fuels, chemicals and materials. So that's kind of my climate tech angle, if you will, prior out to UFL. Can we talk about the Urban Future Lab? So how did it came to be?
00:03:10
Speaker
Yeah, um UFL, we have we are the longest climate incubator in New York City. ah We were formed in 2009 right after the financial crisis as a strategy to revitalize the New York economy. And since then, we have supported about 170 climate startups from Pre-C to Series A. Typically, they join us when there are as small as two co-founders and they leave us when they are as big as 100 employees and and then you have everything in the middle essentially. We are kind of climatic agnostic, ah you know, ah what we offer is a lot about the health entering the New York market so it's obviously often related to the built environment and mobility but more and more in the recent years we have we have diversified into
00:03:58
Speaker
industry decarbonization with hydrogen and carbon tech with ah you know renewable energy with offshore wind so we have a distance we have five programs overall to cover different aspects of climate tech. ah But our you know historical call program is an incubator called a care so we have a space on time broken and you want to add anything.
00:04:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think that definitely covers um some of our history and our origins. And, um you know, since that inception in 2009, with a grant a catalytic grant from and NYC EDC, we expanded to include more accelerator programming that Fred was mentioning. So the Innovate UK Global Incubator Program now in its fifth year, the Carbon to Value Initiative now in its fourth year, and the Offshore Wind Innovation Hub, which Fred also mentioned now in its second year.
00:04:47
Speaker
And through all those programs, including the Acre Incubator, we've supported more than 170 companies who have raised more than $2.5 billion. um And that number doesn't include recent raises like the $200 million from 9DOT or the $69 million from Erico, among others. um And all of these really amazing companies have an 88% survival rate since 2009, which we'd like to think we have um a little something to do with through our support that we provide to the founders.
00:05:16
Speaker
and Jeanette, as far as I know, you are partnered with New York City University, so can you tell me how that partnership works and how did it help companies? So we sit within and NYU Tandon, and within Tandon we specifically sit within the Sustainable Engineering Initiative. So that is the part of Tandon that really focuses on research to um avoid, remediate, mitigate, or adapt to environmental challenges and the climate crisis. So you can see how much of really strong overlap there is between UFL and that Sustainable Engineering Initiative. We are sort of this bridge to that external entrepreneurial world um and connecting that back to the researchers and faculty here at Tandon.
00:05:58
Speaker
So eligible startups have the opportunity to work very closely with the researchers and faculty to advance their innovation and to advance that research um and to also apply jointly for funding. So, for example, one of our companies has jointly raised over six million with our faculty and researchers. And we just want to see 10 times more of that because we think that sort of flywheel and symbiotic relationship between academia and innovation through the entrepreneurial space is so, so critical to moving this work forward.
00:06:27
Speaker
I think you would just add on the NYU sort of advantage is you know access to top talent. Like climate tech is a very, I say, engineering-hungry caterpillar. And you know it's like ah software and hardware and chemical, electrical, me mechanical. And so we have an internship program so that students can start to dip their toes into climate tech companies.
00:06:53
Speaker
And of course, and NYU has more than just the Tendon School. They also have you know a Stern and the Law School and and many other schools that can feed really good talent into climate tech. And we know it's a bottleneck, so we're excited about this this opportunity yeah yeah to feed good talent into startups.
00:07:12
Speaker
Fred, you've mentioned i mean you and Jeanette both mentioned that you helped 100-plus startups to rise just to from from Series A, Series B to we have full developed companies, commercialized companies. so Can you tell me what are some of the biggest challenges that you feel they're facing when they're getting started? Jeanette, you want to start?
00:07:32
Speaker
Yeah, I can definitely start with that. I think you know some of the biggest challenges that these companies face when they're just getting started, it it really begins with customer discovery. They have this idea, this innovation, and usually when they come to us, it's been validated and tested. um But they're looking for that beachhead market. And so really, that customer discovery is super, super key. And I think the challenge for startups is truly active listening. um So not being so wedded to the innovation and the problem that they think they're solving at the detriment of listening to the potential customer and of course the community who may be impacted by their solution as well. So I think that challenge of
00:08:14
Speaker
finding the time to really invest in the customer discovery process and really being able to be flexible enough to receive the inputs that they're getting from the customer discovery process. I think that's ah one of the big challenges we see for these early stage companies.
