Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe

David Hunt 0:32
Hello, I’m David Hunt, CEO and founder of Hyperion executive search and your host for the leading clean tech podcast. The days are getting shorter and colder for us in Europe at least so no better time to hunker down enjoy another episode of the leading konzepte podcast. On this episode, we’re going to look at VC funding and policymaking particularly in the EU and also how that compares to things in the US. Before we kick off, our quick heads up, I’ll be speaking at the solar and storage live event at the NDC in Birmingham on the 24th of November. This is one of the bigger and better UK clean tech events running from the 23rd to the 25th of November. I’m looking forward to of course to getting face to face with clients and contacts again, it was great to be out in Berlin at eco summit. This is one of the great UK shows and it’s good again to get away from zoom presentations and get some some proper interaction. If you are in Europe, certainly if you’re in the UK I’d recommend attending details to register will be on the episode page and clearly hope to see some of you there. But on to business. My guest today is jaws Besley now, jaws leads clean tech for Europe and initiative supported by breakthrough energy and 12 eu clean tech VCs, aiming to help the EU lead the race to net zero by building bridges between the clean tech industry and policy leaders. Josie is also a director of clean tech group the global advisory authority on clean technology innovation in his decade at the company jaws has advised on the world’s leading clean tech investors and corporates helping them assess new innovations deploy capital and all those good things. After starting his career in San Francisco and London. He moved back to France to focus on the European clients and strategy. Hope you enjoyed the episode. Hello, and welcome to the leading Kinzer podcast. Jules, it’s great to have you with us. Great to be with you, David. So so much the dig into Ash is ever the case. The Clean Tech for Europe quarterly review for q3 has just been published. Literally I saw this morning with a great headline that there was a I guess 1.4 billion euro invested on top of what was a fabulous q2 with 5.4 billion invested. So whilst there’s a bit of a summer law, which is often the case we can talk about, it’s fantastic news yet again. There are some key findings I’m keen to share and discuss with with you. But obviously it’s customary just to get a little bit of a brief snapshot of you in your background on how you came to the leading clean tech for Europe. So can you just share a little bit of your journey to where we are right now.

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 3:08
Of course happy to and thanks again for having me great to be with this with this community. So for those of you who don’t know me, I’m just listening. I’m a director at clean tech group, the group for about 10 years. For those of you who don’t know us, we’re the the global authority on sustainable innovation. We provide research consulting events, to really accelerate the growth of clean tech ecosystems worldwide. And this new clean tech for Europe initiative is one that we have launched in partnership with Bill Gates founded breakthrough energy. And with the support of at the moment, 11 soon to be 15 you cleantech venture capitalists. And really the aim of this initiative is to help the EU be the absolute leader in the race to net zero, right, we see that there’s traditionally been a bit of a gap between the clean tech community of investors of innovators, like like yourself listening, and the policymakers, especially in Brussels, and we believe that if we just filled this gap, then you will be able to be the kind of cleantech leader of, of tomorrow. So that’s, that’s what the day is all about.

David Hunt 4:21
Yeah, some great partners have had the joy of working with breakthrough energy in the us with some of the portfolio companies and again, I know many of the VCs involved in Europe. So some super committed people who really know and understand the sector. But that’s an interesting thing, isn’t it? And that’s that gap between the policy support and to be fair, the policy I think, understanding in government, government level compared to what we all know because we work this stuff day in and day out. So we dig a bit more into into the policy side but just let’s start with the Q few q three review Jaws, what were some of the highlights or what were the some of the learnings from from the course. have just gone?

