Christina Pearson and Alicia McKnight Discuss the Surge in Climatetech Deals

“There’s been a lot of excitement in the last three years or so around technology, innovation and the energy transition. The term climatetech has come about, and there is both public and private interest in it,” said Pearson.

While solar and wind are now established forms of energy used across the U.S., newer technologies including battery storage, electric vehicles, carbon capture, hydrogen, nuclear fusion and biofuels have spurred climatetech innovation.

“Things like the winter storm in Texas and the challenges with wildfires highlight the need for innovation,” said McKnight. “When you have intermittent resources, that only generate power when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, what do you do for other times when you need to have the lights on? Tech has an interesting role to play to better monitor energy usage and the distribution of generation.”

An example of how big energy companies are eager to get involved in the climatetech space is longtime Pillsbury client Chevron.  Chevron Technology Ventures LLC launched two Future Energy Funds, one in 2018 and the second in 2021.  In parallel, Chevron New Energies, a low-carbon fuels business unit of Chevron USA Inc., was also launched in 2021. Over this period, Pearson and McKnight’s team has advised Chevron on numerous investments, including in biofuel, geothermal, carbon capture and hydrogen tech companies over the last 18 months alone.

“We realized we had this incredible opportunity and overlap of practices that we could apply for many different clients across the firm,” McKnight said. “We also have regulatory, international trade, IP, nuclear, environmental and other practices that serve as a brain trust of all the different pieces we have to pull together to do these deals. That highlights the breadth and variety of practices that are really necessary to support this initiative.”

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