00:08:29
Speaker
ah Just to clarify, do that because I think we support best companies from pre-seed to Series A. and But you know we obviously, we have alumni, i know and so we understand the struggles also post Series A. One example is a Carbon Free is a company that participated in the CDB cohort, the Carbon to Value cohort.
00:08:50
Speaker
in 2021. Now they are ah raising capital to build a first of a kind demonstration plant that will capture and mineralize CO2 from a steel mill. That's going to be around 50,000 tonnes per year of CO2, over $100 million dollars in capital investment. And so for funding, financing, this kind of scale up, it's very, very ah difficult because you're still not half proven the technology at scale. So you still have technology risk you have execution risk because this is your first project, so making sure you can actually deliver in the time and the and the cost. And then you have, you know, you need to secure your supply chain, your offtake agreement, your supply on the on the power side, your side, your permits. And so it's a very, very tricky part to switch to to kind of transition from like this innovation. I have a pilot
00:09:44
Speaker
I have early customers to like large scale, much bigger volumes and industrial scale facility. Not every climate tech will need to mean we'll need to build you know first of a kind industrial facilities, but there is a lot of sub sectors in climate tech like energy storage, carbon capture, hydrogen, everything that is like hardware and heavily science based innovation, they will need to prove that that stage. and it's ah very, very um long valley of this and very dangerous, I would say, a valley of this that perhaps is not ah talked talked about. I think there is more and more a trend around around talking about this this problem, but we need we need to more solutions and it's it's not it's not easy. I guess maybe it's not the point of the podcast, but it's this is definitely a huge challenge in commercialization for later stage companies. Absolutely. We had some of our clients who worked with us but didn't get to commercialize, which was sad, but yet it's the reality we live in. So yeah, like you said, it's not something that we talk about very often, but we definitely need to. It is a part of this podcast. We want to discuss challenges and be real and open about it because if we don't talk about it, how are people going to overcome them?
00:10:59
Speaker
What are some of the positives thread that you saw while working at startups? What challenges did they overcome? And what were some of the best practices that we can share here? Yeah, we are biased, obviously. But a lot of like so successful startups, they they do join accelerators and incubators because we provide a lot of the connections. And I like to compare you know the infrastructure. like We are the roads between all the stakeholders that need to be connected and aligned to be successful in climatic. You need to have a very good understanding of regulation. You need to have a but very um good understanding of the investment landscape. Like not every investor will be a fit for your company. And so we can help you you know navigate our investor network.
00:11:47
Speaker
Obviously, you need customers and partners to scale, industrial partners. And so that's definitely one thing that nobody we encourage a committed company to consider is like which accelerator program, which incubation program is a good fit for you. Don't do like accelerator tourism because then you kind of spend all your time on these programs.
00:12:08
Speaker
ah but be very strategic, very intentional, join just a few and stick with them and invest in them. And I think that's why we still have Nine Dot. you know Nine Dot is pretty much ready to graduate from us, but they stay with us because they love the community. They love to bring give back to the community. They love to be part of us and just you know be part of the bigger story. That's definitely one thing that ah I think that we see. And I don't know, Jeanette, what would you, which, do you have another one? I mean, we have a lot of them, so I guess yeah like to my explore at the time but we can maybe go through three or four.
00:12:43
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely want a plus one, the joining an incubator accelerator or some other group that can really help you with those connections. Climate Tech, like so many other industries, is really about who you know. And these incubators and accelerators, they have spent the years building those relationships, um becoming trusted partners to VCs, policymakers, utilities, all of those folks that you need in your your corner, basically, to commercialize.