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 5:01
Sure. Well, I mean, you know won’t be a big surprise to this community that 2021 has been an extraordinary year for cleantech innovate for clean tech investment. And, you know, so what we’re trying to do with these quarterly briefings is just to give the broader community of cleantech and policymakers a sense of what’s going on in the world, right. And so obviously, we’re tracking venture capital investments. But we’re also tracking what’s happening in the in the policy world as, as usual, we’re trying to build that bridge. So I think on the clean tech side of things, VR now, we are not counted 8.5 billion euros invested in classic venture capital in the EU, over the past three quarters, right. And that’s already nearly double what was invested in the total of, of 2020. So we’re obviously on a very, very fast acceleration curve here. And venture capital is increasing super fast. Now, q3 was relatively slower than q2, that’s not a typical in the EU, we typically close less deals during the summer, in q2 was one of the biggest quarter we ever recorded with more than 5 billion euros invested. But I think the this quarter shows that almost it’s almost a typical quarter for the EU. And but we see a lot of promising technologies getting financed, we see actually a record in Series B deals, but still a very disappointing quarter for growth equity, really underlining that our main problem in the EU is all about the scale of the investment side. And just just on the policy side, the quick update for this quarter is there’s a huge package that’s been proposed by the Commission called FIFA 55. And we hope you’ll be able to talk a little bit more about it later on. And then I think our main finding over the quarter is just that the overall regulatory framework is still not fit for innovation. And we have a lot of work to do be that on the taxonomy without on state aid without on hydrogen. There’s so much to do to make the broader you regulation context more innovation friendly.

David Hunt 7:17
Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the issues and I’ve talked to on the podcast with others before that, where we know that the sector, the clean tech sector, broadly is, is going through phenomenal change and growth and innovation. And I think it’s very hard for those in government who are not from the sector to to keep pace with what’s going on. And that’s why I think certainly in the you know, from what I’ve seen in my experiences in the UK, and Europe has been a big disconnect between what the ministers involved understand of what’s going on, compared to what’s actually going on. And the other challenge often and this is why the this organised this initiative is great is clearly you’re quite often it’s a lot of the incumbents and the status quo companies who have the ear of government and not so much, you know, us in the VC, entrepreneurial community. So is that something that’s being addressed through this initiative?

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 8:16
I mean, of course, it’s it’s one of the assumptions and the principles on which we found that this initiative, which is the voice of startups, scaleups, and VCs is just not filtering through in, in Brussels, and to some extent, in a lot of member states. I mean, you know, the incumbents have established a very strong presence and our very regular contact with policymakers. And they’ve, you know, been able to basically have a regulatory framework that is very fit to what they’re trying to do, right? Yeah. But on the innovation side of things, unfortunately, as we’re not getting heard, and listen, there are good reasons for that, right? We’re a bunch of very small organisations, right? So none of us individually have the budget or the time to go, you know, spend months in Brussels speaking to any piece or to condition people or hiring, you know, public affairs consultants. But this is, you know, almost what we’re trying to do here is to say, you know, together, we’re stronger. And so let’s, let’s unite, and let’s have a common voice in Brussels that, you know, the policymakers that really want to talk to us, because there are so many and I you know, that’s the one discovery that we’ve made launching this initiative is, you’d be surprised. I mean, obviously, a lot of the policymakers don’t know exactly what clean tech is, a lot of them have kind of solar and wind in mind, you know, from 10 years ago, but they’re so keen to hear from our community. They’re super, super keen to hear about the technologies and hear about how they can, you know, provide the framework for these technologies to scale so we’re facing a lot of goodwill, but as you say, it’s all about kind of having mutual understanding, getting to know each other better, and then eventually working on a framework that You know, really accelerates cleantech in the EU?

David Hunt 10:03
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, and the overlay bring a point. But we all know that a lot of these larger, you know, traditional energy companies spend significant amounts of money on lobbying and providing secondments into various government departments. And that’s one of the challenges that we will have smaller players. So that was really excited when obviously I saw a month or so ago when, when the concept was was launched, knowing again, particularly some of the players behind it. So how it’s relatively early, and we’ve had obviously the few now quarterly reports were you’ve done some of the analysis on some of the key findings within the sector. How have you talked about having a, you know, a willing year, so to speak at Brussels, but how have some of the findings been received? And was there a surprise maybe? Or what were the sort of initial thoughts and feelings when we’re able to give them more granular detail about exactly what’s happening in the clean tech sector?

