Scaling F.O.A.K. Pathways: Catalytic Capital is the Gear Needed to Unlock Clean Energy Innovation

Kelly Adams ice climbing in the Canadian Rockies

By Kelly Adams -

As an ice climber, I’ve learned that success isn’t just about physical endurance or mental focus—it’s about having the right gear and pathfinding with precision. Scaling vertical sheets of ice requires trust in your tools and the knowledge that every step, however small, is critical. This same principle applies to scaling climate solutions. Game-changing innovations—like those recognized by The Earthshot Prize—require more than vision and hard work. They need catalytic capital: the financial tools and support that help turn needed, viable clean energy innovation into world-changing solutions.

Today, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Our power grids are being pushed to their limits, struggling to keep up with surging demand from a data-driven, AI-powered economy. Brownouts and energy shortages are becoming the new normal. At the same time, further straining resilience, around the world, people are grappling with the impacts of climate change. Electricity is critical to quality of life and we have to do everything we can to optimize its use. It’s no longer a question of if we need to act—it’s how quickly we can scale solutions that protect both people and the planet while strengthening our energy infrastructure for a resilient and sustainable future.

Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems (ATS), the company I’ve led for the last five years has developed a technology that transforms industrial waste heat into clean electricity. This clean energy innovation has the potential to reduce millions of tonnes of CO₂ annually while providing businesses with a revenue-positive solution to electricity. 

Often first-of-a-kind (FOAK) solutions like ATS are considered a risk because there is no comparable in the marketplace. We have been working to break down these barriers by using the momentum of being a winner of The Earthshot Prize, demonstrating our technology’s viability with the U.S. Department of Energy, and securing a purchase order from the world’s largest cement manufacturer. Leading with cement, we are also developing use cases with AI data centers and other industrial sectors such as steel. Now, we are looking for the right financial partners to commercially scale ATS and unlock its impact potential.

Catalytic capital bridges the gap for solutions that are novel and hold high potential, but which have not yet been deployed at full commercial scale. It provides funding where traditional investors fear to tread, enabling companies to overcome early hurdles and build the momentum needed to attract growth capital. Just like a climber needs ropes, ice axes, and crampons to ascend safely, clean tech innovators need  impact investors and other partners in the financial world such as governments and philanthropic organizations to provide the financial tools that allow them to scale.

At The Earthshot Prize Awards, Prince William emphasized the need to "scale up" the ingenious solutions created by this year’s finalists, urging all of us to support the visionaries driving climate innovation.

Clean tech solutions like ours at ATS are not just concepts—they're real, proven, and capable of transforming industries and reducing emissions at scale. However, without catalytic capital, their potential remains locked away. At the scale of our species, we cannot continue to be this energy inefficient to maintain our way of life. We have to learn to do more with less. Energy will constrain the quality of life if we don’t radically shift our thinking of what’s possible and our ability to finance it. 

Investors, governments, and philanthropic leaders must embrace this challenge with us to ensure that the clean energy solutions we need now and in the future exist. The path ahead of us is challenging, but by working together, and developing our tool sets, we can redefine what’s possible.

The time to act is now.