00:13:11
Speaker
um So leveraging that network as much as possible is really, really key. And then once you're in an incubator accelerator, I think the traits that we've seen of founders and startups that make them most successful are really coachability. So the ability to take feedback and to really implement that feedback.
00:13:30
Speaker
um Again, that listening, which sort of goes back to the coachability of listening to the market and being able to pivot where needed. um And then really, it's, you know, it's their bread and butter, but that ingenuity and that grit um to be able to follow up on the opportunities when they come, even if the timing isn't exactly right.
00:13:50
Speaker
um and to really take the opportunities and the connections um for investment, for funding, and all of those really good things that help you clear those values of death. It might sound surprising, but and every once in a while, there are startups that come into incubators and accelerators, and what you put into it is what you get out of it. So I think once you actually get that connection, as much as you can put into, again, leveraging those relationships, better your company will be and the ah more success Can you share a story about certain startup or startups, if you will, that manage to pursue early challenges with your help? um We have a lot of success stories, which is, you know, wonderful for us. um I will share a story from one of our Innovate UK companies in the global incubator program that we run. The company is called Twypes. They were a cohort four company. They've made the first truly
00:14:44
Speaker
flushable and biodegradable wet wipe with an innovation in the binding of the wipe, so no longer plastic based, but a plant based fiber. And they came in to do their customer discovery as all the startups do in that program, they have to complete 50 interviews. So as you can imagine, it's a lot of work, and they find some really great insights.
00:15:05
Speaker
But basically they really came in with this idea that their beachhead market would be moms um and that's what worked for them in the UK and found that actually here in the US it was campers.
00:15:17
Speaker
hikers, fishers, sort of more outdoorsy people. um And so their ability to take that feedback and actually pivot and really change their marketing and change their strategy, that's what led to their success. And through the program, opening up, I believe, three new markets within the US and beginning to sell within the US for the first time ever.
00:15:40
Speaker
So really just an example of how those traits that we see among our startups, they really do yield to success and new customers, um if you're willing to take their feedback and to pivot and be flexible. You know what I'm also interested about? We had a couple of these challenges with our clients as well. How do you help startups to develop in a business sense, but also to to stay green along the way?
00:16:05
Speaker
I mean, yeah, how do you define state green? You know, I think for us, it's, we, we are focused more on decarbonization, but we have to keep in mind that, you know, you don't want to, it's not at the cost of everything else. Like if you need a lot of land and a lot of water and you're going to have a lot of environment, other environmental impact or other actually social impact too, right? Like you get a, We got to think about this. So I think one thing that we try to sort of include in our in our program and curriculum is the idea of like what think ahead of your adverse effects of fun startups. They think about the opportunity and they are excited about the solution and they focus on like the positive. But you you got to think down the road about the impacts and the risks.
00:16:55
Speaker
Because eventually, you know if you're successful, you're going to also need to to raise some debt capital. And and down the road, like the capital journey is all about risk. It's not about opportunity anymore. it's it's The VC world is kind of driven by opportunity. But but ah you know down the road, you've got to think about more about a risk. And so helping the company, thinking about adverse impact of their innovation, what is like What could go wrong ah from a social social economic, from an environmental impact perspective? On the CTV program, for example, we a lot of companies claim that they are carbon negative, but because they take CO2 out of something,
00:17:37
Speaker
and they make something else with it and they're like hey we're carbon negative but in fact it's we you know we turn a lot of time to redefine the concept and really explain that for example carbon negative it's only if you should take co2 from the atmosphere and you are able to make a product that is very long lasting that sequester the co2 for you know Over a hundred years, ideally thousands of years. And again, that's why carbon free is a good innovation is because mineralization you bind CO2 to a mineral. And once that has happened, it's very hard to reverse. And so you have a product in this case, it's like,
00:18:15
Speaker
Custom carbonate can be used in household as an ingredient you know to decarbonize scope 3 supply chains of big CPG brands, but it doesn't re-emit CO2 even after use, unless you really have to you know heat it up at a very high temperature. You really have to probably really hard to re-release the CO2.