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 10:58
Right. So let’s maybe start with our first paper, which we published in March. And basically for clean tech folks, I mean, that the main finding was the EU is really becoming a powerhouse in early stage, cleantech innovation. Yeah, but we’re really struggling on the scale upside. So if you think about the startup lifecycle, at the seed stage, that he was attracting 23% of all global cleantech seed funding, but when you get to growth, equity, and really the scale of stage we attract less than 7% of global cleantech growth equity. And David here from the UK, the UK, it alone attracts close to 5%. So you can imagine like the big scale of gap that is taking place in the EU at the moment that you know that almost equivalent to the UK, and we’re talking about 27 companies. So

David Hunt 11:52
yeah, so before we will talk about that a little bit of a policy around but just on that topic, you’ve clearly worked both sides of the Atlantic you asked your organisation clearly is very much focused on the whole global community. Why do you think it is that from an investment perspective, Europe is so strong on the startup scene, and we know that for a fact because 90% of our clients, Iberia, post investment startups at the early stages, we’ve got great communities in various parts of Europe, including London and I still can’t deal with Brexit I still consider them part of Europe. I know technically we’re not but so there’s so much in there startup communities in you know, in, in London, in Berlin, and Amsterdam and Barcelona and various hubs around the Lithuania various hubs around the Europe. Why are we not getting the follow through into the equity in the latest stage investments? Do you think?

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 12:44
Yeah, so keep excluding the UK from the picture, not because it’s not in Europe, because actually doing very well in growth equity. So I don’t think you’ll have the same problem in the UK as in the EU, but I think in the EU on the growth equity in the scale upstage. I think it’s it’s I think it’s a mix of factors. To be honest, I would say the first factor in our opinion is a lack of clear EU wide demand signals. So if you think about I don’t know you know, so you want to talk about steel right? At the moment, there is no clear EU wide demand signal for green steel, you’re going to have you know one carmaker here that saying like hey I want to source you know 1% of may steal from green and you know in five years but you don’t really have a kind of cohesive you wide approach to saying the target for green sealing cars is 15% right i by 2025. So we don’t have these kinds of big demand signals meaning the the companies that are producing these technologies are left you know with a fragmented market and fragmented demand on that point of fragmented market that’s another big hurdle to growth equity because what growth equity funders wants want to see is you know there’s an easy scalar path that takes you through x&y markets and you have access to you know that market size and you know, we’re ready to roll out to basically you take the the EU situation and you know, a case that people on this podcast will know very well is the case of zonen. We talked with with Christoph when writing this initial paper and what he was telling us is basically once he had certified his battery pack in Germany, he had to recertified all over again when he tried to enter Italy, Spain or any other EU country, right? So obviously he then at some point decided to just go to the US, right? Obviously is very understandable decision but if you look at it from the US standpoint, it means basically, we’re losing out on both the scale up and the climate benefits of you know of such a fantastic company. growing in our, in our territory, yeah, the lack of, of demand signals a fragmented market. And I’ll say just one last thing is, in our opinion, an inadequate scale up financing ecosystem. Obviously for us, finance is a bit of a follower, right? Finance follows the opportunities. But still, I think in the EU, we’re missing, you know, we don’t have 1015 growth, cleantech funds that have 500 to a billion euros to invest and, you know, have that kind of expertise on the growth side of things.

David Hunt 15:32
Yeah, yeah, it is a complex situation and another client of ours more on the charging infrastructure side was struggling with exactly that they had a great product for their home market. And when they started to roll out across Europe, that it was almost like not quite starting again, but almost starting again, from a regulatory regulatory point of view in terms of, you know, the approval of the product. So is there work being done on that factor of trying to make product approvals more new See, approved, if you like, or what once you have approval in one country, you kind of get automatic approval across the EU.

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 16:08
Great. So So that’s, that’s one of the key things that we’re starting to, to work on. Because if you think about it, that is, you know, one of the single biggest hurdles to the to the clean tech scale about the woman’s interestingly, it’s not a problem that is particular to clean tech, meaning a lot of other sectors are trying to push for the same, the same kind of harmonisation. But obviously, it’s particularly problematic in clean tech, where we have a lot of hardware technologies, and so very subject to these types of standards. But I’ll give you an example. We’ve been trying to think about the cement example where there are different standards by by country. And so it’s very hard to have, you know, a new kind of lowered carbon cement, you know, getting getting approval for the entire 27. Block. And so there we’ve been in contact with the the European Commission, which is starting to think about what they call, you know, foresight standards, meaning standards that apply to kind of newer technology. And so they’re we might, we might have a route to start to have kind of a wide standards for for cement, I mean, obviously, it’s just the start, we need to be working in, you know, energy storage, transportation, you know, all types of materials and the whole scope of clean deck. But, again, on this type of topic, there’s there’s really appetite from the policymakers to hear from us. And to advance on these, these topics.

