Welcome,
I’m excited to introduce you to Evergreen Climate Innovations, formerly Clean Energy Trust!
While our mission remains focused on supporting entrepreneurs and startups bringing impactful climate technologies to market, we’ve evolved over time and want our name to reflect that evolution. Along with our new name, our rebrand includes a new website and overview video to better highlight our environmental, economic, and social impact.
Clean Energy Trust was founded in 2010 when much of our work was focused on clean energy: wind, solar, biofuels, and batteries. Those sectors are still critical but today we are also working with innovations beyond electrons and fuels. We’re seeing advancements in technologies for recycling and reuse, sustainable agriculture, water conservation, and advanced materials, among others. Climate innovations now touch every industry and sector of the economy. We want our name to reflect our role in this transition.
Our new name also speaks to how we invest directly in early-stage climate technology startups through our evergreen, revolving 501vc® Investment Fund. This structure allows us to reinvest our investment proceeds, putting philanthropic contributions to work again and again. Evergreen Climate Innovations prominently positions our unique investment approach, our focus on climate solutions, and innovation as the North Star for everything we do.
Along with our new name, we decided it was time to evolve our look as well. Our new brand and website focus on inclusivity – to attract the most innovative climate technology startups and innovation supporters.
Our work and the climate technologies we support are complex, so our brand shouldn’t be. We took a minimal approach to focus on our mission. We prioritized sustainable web design principles to optimize for energy efficiency – minimizing load times and reducing our website’s environmental impact. We selected each word and image carefully. In fact, each image used on the website comes directly from our portfolio of innovative climate technologies. We encourage you to explore them all.
We also leveraged the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 to ensure the web content made available on our site is accessible and user-friendly for everyone. We want everyone to be able to discover and explore startup opportunities and the climate tech startups that are providing solutions for the climate emergency. These key design decisions help us to reduce barriers while honoring our past and laying the groundwork for our future.
Emerging from our first decade stronger and more determined than ever, we are proud of our impact. We know our model works and we can’t wait to work with you to realize our vision for the future. With this new name, we can continue to successfully grow and flourish as a nonprofit organization advancing and expanding the Greater Midwest region’s climate innovation ecosystem.
We thank you for your support,
Erik Birkerts
Chief Executive Officer
Evergreen Climate Innovations (formerly Clean Energy Trust)