00:18:36
Speaker
And so we have a lot of companies that actually changed you know changed the language a little bit. It doesn't change necessarily value prop, but know I think carbon accounting can be very confusing. And so that's a lot of but of our focus on ah on the on like trying to explain the basic concept around carbon accounting, LCA, and this kind of thing.
00:18:55
Speaker
Yeah, I have to say, um we see like this type, it's not greenwashing, but it's not like the like um taking a look at an and entire picture. We see that a lot with companies that are using AI to better the climate or working with climate tech companies with AI softwares. These softwares are definitely helping the companies, but then we're not talking about their own emissions and water usage and things like that. So We need to optimize everything, I guess. yeah at least Look at the whole picture, like you were saying, and and think about the circularity of things also, because you can we can decarbonize the economy, but keep it linear, right extracting
00:19:38
Speaker
especially, you know, in the EV space, for instance, extract lithium and all the minerals, make the batteries. Yes, you have decarbonized for, to some extent, the mobility, but you're still extracting resources. You're still generating a lot of waste. What do you do with the waste? We haven't, that's to me a huge challenge that I think about a lot. It's like intersection of circularity and decarbonization. And then keep that in mind. I thought, yeah.
00:20:07
Speaker
Yeah, not to stay in this carbon tunnel vision space, right? Yeah. and When we talk about startups and how they scale, what you've seen that really helped them and are there any strategies that you used for that to help them scale?
00:20:23
Speaker
Well, I think there is one story in our portfolio that was very smartly done. It's a company that makes alcohol and fuels from CO2 and hydrogen. They are called Air Company. And really, one thing that they that they did really well in the early stages is to try to monetize their R and&D production. So they had a small lab, pilot, plant.
00:20:48
Speaker
And they were making product out of it. And one of the co-founder is actually from like the CPG world from like a big brand background. So he had a marketing sort of angle to the problem and he they started to just directly sell, sell the ethanol as vodka. It's called um air vodka. It's sold out, you cannot find it. And it's very pure. It's you know, it has certain traits compared to traditional vodka. And they could sell like basically ethanol, which you know, most people think about ethanol as a fuel. um They could sell it with like a 10x 20x price premium. So they could generate revenue. And that really is very, very appetizing for like the ah investors, because for like,
00:21:33
Speaker
hardware technologies it's very hard to have revenue early on so trying to monetize the early products rnd sell pilots ah so very often we see companies you know that just try to do a pilot for free because they are hungry to just take put the technology in the field.
00:21:51
Speaker
But out in our experience, you're only going to get really good results also if you have if the customer has skin in the game. And if you're really solving a problem, they they should be able to pay for it. And so even if it it doesn't have to be like the price that you will charge at the commercial scale, but really make sure that the pilots that you generate, that that you run are paid and so that you you get a little bit of runway, right? It's it's not insignificant. It's some non-directive dollar.
00:22:18
Speaker
and and and then we help them to think about scale beyond the beach head so in case of air company i think you know we were excited when we welcome them into the cdv cohorts not because of the vodka play because we're like you're not gonna you're not gonna solve climate change you know selling decarbonized vodka or or kind of a new vodka but because you can make fuels at scale they have a process that can scale really well It's called thermochemical, so it's basically got big reactors and we know how to scale the big chemical reactors. We have 150 years of experience of scaling chemical reactors, so they can go very big um if they are successful and then they can get economies of scale and the cost.
00:22:59
Speaker
cost can go down and as they scale up. And so we this is one of the reasons why we selected them to be part of C2V. And then we tried to to to see you know in on the roadmap, when are you going to go towards larger scale market like sustainable efficient fuel? And since then, they have signed a 1 billion gallon of take agreement with airlines like JetBlue to make sustainable efficient fuel. so um a story from the lab, vodka, to like, now they are built, they have plans to build a large demonstration plant in upstate New York, too. It's not done for them. They still have a lot of ah way to go. But the this is an example of like, scale up, you know, and they've just raised a series B $69 million. dollars Jeanette, we just, we mentioned just a little bit about social impact of climate tech.