David Hunt 17:42
Yeah, yeah, no, super important. And the other thing you touched on there was in terms of the size of funds for foreign investment, and for versus equity and scale of investment. And that’s clearly very different. We’ve got it, we’re working with a PE firm in the US who just dropped $1.5 billion fund, and that’s one firm with one fund or clean tech focus. So do you think that if we had the clarity of policy and vision across the EU that the funds would follow and clearly breakthrough have energy have, again, done some great things and been very prevalent in in Europe? But is that the issue the fact that some of these big funds aren’t coming here? Because there is that lack of lack of either visibility or lack of or complexities of 27 different countries doing 27 different things?

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 18:29
Yeah, I mean, that’s that’s certainly part of it. But then there’s a bit of chicken and egg too, right? There’s, there’s a chicken and egg between the demand and the and the offer. But yes, very clearly, if we managed to have more harmonised markets, and if you know, the the growth opportunity for some of these companies, at the moment, we’re building national champions, right 27 national champions, and in some cases, and that’s just not a way to scale up in very nascent businesses where the the market is so small, right? Yeah. We need to figure this piece out. And then on the the funding side of things, I think things are starting to move a little bit faster, meaning you’re starting to see some growth funds being created, signing some Cornerstone investors, and that, you know, the general size of these funds is, is is increasing. Now, you know, I think you’re seeing a couple things you’re seeing one, the kind of the pioneers, the people that know the most about cleantech and have been trained successfully, in some cases, scaling these companies for decades. They’re starting to come to the market with with bigger funds and trying to have to raise bigger funds. And then you have new comers as well that you know, sometimes have had the trust of bigger pots of money from pension funds from parents from banks. And they as well will come to the market with much bigger funds in the in the, in the next year or two. Yeah, you’re gonna have a bit of a convergence of players and I’d be surprised if you know in 12 months, we don’t have at least four or five growth funds operating in this type of environment. Right?

David Hunt 20:05
Certainly, certainly what we need again before we move on to mobility more on the policy side looking again at the US because it’s difficult you look at as you said, an absolutely fantastic record h1 for for investment in, in the EU. And yet we’re still saying there are there are big blockages to stuff more capital coming in comparatively that the numbers for the EU so far, how do they compare with us or APAC or other regions in the world?

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 20:32
Yeah, so so if you look at quintagroup figures from from q3 at the moment in terms of deal volume, so the the number of deals worldwide. North America is now below the 50% line. So 46%, in 2021 of deals took place in North America. Okay. 33% took place in Europe, in Israel, and then 16% took place in in Asia Pacific. So the if you compare that to your five years ago, basically you have you had about 60% in North America, and then a smaller share for Europe and for Asia Pacific,

David Hunt 21:15
right toward the direction. So the direction of travel clearly is the right but clue there are still many things that need to be done to to equal things up. And again, obviously the situation since Biden administration coming in certainly the tail winds are getting stronger again in the US for for investment in clean tech, and for all that’s going on there. And we’ve clearly seen some big deals and interesting specs and all we touched on very briefly fit for 55. Maybe you can share a little about that piece of policy or that framework and share how you feel that that’s impacted or will impact the sector in the in the coming?

