Embedding inclusion in climate entrepreneurship

Early signals of system shift in ClimaTech Connect 2025

Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, with climate risks shaping daily life and affecting food and energy security, public health, infrastructure and ecosystems. Yet even as climate pressures intensify, and women are disproportionately affected, they remain excluded from many of the spaces where solutions are pitched, financed and further developed, spaces where their knowledge, understanding and ideas could make a meaningful contribution. 

But how can we make this change when the disparity is already so stark? Across the climate innovation landscape, climate-tech founders remain disproportionately men, and women-led teams often advance less easily across funding gates. Entrepreneurship Support Organisations (ESOs) face similar barriers, with limited tools and confidence to integrate inclusion in a systematic way. As a result, high-value opportunities in climate innovation, such as grants, investors, and networks tend to flow toward already-advantaged founders.  

Climate KIC created the Gender & Inclusivity Portfolio Coordination Task to help address these structural imbalances.  By focusing on systemic, upstream change rather than isolated fixes, we are aiming to embed inclusive practices into project design, governance, marketing and outreach, selection and programme capacity building across the project portfolios.  

One of Climate KIC’s inclusive innovation leads, Wallis and Aimee, first initiatives was supporting ClimaTech Connect 2025, a joint training and mentoring programme designed to accelerate early-stage start-ups from Europe and third countries associated with Horizon Europe offering digital solutions for climate impact. Co-delivered with EIT Digital, the programme brings together technical expertise, community reach and high-quality accelerator management.

ClimaTech Connect operates a three-gate system: an Open Call, followed by Training and Mentorship, and concluding with a Demo Day, after which the four best teams are awarded grants. Catching the project cycle at its very beginning and following it through to completion meant the Gender & Inclusivity Portfolio Coordination Task could work closely with the delivery team, helping to set gender and inclusion Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track representation, participation and inclusive impact across the programme. This end-to-end involvement also provided a real-time opportunity to observe how early, coordinated integration of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) can reshape who applies, who progresses, who ultimately benefits, and how founders themselves define and understand “inclusivity” “strong teams” and “climate impact.” 

 

“Climate transformation through digital technologies, no matter how sophisticated or innovative, cannot be considered truly real or sustainable unless it is grounded in a deliberate gender and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) lens. Without equity at the centre, even the most advanced solutions risk reinforcing the very inequalities that hinder resilient climate futures.”

Sebastian Bustamante, ClimaTech Connect Project Lead at Climate KIC

Inclusive design matters: Setting the foundations from the open call 

During the Open Call phase, we reviewed call documents and outreach materials to ensure that the language, tone and framing reflected Climate KIC’s commitment to DEI, ensuring that diverse teams were welcomed, valued and encouraged to apply. The application form included a dedicated DEI section to surface teams’ values and their commitment to inclusive innovation. Alongside this, the team provided guidance on inclusive communications and introduced a Gender & Inclusivity Code of Conduct for the ClimaTech Connect programme delivery team. These are core tools or guiding documents to shape inclusive design and delivery of our support. 

The success of this early design work was tangible. One hundred and sixteen teams applied, and a striking 68 percent had at least one woman in a leadership role. More than a third reported gender-balanced teams, and two-thirds came from EIT Regional Innovation Scheme (RIS) regions. When the Stage 1 cohort was selected to go through the gate for the training and mentoring, diverse representation remained strong: three-quarters of the accepted teams included women in leadership, and over half were both RIS-based and women-led. It was heartening to hear and understand the range and depth of their engagement. For example, ClimAris highlighted how the authentic lived experience within its women-led, multidisciplinary team fuelled its commitment to developing accessible and culturally informed technologies, whilst Vegg Foods, emphasised creating growth opportunities for underrepresented groups, particularly women in STEM and young professionals. 

Inclusive design at the earliest stage helped set expectations and broaden the applicant pool, whilst practical tools, from DEI checklists to conduct guidance, made it easier for delivery teams and evaluators to apply inclusion consistently and confidently. 

Building capacity through training and mentorship 

With the start of the Training and Mentorship phase, the teams began an online training that combined entrepreneurial and climate-specific skills. Internally, Climate KIC’s inclusive innovation experts provided DEI checklists for programme and event design, ensuring that workshops, mentoring sessions and peer-learning opportunities were accessible and equitable. 

Founders also participated in an interactive DEI workshop that offered concrete tools and exercises on building diverse teams, strengthening inclusive products and services, and communicating more inclusively with customers and investors. They left the session with the foundations of DEI action plans to apply in their start-ups, positioning inclusion as a core part of their business strategy in climate innovation.