00:23:55
Speaker
So I would like you to tell me how does the idea of equity shapes the way you work with startups. I think when we had our our intro conversation, you said that that's really important to you. So I wanted you know us to spend some time talking about about this issue, about this topic.
00:24:12
Speaker
Definitely. um So back in 2020, the Urban Future Lab, like many other organizations, kind of took a hard look about what we were doing to support equity in our work, um the unique role that incubators and accelerators can play in um advancing equity, and then also some of the ways that we were unconsciously or inadvertently complicit in maintaining inequitable processes or systems or things like that.
00:24:39
Speaker
So out of that work and out of a listening tour that we went on with several climate justice experts and environmental justice experts, we launched our first Future Impact Prize track, which was awarded to a community-based organization working on a climate justice.
00:24:55
Speaker
And so that was one way that we realized that our role was really to be a connector, a convener, a supporter, rather than reinventing the wheel of any work that had been done to advance the equity in the climate tech space.
00:25:10
Speaker
So after that, we continued that work through this event series called Climate is the New Economy and bridging and bringing together innovators, policymakers, funders, and CBOs in the same space to have these conversations, recognizing that like any stakeholder that we're introducing startups to, to help on their commercialization journey, CBOs and communities and workforce development groups should also be in that stakeholder category. This transition to clean energy is really powered by people. And if you don't have the support and the buy-in of people, it unfortunately doesn't go very far. Through Climate is a New Economy, we hosted several event series that we, or events, where we brought together all of these different stakeholders and also hosted this Urban Future Forum in June of 2024 that did that across a full day focusing on equity in deployment. So some of the ways that we really try to
00:26:08
Speaker
weave equity into our work and to provide insight into equity for our startups are through these events where it's really key for them to meet these key so these stakeholders who are so pivotal in their commercialization journey and then also through the education that we provide in our programming.
00:26:28
Speaker
So teaching them and sharing more about what does Jedi or justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion look like in the climate tech space, especially for some of our UK companies, how that might be different than what is sort of diversity or equity or inclusion in the UK and how that history is different here. And then how that might relate to funding opportunities, like federal funding opportunities, where you now have to include community benefits plans and to work within these Justice 40 principles. And what would you say, what are some of the biggest barriers you've seen to making climate tech more accessible? I mean, communication is really the biggest barrier to making climate tech more accessible. it's Everyone is starting at very different points in terms of knowledge of the problem, knowledge of the solutions, knowledge of the impact.
00:27:20
Speaker
and I think communication is one of those things where if you can find a way to meet people where they are in their understanding or lack of understanding or sort of the gap, you can get people to actually take action. So it's going to be very hard for, say, and an innovator to talk to a community who doesn't quite know anyone who is using like a heat pump, for example, in their home.
00:27:48
Speaker
going to be hard for them to explain why this is really advantageous to them, especially because heat pumps that, you know, runs on electricity, they're maybe getting free steam heat here in New York City from their landlord, and then the heat pump, they actually have to pay for themselves.
00:28:02
Speaker
um and the electric bill, they have to pay for themselves as well. So that communication gap, it's knowledge on both sides of the experience being lived by the community and then some of the knowledge of the innovation or the solution and the pros and cons, because innovations do have cons, they're not always totally net positive. It's knowledge gap that has to be to be bridged.
00:28:23
Speaker
Do you have any ideas how to overcome that challenge? It's not a small challenge. It's not a small challenge and I often think about my public health work because I worked in the communications department and that was our challenge of educating people on different health issues and trying to get them to change their behavior to take action to improve their lives.
00:28:43
Speaker
That is not easy. Even if you think it is a positive thing for people, it's convincing them that it's positive for themselves is quite challenging. And I think as many opportunities and as many plays that we can get from different industries that have tried to do this, including the health industry, I think could really be helpful for the climate tech industry. We don't have to reinvent the wheel here. We have gotten people to take really amazing measures for themselves. Think about anti-tobacco campaigns and how that has really changed things.