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 21:56
Sure. Thank you. I think before we dive into fit 55 I think it’d be helpful to have a bit of an overview of what’s on the docket at the moment. And, you know, I regularly have that conversation with, with venture capital investors in the initiative. And basically what we tell them is, everything about cleantech is about to be regulated on by the EU in the next 1218 months here. Really, if you look at the collection of packages that are being negotiated at the moment, it touches everything from fundraising of funds, to investment for companies to exits for these companies. So the whole value chain of cleantech is is going to get impacted by by these packages. So one of them that keep in mind before we get to 55 is capital markets union, which is the package that is going to change, for instance, a proportion of money that insurance companies can put to venture capital and that could be a huge influx of money for FinTech funds. Okay, it’s also going to regulate the IPO conditions for SMEs. So on the other end, the kind of the exit end, it may provide a better kind of public market exit for FinTech companies. And then indeed, in the middle there, so like how, you know, how do we scale these clean tech companies? The Federal 85 is is absolutely the package to watch. I mean, it’s, it’s going to basically review the regulation in renewable energy, buildings, transportation, clean infrastructure, carbon pricing, I mean, it’s a, it’s absolutely, it’s a huge package that touches every single activity that we look at. So maybe to take take a couple of examples. The most, I think the most telling one is on carbon pricing. ie the current proposal in the federal 85 package includes, obviously a stable and raising carbon price, but also a border adjustment mechanism that would basically stop imports from or price differently imports from countries that have have lower environmental standards. So if you’re producing green steel in Sweden, there would be a border adjustment mechanism if you know cheaper steel comes from the outside and is has a higher carbon intensity. So these types of mechanisms basically say, you know, demand for green products is going to go way up.

David Hunt 24:36
This is obviously a really good to see there’s all encompassing because there are so many aspects. I mean, clean tech clearly is quite a big umbrella for many different types of technologies and buildings and and the construction industry in particular is clearly a big area and also a big area of need in terms of innovation and carbon reduction. What’s the sort of timeframe for this to start impacting our order? The mechanisms currently in place or is there again, a timeline for when fifth fifth of the fire is going to be rolled out?

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 25:06
Yeah, so and this is why the involvement of the cleantech community here is absolutely critical. I mean, I may be sounding like a broken record, but we need all of you to really get involved in this. And it doesn’t mean, you know, spending all your days on it, that means, you know, spending a few hours every month thinking about this, and maybe, you know, a bit of a bit of resources. The timeline is basically that these huge packages are being negotiated in the next 24 months. Okay, and, as you alluded to earlier, there are a lot of different interests here. Obviously, incumbents have a strong interest in some of these things. If we’re talking about carbon pricing, for instance, they have an interest in preserving a lot of the free allowances that they’ve had on carbon price for a long time. And, you know, equally on all the other regulation there are there are strong interests. So the the, it’s really important in the next 24 months that the voice of cleantech really filters through and that lawmakers that are, you know, super progressive on some of these topics feel like they have a community that supports them. And that gives them ideas, and that helps them make this regulation really innovation friendly, basically an index 24 months, we should have a fit for 55 voted on most capital markets, Union actions being taken. One of the files we didn’t talk about is the EU taxonomy, which will also have a huge impact in the next 24 months. So the really the big the big battle is now and that’s why we’re trying to mobilise as many people as frankly, tech ecosystem to kind of share their voice.

David Hunt 26:45
Yeah, and I would I do that because again, as you know, there are great clean tech communities in many hubs in many parts of the EU. And obviously, you’re on a pan European basis, a lot of startups who talk to each other a lot of collaboration, some great accelerators, rock star, obviously, I was involved as well, and doing great things. But it does always feel like as a smaller entity, whether you’re a startup or a young company, that you are so busy, you know, doing all the things and many things that the challenges that founders of companies have, how can they get involved in a way that’s meaningful to both them and to, to the community at large?

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 27:25
Sure. So maybe, let me tell you a few words about how the initiative works. So at the moment, we are actively recruiting venture capital investors. And that’s not to say that we’re not obviously talking to a lot of startups and scale ups, we’re actually involving them in a lot of our activities. Just for the the the core kind of affiliation, we’re starting with these funds, because they already cover you know, 250 300 startups themselves. And so it’s, it’s a, it’s a good kind of, aggregator, and it allows us to go a little bit faster with a with a smaller group. So if you are a venture capital firm, and you’re interested in, in getting more exposure to policy questions, and meeting policymakers, please just reach out and we can have that conversation. for startups and scale ups, what we’re doing is we’re inviting them to very specific conversation. So we’re now being asked by policymakers to provide briefings on specific topics. And so that they can, you know, get smarter on FinTech topics and integrate that into their their regulation. And so, to give you an example, we have a briefing with a really a leading member of parliament very soon on the topic of innovative renewables. And there, we’ve invited two super innovative companies, one in Germany, one in Estonia, to present their innovation and basically say, here’s what we need to scale up right now. So if you get in touch with us, we’ll we’ll make sure to include you in some of these workshops at closing. And also make sure that your time is is used super efficiently. So we’ll, you know, we’re doing a lot of the legwork ourselves of policy analysis and making sure that we’re asking for the right things. But then it’s really your voice that we want to hear in the end, policymakers, so make sure you’re as involved as possible.