Ten teams were selected at the end of this part of the programme to progress to the Demo Day,  with seven of them women-led, and nine out of ten from EIT RIS regions. The support provided through the DEI mainstreaming sessions helped teams see inclusion not as an add-on, but as something intertwined with product–market fit, user needs and organisational health. 

Embedding inclusivity into the Demo Day 

On 8 October in Valencia, the chosen teams stepped onto the Demo Day stage of ClimaTech Connect 2025 in front of investors, jury members and programme partners. Pitch after pitch was delivered, and founders spoke not only about emissions reductions, AI models and compliance pathways, but also about gender balance, equity commitments and plans to build diverse leadership teams as part of their core business strategy. 
 
From GreenPow outlining its target of reaching 50 percent women hires by 2026, to Zasad Zivo presenting a DEI policy already integrated across its operations, inclusion had become part of the business narrative. DEI Action Plans appeared alongside team photos and CVs. Hiring targets were presented as business enablers. Founders described team composition not as a moral obligation but as central to resilience, credibility and user understanding. Inclusion was no longer an eligibility box; it had become a recognised source of competitive advantage.  

 

“Observing the cohort pitching at the demo day was inspiring, as it became evident that gender and inclusion interventions aren’t add-ons— they’re drivers of creativity and holistic innovation, influencing how climate entrepreneurs define success and also create societal impact.”

Emily Amann, Circular Economy Entrepreneurship Lead at Climate KIC 

 

Advisory throughout the programme had helped founders speak confidently about these elements, and seeing their peers do the same created powerful signals across the room. 

 

“The DEI training within ClimateTech Connect encouraged me to re-evaluate our internal decision-making processes and intentionally place a more inclusive approach at the core of our strategy. I gained a clearer understanding that diversity in hiring and leadership roles is essential for truly sustainable innovation. For this reason, I am integrating inclusive growth objectives into our business model, focusing on building a more equitable structure both within our team and across stakeholder relationships.”

Canan Tiryaki, Vegg Foods 

 

It was also clear that the Jury witnessed how inclusion had become a consistent part of values and strategic innovation throughout the programme. 

 

“As a jury member, one of the most striking shifts was seeing founders treat inclusion as a strategic asset rather than a peripheral requirement. What stood out to me was how naturally DEI was woven into their narratives—shaping hiring plans, customer insights, and even product roadmaps. This made it clear which teams had truly internalised inclusion as part of their competitive advantage, and it allowed us to evaluate DEI not as a separate box, but as a signal of stronger, more resilient business models.”

Israel Griol Barres, Universitat Politècnica de València; member of Demo Day selection jury

 

And yet, it was also at this final gate that, despite the strides, the fragility of the progress was revealed. Only one of the four grant-winning teams included a woman in leadership.  

Despite a programme cycle that consistently elevated diverse teams, elements of the scoring still rewarded conventional profiles. The mismatch served as a reminder: even when inclusion shows up everywhere else, it must also show up in how quality is measured. But Demo Day also exposed what happens when criteria and scoring do not evolve at the same pace as programme ambition. Just as there is a lack of diversity in funded climate-tech solutions and within ESOs, so a lack of diversity in panels and jury rooms makes it harder for inclusion-centric strengths to be recognised. The late-stage drop-off underscored the need for bias-awareness training for selection committees and decision makers. 

Carrying the learning forward 

The main insight from this strem of work is that inclusion must be built in from the beginning, made visible throughout delivery, and embedded in the metrics that determine who advances. In the case of future cycles of ClimaTech Connect, incorporating weighted DEI scoring, prioritising broad and diverse representation on our evaluator and jury panels, strengthening founder accountability around team development, and follow up after the programme to track leadership and hiring changes over time are actions that will deepen the inclusivity integration and strengthen the programme overall.

At portfolio level, the Gender & Inclusivity Coordination Task will transform these learnings into guidance for other Climate KIC entrepreneurship programmes, refining tools, expanding training modules, and strengthening monitoring systems so that inclusive practice becomes a standard rather than a pilot.

ClimaTech Connect 2025 shows that when inclusion is deliberately integrated into design, delivery, and decision-making, it can reshape who participates in climate innovation- and who benefits from it. The shifts may still be early, but they signal a system beginning to change. 

 

“Inclusivity is not a side project to the climate transition. It IS the transition – the process of designing a future that works for everyone, not just a few. The ClimaTech Connect programme reflects this notion, and while there is still work to be done to strengthen the initative in the future, there are many learnings and practices we can take into other programming at Climate KIC as we strive to make inclusive climate innovation our default.”

Aimee Apel, Social Impact Lead at Climate KIC