Diverse teams are a powerful force in deeptech

Charlotte Connell

Dec 6, 2021

3

min read

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CSIRO Innovation fund, Main Sequence has stepped up to sponsor the inaugural Woman in Climate Tech Award, we caught up with Partner, Phil Morle on why diversity is important and what excites him about Climate Tech.

Why is supporting the Climate Tech community important to you as a business? ‍

Climate change is producing the most critical collection of problems to solve for the next phase of humanity and the combination of science and entrepreneurship can deliver solutions. At Main Sequence we are committed to finding these solutions and the people that are behind them, and supporting an accelerated pathway to impact.
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Why is it important for Main Sequence to support and recognise the inaugural Woman in Climate Tech Award 2021? ‍

Diverse teams are a powerful force in deeptech venture building but we are still seeing more men than women in our work. The work to attract more women in our portfolio is very important to us.
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What do you look for when investing in a Climate Tech company?

‍Currently we are looking for solutions in energy transition, climate modelling and prediction + food and materials production that we believe can have a massive impact on climate change. As well as carbon neutral forms of production, we are interested in technologies which can rewind climate change to get the carbon out of the atmosphere and back into the earth or the ocean. We are very comfortable to invest early.
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What are some of the opportunities you see coming out of Climate Tech? ‍

We are seeing the early stages of entirely sustainable models of production. Energy production is well underway and we are particularly interested in solutions that bring hydrogen-based energy systems to life. We are looking at a lot of tech that is completely re-inventing food in a way that will transform agriculture into a carbon sink rather than an emitter. Fossil fuels have more uses than energy production and fuel in general. We are seeing technologies appear that will remove the need for fossil fuels there as well - plastics production for example.
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What excites you most about Climate Tech in Australia and New Zealand? ‍

Once we start looking for large-scale activity that's bad for the planet, we see it all around us. But we also find solutions, available today to address it.