David Hunt 29:13
Okay. But an obvious one would be for if they have any startup or founder that has some VC support or some funding to, I guess, badger, their funding partner or their investor to be part of to pass up the chain, so to speak.

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 29:30
And maybe, because you were right to mention the the national regional local hubs. I mean, the there’s so much fantastic work that is happening at at a local and national level that we’re certainly not trying to, we’re trying to be as complimentary to that as possible. And so we’re starting to reach out to regional hubs and communities to see how could we support doing similar work in member states right. So if you take the example of Estonia, beamline accelerator and cleantech Estonia have joined the initiative. But they’ve already been doing extraordinary work over the past 10 years in Estonia, connecting with their policymakers, and, you know, building a fantastic just a fantastically tech today, per capita, either one of the most important countries in the EU. So we want to make sure that, you know, for these types of initiatives that we hear, as supports that we do partnerships when we’re necessary. But really kind of, you know, we need both the Member States and the EU level to succeed here. So obviously, much work in collaboration from from local parents.

David Hunt 30:40
Yeah, yeah, super. Now obviously, we’re hopefully coming to a stage and who knows what the winter brings where we’re able to congregate, and it’s been great in the last few months to attend the events across Europe, cleantech events across Europe. Hopefully that continues in terms of, again, potentially events or places where people can directly engage with cleantech for Europe is are there any events and or platforms coming up where people should put their attention or their attendance if they can?

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 31:09
Sure. So the next dates to keep in mind is so we’re doing these cleantech for Europe summits, every quarter and the idea is to have cleantech leaders share a stage with with top policymakers. So the last one took place September 8, for instance, and we had from our community that you will know well. When is levels Berg from said ventures and Eva nimesh from inland capital. We also have had gaitan, Burnham from Pretoria, GE ventures and Donna Ryan, CEO of ecosim materials. And then sharing the stage with them we had you know MEP Pascal co founder who is the chair of the NP committee in the European Parliament, and basically the living figure on all of this environmental regulation. We had the deputy chief executive of the IAF, we had the director general for GG grow, which is the the part of the commission that deals with a lot of these questions. And so we’re we’re trying to have these types of forums every quarter, and the next one is on January 12. So if you download the quarterly briefing, you will see a an invite at the end to pre register. And then the so that’s that’s obviously the next summit. And then one thing that I will flag on this call is that I think a lot of you have been to clean tech forum Europe. And we made the announcement very recently that the next clean tech forum Europe will actually take place in Brussels in the next next fall. And so again, that’ll be just a fantastic opportunity to engage the the policymaking audience, and we’ll have a number of workshops there where you can meet to kind of talk to policymakers, and discuss some of these topics. Super

David Hunt 32:50
Well, we’re certainly on the opposite page, of course, post links to the the content of your website where of course you can download the quarterly reviews and see details of summits and events coming up. Clearly we have coming up cop 26, which ppreciate is, is obviously a global rather than a specifically European event. But are there any activities or any thoughts, hopes and aspirations from clean tech for Europe for cup? 26?

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 33:15
Absolutely, I mean, it’s it’s it will be a key kind of global, you know, milestone to progressing some of these I mean, obviously, what we’re looking for is to see how the EU can play a role in terms of, you know, broadening its appeal. So for instance, this February device package is the first time that a major power actually provides a roadmap right, to actually get to net zero. And so we’re looking to see is that is that an effort that gets picked up by by other kind of major powers? And we certainly hope so. Yes, that’s kind of what we’re looking out for.

David Hunt 33:53
Yeah, yeah. No, certainly will be asset ever is fascinating, so much geopolitics at play. But it’s great to see that there is certainly in in, obviously, in Europe, a real battle or push for for a greater level of collaboration and a greater level of understanding of exactly what is going on. And clearly, the net result of which, of course, is aimed to address climate change, but also looking at the broader economics, you know, as you know, is my passion is around people’s careers and jobs and the opportunity to work in the sector. And, again, I think that’s something which doesn’t necessarily always register with governments that we see that they’re investing in and creating the platform and environment for people to transition careers and to create meaningful long term jobs in the clean tech sector. And I think sometimes that’s something which doesn’t get across is that something which is ever addressed within the clean set for Europe, conversations or border conversations?