00:29:13
Speaker
I think about the campaign to reduce the ozone, the hole in the ozone layer, um and how that really moved people. There have been success stories in communication, and as much as we can replicate those, I think the better it will be. Since we are approaching the end of this conversation, I have to ask you, looking ahead, what excites you the most about the the future of climate tech and the role of urban future lab in it?
00:29:40
Speaker
Every year, we run a competition. or We award 250k checks to very early stage companies. And we use that competition as a funnel to our incubator. So we work with the best, most promising companies. So we focus our effort on what we think is worth our time. um And every year, we think about what are the new problems in climate that I want to solve. And I think one very underserved space right now for innovation is adaptation, climate adaptation. you know We think about climate adaptation, basically like sea walls and emergency communication. and And I think there is a lot of innovation. Yesterday, we had five companies pitching from like water scare city to flood resiliency to insurance to energy storage ah for for outage. A lot of solutions that are
00:30:36
Speaker
Sometimes intersection of mitigation and adaptation, sometimes only adaptation that are really important. And we are seeing climate impacts on the day-to-day basis is tomorrow. is for ah it We are going to get up impacted. our Our grandchildren are going to be impacted by us not mitigating, but we are going to see the impacts of climate change tomorrow. So I think adaptation, innovation for adaptation is really a space that we are investing and looking at a lot in in our day to day. And this maybe the second thing that always gets me excited, you know, it's just New York, New York State as a market is an incredible market to scale c climate tech. It has a lot of capital, obviously. It has a lot of talent and it has a big market. If you look
00:31:21
Speaker
ah The New York state, ah if it was a nation, it would be the 10th largest economy in the world. So really you have a lot of space to scale and a lot of consumer. You have about 20 million consumers just around New York that are ready to use your products. There is a port, there is manufacturing base, base.
00:31:43
Speaker
There is very aggressive regulation. We are 100% net zero electricity by 2040 and local low 97 for the built environment. So just New York is a great place to scale climate tech. And so, you know, you should definitely come and work with us to scale your your innovation in in New York. Absolutely. I just have to give a comment on your, we're going to, you know,
00:32:09
Speaker
feel the impact of climate change tomorrow. I think we're feeling the impacts today already. you know I definitely feel like we need more people in the climate space and climate tech. And and Jeanette, you have well we'll talk about this, apart about you know the future of climate. Are there any future partnerships that are exciting? Are they going to happen within the Urban Future Lab?
00:32:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think you know you said it's we definitely need all the people that we can get in the climate tech space. And for the Urban Future Lab, future partnerships are always sort of looking outside of our usual suspects of people that we work with. But how does connection for the Urban Future Lab to events like the Climate Film Festival help advance the work that our startups are doing, help advance the work that our faculty and researchers are doing?
00:32:57
Speaker
um So they had a section all about science and solutions for the climate challenge. And so how does our interaction with communicators, with folks in the business school at Stern, um with folks at Tisch and things like that, how does that help advance the work that our startups are doing and help to really move the needle on climate innovation? Please do send us an invite.
00:33:24
Speaker
Thank you both for being my guest here. For the end, can you tell our audience where they can find more info on Urban Future Lab, where they can get informed? Sign up for some of your programs if they want to.
00:33:39
Speaker
Yeah, we have a website, very easy, ufl.nyc. And you can subscribe to our newsletter. This is our main channel. We also have social media, LinkedIn, Instagram. um And so you can follow us on on both and hear about all the news, all our companies, hiring, fundraising, and all our programs if you're a startup to to join some of our programs. Thank you again. Thank you. It was great to chat with you.
00:34:14
Speaker
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00:34:34
Speaker
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00:35:00
Speaker
you could help us to grow to get even more people from the climate tech space and create additional content so please consider doing that thank you in advance and of course thank you for tuning in to this episode and hopefully i'll see you in the next one bye