Carbon Equity closes €30M Fund II for Climate Tech, targets Africa's decarbonization. The Dutch VC firm's second portfolio fund will channel capital into climate tech startups across Europe and Africa, with a focus on solutions for decarbonization, offering African operators a new avenue for growth capital. Amsterdam-based climate tech VC firm Carbon Equity has closed its second portfolio fund, Climate Tech Portfolio Fund II, at €30 million, earmarking capital for climate tech startups in Europe and Africa. This development offers African operators a direct channel to European institutional capital, particularly for solutions focused on decarbonization. Carbon Equity's latest fund, which had an initial target of €75 million, will invest in a diversified portfolio of over 150 climate tech companies across sectors such as energy production, industry, food and land use, transport, buildings, and the carbon economy. The firm typically invests alongside 7-10 world-class climate funds, including both early-stage venture capital and later-stage growth and buyout funds. This fund-of-funds structure allows for broad exposure while mitigating some of the inherent risks of direct early-stage investing. The Climate Tech Portfolio Fund I, which closed in December 2022, exceeded its €25 million target, raising €42 million. The firm's investment strategy emphasizes high-impact climate technologies with attractive returns. Carbon Equity was founded in 2021 by Jacqueline van den Ende, Lara Koole, Jeff Gomez, and Liza Rubinstein, with a mission to democratize access to climate private equity and venture capital. The firm has progressively lowered its minimum investment thresholds, with its Access to Climate Tech Fund II, launched in May 2025, allowing retail investors to participate from €20,000. This contrasts with previous funds that required a minimum of €100,000. The African Climate Tech landscape. The allocation to African climate tech is notable given the continent's growing, albeit complex, climate investment landscape. In 2025, African climate tech funding reached a record $1.5 billion, accounting for nearly 40% of disclosed venture capital on the continent. This marks a significant shift, as climate-focused companies raised more than three times their 2024 funding targets, with climate tech's share of total African startup funding climbing from 34% in 2024 to 38% in 2025. This surge in capital has seen climate tech overtake fintech as the largest category of venture funding in Africa. However, the African climate tech market presents unique challenges. While overall funding has increased, it remains highly concentrated, with the top 20 companies accounting for 60% of all capital deployed between 2016 and 2025. Adaptation solutions, despite their critical need across the continent, attracted only 16% of this funding, with the majority going to mitigation efforts. Furthermore, the collapse of companies like KOKO Networks in early 2026, due to regulatory hurdles around carbon credit sales, highlights the precariousness of business models heavily reliant on external approvals and blended finance. This underscores the need for investors to carefully assess the regulatory and operational environments in which African climate tech startups operate. European context and comparable rounds. In Europe, climate tech remains a significant, though recently contracting, investment vertical. In 2024, European cleantech startups raised €16.2 billion in venture capital, making it the continent's best-funded vertical. However, in 2025, EU cleantech VC investment declined to €8.2 billion, down from €8.7 billion in 2024, confirming a sustained post-peak contraction. Deal activity also dropped sharply, with Series B investment weakening significantly. This creates a Series B funding shortfall of $13.5 billion in Europe between 2020 and 2024 compared to the US, where average Series B rounds were roughly 20% larger. Carbon Equity's approach of investing through established climate funds, such as Energy Impact Partners and Lightrock, provides its limited partners with exposure to a broader range of companies and geographies, including North America. The firm's portfolio includes companies like Fervo Energy (geothermal), Form Energy (grid-scale batteries), and KoBold (critical mineral discovery). These investments span critical areas of decarbonization, reflecting a thesis that electrification, resilience, and AI are converging to rebuild the global economy. What this round buys. The €30 million raised by Carbon Equity's Climate Tech Portfolio Fund II provides the firm with capital to continue its fund-of-funds strategy, offering investors diversified exposure to a global portfolio of climate tech companies. For African operators, this fund presents a potential source of later-stage growth capital, particularly as the continent's climate tech sector matures and attracts increased interest from international investors. However, founders must demonstrate robust business models that navigate local regulatory complexities and infrastructure challenges, as reliance on carbon markets or government subsidies can introduce significant risk. The fund's mandate to invest in Europe and Africa suggests a recognition of the distinct opportunities and challenges in both markets, demanding a nuanced approach to capital deployment. Based on information available at time of publication. Trademarks and logos belong to their respective owners. Spot an error? Write to [email protected]. Editorial policy · Disclaimer. Support our work Buy the AU-Startups team a coffee. We track African funding rounds, investors and outcomes, and publish what the data actually shows. No paywall on the reporting. 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The same biogas, twice the power output: Why Carbon Equity invested in Reverion. Bas van Beijeren September 11, 2026 For years, Germany had one of the most advanced biogas industries in the world, with close to ten thousand biogas plants on farms and waste sites across the country.