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 34:48
I think it’s an absolutely key point, especially when you’re talking about the scale up. I mean, what we’re seeing is when we’re talking about funds, I mean, you have a number of these these new funds that are getting Created sometimes by, you know, VC industry veterans sometimes by, you know, growth veterans. But I think there’s this kind of converging talent of on the one hand kind of, you know, growth, equity expertise and and kind of cleantech expertise. And I think there’s a lot of work to do for talent there. And certainly hope that you know, that hibernians contribution is super strong there and we need basically, to build these 1015 in growth funds and we’re going to be it’s kind of a mix of cleantech and financial talent for that. So that would be the one to keep in mind in my opinion.

David Hunt 35:41
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. That’s critical. And then the knock on effect of that, of course is the you know, as the industry broadly, scales then drops at every level for you know, from from blue collar factory jobs through to everywhere in between, where there’s so many opportunities as the as the sector grows and scales. This is super exciting. So I know many of the founding members have worked with them in their portfolio companies and it’s great to hear stories and again work with Chris Stevens on and way back when, when they were just a little German company. So it’s fascinating to see how quickly all of this has evolved and continues to evolve.

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 36:16
Maybe I’ll take your prompt to take a minute to acknowledge just how, you know how these these cleantech pioneers are really stepping up today. And, and going to building that voice. So you talk about our funding members, you know, specifically people like beamline in Estonia b2b or meeting Venture Partners in Germany, or energy in fact, partners. People like Capricorn in Belgium people like you know, people like Demeter in France or eurazeo I mean there’s just all these people in our coalition there they’ve been in clean tech from the start and they’re just I think they’re just doing fantastic work

David Hunt 36:56
Yeah, yeah, it’s always mentioned Peter and the team in the in the Czech Republic as well but ya know, so much as happens and has evolved and it’s super exciting to see just what has happened but that’s always been my frustration jaws I’ve not been in the sector since 2007. And you know, starting up a solar business way back when and that was always the big problem was was no disconnect, no understanding of government level of what was possible and what was happening and clearly it was a lot different now than it was then. But still that big challenge ahead for us to get the of the important people that already have as we said before the incumbents already have that sort of those relationships and those deep pockets to facilitate what’s best for them. So it’s great to have an organisation that’s fighting the case for for clean tech in Europe and appreciate all the work that you guys are doing so far. In terms of engagement we’ve touched on a few areas so we’ll post on to the episode page obviously links to to Clinton for Europe on the web page, they can download and sign up for quarterly reviews, anything else before we leave that people should do or could do to make sure they’re engaged and to make sure that playing their part

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 38:03
Doh good occlutech figure up that come have a look at our you know, research and, and come to our events. And again, if you want to get in touch we are we’re at the start of this journey. And we could use all the help we can get

David Hunt 38:16
perfect Well, it’s really appreciate you sharing your time and what’s going on jaws and for the work that you’re doing, I hopefully will get to see you for a coffee or a beer at some event soon. It’s great that we have been able to do a little bit more of that in the last few months and fingers crossed that continues for the US audience again and we do have a good audience in the US you know, again what we’re trying to see hopefully that you see is you know there’s bring bring your money, bring your expertise, because there’s so much work here to be done and so many great initiatives that we’re working on here in Europe and we’ve already seen that you see a shift in the the investment community moving into what’s always been a massively innovative and exciting hubs across Europe you’re doing some fantastic things. So yeah, let’s share more of that story. Let’s get more involved that support more let’s fingers crossed for decent outcome or outcomes from cop 26 and the fifth 24 sorry, 55 and various other things that you guys are influenced nor attempting to influence so far, no 18 to 24 months is not a big timeline. And there’s lots of work to be done. But let’s hope it really again lays the pathway for the next 1015 years of real rapid growth Russell.

Jules Besnainou – Cleantech for Europe 39:22
Indeed. Well thank you so much for having me, David, and looking forward to hearing from all of you.