Cleantech Startup Failures

Science-based carbon advisory met the brutal reality of clients canceling sustainability budgets.

Brilliant satellite tech, wrong underlying asset: when the forest credits burned, so did Pachama.

Built the Moody's for carbon credits just as the entire market stopped buying carbon credits.

9,000 chargers deployed but couldn't charge its way to profitability.

Bill Gates-backed produce freshness startup wilted when food supply chains stabilized.

Battery supply chain traceability startup died when regulation it depended on was delayed.

Promised to charge your EV in 5 minutes. Took 12 years and $200M to prove it couldn't scale.

Overstated lithium recovery rates by 33 points — Argonne's tests killed the Series B.

Nineteen years of textile recycling R&D ended in administration, not revolution.

Hydrogen's supply chain innovator collapsed when green hydrogen economics imploded.

Ocean carbon removal startup that sank under regulatory and market headwinds.

The carbon NASDAQ that watched its entire asset class evaporate in 18 months.

Australia's most efficient electrolyzer startup ran dry when the hydrogen economy stalled.

Cooling air couldn't cool the burn rate on this energy storage pioneer.

Turning waste into energy — and $1.2B in value into ashes.

The carbon API startup that API'd its way into a market that no longer existed.

A $380M green hydrogen bet ended when institutional capital fled the sector entirely.

Tried to be the Franco-Nevada of carbon just as carbon entered a nuclear winter.

The $1B carbon empire that built its fortune on credits that never existed.

Grid-scale batteries deployed, grid-scale software failures undeployed the company.

Smart battery software outsmarted by OEMs building it themselves.

Mushroom packaging pioneer found that fungi couldn't outcompete styrofoam on cost.

Clean energy financing pioneer killed by the Fed's interest rate sledgehammer.

Nineteen years building consumer carbon trust, destroyed in months by its parent company's fraud.

Clean energy home financing pioneer undone by predatory lending regulations it helped invite.

Britain's bioplastics pioneer dissolved when cost reality met sustainability ambition.

The DAC pioneer that got absorbed by the oil industry it was meant to fight.

The waste-tech unicorn that SPAC'd its way to bankruptcy in just 14 months.

Fish-safe turbines that couldn't survive the slow current of US hydro permitting.

Brazil's carbon marketplace dream collapsed when its own forest projects faked the data.

AI lithium exploration with a 34% false positive rate — a fatal error in critical minerals.

26 years of carbon offset history ended when Jamie Dimon decided the climate wasn't urgent enough.

$450M and 20 years couldn't make garbage-to-fuel commercially viable.

Retroactive carbon credit invalidation wiped out a mining offset platform overnight.

A SPAC-fueled home battery dream that shattered on supply chain reality.

Dynamic electricity pricing's poster child became a cautionary tale after Winter Storm Uri.

IPO'd at €180M on green energy. The energy crisis turned their model inside-out.

The peer-to-peer energy grid that regulators never let fly.

One government policy cancellation wiped out a decade of community solar investment.

Brilliant energy disaggregation tech that couldn't hit the accuracy bar utilities demanded.

Shell's virtual power plant bet got crushed by a challenger energy giant.

The plastic recycling unicorn that Hindenburg Research exposed as vaporware.

Ghana's clean cooking startup couldn't price its way out of poverty-market economics.

Plastic-to-fuel startup burned out when pyrolysis economics met contaminated reality.

Clever lampposts, fatal procurement cycles — the EV charging startup killed by council bureaucracy.

Shell's EV charging bet dissolved into a rebrand — another startup identity erased by Big Oil.

Flexible solar that flexed brilliantly in the lab, but snapped in the market.

Canada's DERMS champion couldn't scale fast enough to survive its own investors.

Enterprise energy compliance SaaS squeezed out by Schneider and Siemens behemoths.

Berlin smart meter analytics startup starved by Germany's own delayed rollout law.

Smart meter analytics that couldn't survive the pilot-to-contract valley of death.

The solar gadget that promised the sun and delivered nothing.

Peer-to-peer energy trading crushed by the regulatory middleware it couldn't escape.

25 years and $300M couldn't bridge the lab-to-factory gap for lithium-sulfur batteries.

The solid-state transformer dream that melted under hardware cost reality.

Dutch energy tax rules killed peer-to-peer electricity trading before it could prove itself.

Demand response's biggest name got blindsided by the regulation it helped create.

Energy storage software trailblazer acqui-hired for its IP before the market fully matured.

The Airbnb of solar panels hit a regulatory wall in 21 states simultaneously.

Spain's green hydrogen startup that arrived at the party before the drinks were ready

Chile green hydrogen for the Atacama desert first-mover — theoretically competitive by 2030, but 2023 electrolyzer costs were $8-12/kg vs the $2/kg needed for mining competitiveness

Costa Rica carbon credit platform built on Verra REDD+ certification — 90%+ of Verra REDD+ credits invalidated in 2023 following journalism investigation

Blockchain-incentivized air quality monitoring network stalled when Algorand price collapsed

Chile EV charging competing against Enel X (1,000+ chargers), COPEC's VOLTEX (500+ fast chargers), and government subsidies only available to approved vendors

Peru cleantech: OSINERGMIN 24-month DER certification, 6 presidential changes disrupted MINEM leadership, and Enel/Engie PPPs covered primary commercial channels

The UK's fastest-growing renewable energy supplier entered special administration with 1.7M customers when wholesale gas prices surged 400% and its fixed-rate model collapsed.

Mexican solar energy developer destroyed by AMLO energy reform canceling renewable contracts

Mexico rooftop solar in Sonora's sun belt — Net Metering 3.0 eliminated surplus generation compensation and CFE permit backlog reached 18 months

Ecuador's solar startup that discovered clean energy needs clean financing too

Argentina climate tech with RCEA 18-month registration while BCRA blocked USD carbon credit trading and Milei eliminated the climate change ministry

Colombia's solar startup beaten by Spanish energy giants that already knew the regulator

Honduras's solar startup trapped by the state electricity monopoly's approval process

Renewable energy in the country that just found oil

Argentine solar installer killed by subsidy reversal under Macri government

Kenyan electric motorcycle startup stalled as battery swap infrastructure proved too expensive to build

Off-grid solar pioneer ran out of capital building energy access for rural Africa

Chilean recycling marketplace unable to monetize civic engagement into a viable business

Gothenburg's green acrylic startup couldn't scale bio-based plastics economics to commercial viability

Peru's residential solar company that became a bank by accident

Obama visited the Ener1 battery factory in 2011 — one month later the primary customer (Think EV) filed bankruptcy, and six months after that Ener1 filed Chapter 11 with $118M in DOE loans