* Each takes the methane that comes off manure, crop waste, and food scraps, and burns it in an engine to make electricity. For two decades, that worked because the government guaranteed every plant a fixed price for its power. Those guarantees are now running out, with stricter regulations coming in. Around 3,000 plants will lose their support by 2030*, and the rules they have to meet are ones a conventional gas engine simply cannot satisfy. The reason the old engine no longer works is that the German grid itself has changed. Wind and solar now swing the whole system between two extremes. Prices drop drastically when renewables flood the grid, and they spike when the wind drops and the sky goes dark. The new rules pay a biogas plant to make power when it is scarce and to sit idle when it is not, and they demand far higher efficiency and far lower emissions than a traditional engine can deliver. The plants need to become flexible, and almost nothing on the market lets them do it economically. That gap is what drew Carbon Equity to Reverion, and it is why Carbon Equity is pleased to share that Carbon Equity has invested in the company alongside two of its relationship GPs, Energy Impact Partners, who led the seed and Series A rounds, and Extantia Capital. Carbon Equity has been tracking Reverion for a couple of years, waiting for the right terms and the right moment where the technology was derisked and the company was ready to scale. The unlock. Reverion builds modular power plants the size of a shipping container that can operate in both directions. Fed with biogas, it generates electricity at close to 73% efficiency in the field, against roughly 40% for the traditional engines installed on these plants.* That alone means nearly twice the power output from the same biogas. This is the key unlock for operators to comply with the new regulation. Additionally, when the grid is awash with cheap wind and solar and prices are low or even negative, the same unit switches in under a minute and runs backwards, turning that surplus power into green hydrogen or synthetic methane that can be stored and sold at a later moment when prices are high. A single machine that is operational whether power is scarce or abundant. For a German operator, that two-sided plant is the difference between a stranded asset and a profitable business. The plants' ability to capture carbon also sets it apart from other products on the market. A normal biogas engine burns the gas and releases the carbon. Reverion captures it instead, in a pure stream ready to be stored or sold, at no cost to its efficiency. A Reverion power plant makes more clean power, earns the operator more from the same feedstock, helps them clear the new emissions threshold, and is carbon-negative while doing it. The technology has been operating in the field for more than fifteen thousand hours, and it holds the world efficiency record for this kind of power plant.* The long-term case. The company has already patented its processes, now it's time to scale its manufacturing capabilities and execute on their backlog of customer demand. Pre-orders and letters of intent have been signed by blue-chip counterparties in Germany, and the company also has a $41 million carbon-removal agreement in place with buyers including Google, McKinsey, and H&M through Frontier Climate.* Existing demand already exceeds the company's current manufacturing capacity. The task ahead is not finding customers; it is building the scale to serve the ones already waiting. Germany's expiring biogas fleet is only the first large market. Other markets that stand to benefit from Reverion's clean baseload power include data centres, shipping, and utility-scale storage and generation. Carbon Equity couldn't be more excited to support Stephan, Felix, Jeremias, Maximilian, Luis, and the entire Reverion team as they build the biogas plants of the new economy. Nederlandse huishoudens hebben samen ruim € 550 miljard aan spaargeld, meer dan de € 486 miljard die de overheid dit jaar uitgeeft. Tegelijkertijd zijn forse investeringen nodig om de Nederlandse economie te laten groeien en concurrerend te houden. A lot is happening across the portfolio of its Climate Tech Portfolio Fund IV, which will have a final close at the end of this year. Electrification, resilience, and AI aren't separate trends. They're one, and they're rebuilding the foundations of its economy. Carbon Equity call what's taking shape: The New Economy. Here's why it's happening, and why it's being built in private markets first. Get an inside look at the investment case behind three of its portfolio companies, straight from the team that invested in them.

Carbon Equity launches Energy Transition Debt Fund I. Patricia Nobrega May 13, 2026 New fund offers investors the chance to help build European energy independence through loans for energy infrastructure * Carbon Equity is launching the Energy Transition Debt Fund I, which offers investors access to stable cash returns through loans to mostly European companies that are developing energy infrastructure. * In these turbulent times, energy self-sufficiency is no longer a matter of climate choice, but a geopolitical necessity. The companies that are essential to the energy transition and to making Europe more independent therefore represent an attractive investment opportunity. * The new fund is in line with Carbon Equity's strategy to reach an even wider group of investors through a broader range of products and a revamped platform. * Since 2021, Carbon Equity has raised over €420 million from more than 1,600 investors for investments in energy and climate technology, and aims to grow its assets under management to over €1 billion over the next three years. Amsterdam, 11 May 2026 - Investment platform Carbon Equity is launching the Energy Transition Debt Fund I, which allows investors to invest from €100,000 in loans for companies operating in the energy infrastructure sector. This move expands Carbon Equity's current range of funds. Against a backdrop of ongoing geopolitical tensions and volatile energy prices, the new fund offers an additional form of financing through loans that supports the growing need for energy security in Europe. An independent energy supply is now a necessity, which makes companies that are indispensable to the energy transition highly attractive to investors. Carbon Equity aims to raise €15 million for the fund. This capital will be invested through at least three reputable European private debt funds specialising in providing loans for the energy transition. The aim is to build a portfolio of 45+ loans, primarily for European private energy projects, such as solar and wind energy infrastructure, battery storage, biomethane plants and electric vehicle charging systems. The fund's aim is to help these innovative companies in the energy transition scale up with appropriate capital, at