Peter Griffin: Cleantech startups that can grow quickly might save us from climate hell
Peter Griffin: "NZ has deep technical talent, world‑class science and a reputation for making things work in tough conditions... but right now cleantech founders are being asked to deliver world‑class climate impact on a shoestring." Photo / Getty Images
For more than a decade, our climate strategy has relied heavily on trees. Plant enough of them, the logic goes, and the pines will quietly mop up the exhaust from our utes, factories and cows.
It’s a mindset I’m reminded of every time I encounter a logging truck lumbering over the Remutaka Hill on its way to CentrePort in Wellington, or when I see piles of forestry slash clogging rivers and beaches following the latest flood.
Our tree sink is our get‑out‑of‑jail‑free card when it comes to cutting carbon. But there are far better options for a low-emissions future. The New Zealand Cleantech Report 2026, produced by an industry expert group and sponsored by the MacDiarmid Institute, suggests just nine New Zealand startups, if they scale globally, could, by 2030, avoid as much climate pollution as our entire forestry sector currently soaks up. That’s about 19.2 million metric tonnes of CO₂e (carbon dioxide equivalent) a year by 2030.
The claim deserves all the scrutiny in the world. The modelling is optimistic, and the sample size is small. But the underlying message is the one we keep ducking: our biggest climate lever isn’t more trees, it’s technology that stops emissions at source. While we’ve blanketed our hill country in a pine monoculture, the sectors that really matter for long‑term decarbonisation – process heat, industrial chemistry, waste, the guts of our electricity system – are still burning, reacting and leaking away.
Most of these cleantech startups, which span everything from industrial heat, concrete, and ammonia production, to hazardous waste, transport and grid efficiency, will not become climate unicorns. Some will fail outright. That’s fine. In fact, it’s necessary. When you’re aiming for step‑change solutions, you place many small bets knowing a few will deliver major impact.
But right now, our cleantech founders are being asked to deliver world‑class climate impact on a shoestring. The report shows companies repeatedly falling well short of the capital targets they set, deferring rounds, trimming head count, and stretching every dollar while their foreign competitors surf bigger waves of climate finance.
The Trump administration’s “drill, baby drill” mantra has had a chilling effect on cleantech funding. The situation in the Strait of Hormuz is a stark reminder that we need an energy plan B.
New Zealand loves to talk about being a “test bed” for green innovation. In practice, we’re asking these companies to be frugal heroes while we park money in safe assets and dream of trees.
We need to flip that. We should treat cleantech as critical infrastructure, not a high-risk niche. That means dedicated, patient capital for technologies that decarbonise process heat (eg, steam, hot water or hot gases), heavy industry, waste and electricity, the hard stuff, with government co‑investment framed as risk‑sharing, not handouts.
We didn’t build our ultrafast fibre network by waiting for venture capitalists to take all the risk. Climate tech deserves the same seriousness. We should stop pretending that forestry credits are equivalent to avoided emissions. They’re not. Planting trees is good – we need more native forests for biodiversity, erosion control and long‑term carbon sinks. But they should be the buffer, not the backbone, of our climate strategy.