a stage when banks and other lenders are often still reluctant to invest due to a lack of knowledge of the sector or the complex technology involved. For investors, the fund offers diversification alongside private equity: instead of returns that are only realised upon an exit, investors receive predictable, periodic interest and principal payments, with a shorter maturity. Jacqueline van den Ende, CEO of Carbon Equity, explains: "A lot has changed since we launched in 2021. By 2026, electrification and the energy transition are no longer idealistic dreams, but mature sectors with solid business models. Moreover, given the current geopolitical tensions, energy independence is no longer a climate choice but a strategic necessity. I am delighted that we are now able to launch our first private debt fund. With this fund, we are giving investors the opportunity to help build the very infrastructure that will make Europe more resilient." A wider range of products for a larger group of investors The launch of the Energy Transition Debt Fund I is part of Carbon Equity's development and is supported by a completely revamped platform, with funds across all relevant private market asset classes (private equity, private debt, infrastructure and co-investments). This new phase involves a broader range of offerings for an even larger group of investors, with the aim of investing together in the new economy, thereby reducing dependence on fossil fuels whilst generating attractive returns. "The new economy means investing in the foundations of tomorrow, not those of yesterday," says Van den Ende. "Economic, geopolitical and technological forces are currently converging. Companies at the forefront of renewable energy, modern industry and new sustainable materials are increasingly winning on merit: cheaper, more efficient, more independent and cleaner. Think, for example, of geothermal energy, robots that maintain or even improve our power grid, and AI that discovers new materials through machine learning. That is the economic direction we are heading in; I am convinced of that." Van den Ende continues: "With the launch of this new fund, we are further reinforcing our mission. We want to help people make good money. That means achieving a healthy financial return by contributing to solving the world's greatest challenges. At Carbon Equity, investors are given the opportunity to invest, via funds, in a broad portfolio of the world's most innovative unlisted companies, thereby diversifying their portfolio and spreading the risks." In the space of five years, Carbon Equity has raised over €420 million through a range of fund strategies, and the company remains as ambitious as ever. With the expansion of its platform announced today, Carbon Equity aims to grow the capital raised for the energy transition to over €1 billion within three years. The recently launched Carbon Equity Energy Transition Debt Fund I is a closed-end investment fund that invests in funds providing private loans for energy infrastructure projects. This sets it apart from open-end private credit funds that invest in corporate loans to software companies which have recently received negative publicity due to developments in AI. Detailed information about the new fund can be found on the product page. About Carbon Equity Carbon Equity is an investment platform. Its aim is to unlock billions in capital from private investors to help solve the world's greatest challenges, starting with climate change. Investors can earn a good return with Carbon Equity, that is to say, achieve a healthy financial return by helping to solve those challenges. This is done by investing in highly innovative and fast-growing companies that are not listed on the stock exchange. At Carbon Equity, retail investors gain access to the best venture capital, private equity, infrastructure and private credit funds that were previously only available to very large investors. These funds invest in tens to hundreds of companies, giving investors the opportunity to diversify their portfolios and spread the risks. Furthermore, they become part of the Carbon Equity community of investors who meet regularly at gatherings to share experiences and get to know portfolio companies. To date, more than 1,600 investors have invested over €420 million via the Carbon Equity platform. With commitments to 35 leading funds, 300 portfolio companies funded and several direct co-investments, Carbon Equity is one of the world's most active and specialised investors in the energy transition and climate technology sectors. In addition to the recently launched Energy Transition Debt Fund I, Carbon Equity has four other funds open to investors: the Climate Tech Portfolio Fund IV (early-stage innovations and late-stage growth companies), the Climate Infrastructure Fund I (scaling up proven technology for modern infrastructure), the Access to Climate Tech Fund II (climate technology and infrastructure, lower entry threshold) and the Co-Invest Fund I (direct investment in early-stage growth companies). Carbon Equity holds a licence in accordance with Section 2:65 of the Financial Supervision Act. Carbon Equity and the alternative investment funds it manages are subject to supervision by the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (the AFM). Carbon Equity B.V. is listed in the AFM's register of investment institutions under registration number 15005329. For media enquiries: Carbon Equity Jacqueline van den Ende, CEO Moerkerk Mediarelaties Wim Moerkerk +31 6 1380 7657 Disclaimer This is a marketing communication. This information does not provide a sufficient basis for an investment decision. You should therefore read the fund's prospectus before making an investment decision. An investment in this fund is a long-term, high-risk investment that is not easily liquidated. You should also take into account all the relevant characteristics and objectives of a Carbon Equity fund in your decision, not just sustainability aspects. The Energy Transition Debt Fund I qualifies as an Article 8 SFDR fund. Information about this fund can be found on the website and in the prospectus. These documents are available at www.carbonequity.com. Investing involves risks. You may lose some or all of your investment. Do not take unnecessary risks. You should therefore read the Key Information Document (KID). This states that the risk associated with the Energy Transition Debt Fund I is high, namely 6 on a scale of 7.