Gaia Sciences Innovation: York to play key role in new £150m venture fund focused on climate change solutions

The new fund and partnership model is being created by the environmentally-focused Greensphere Capital, which was founded in 2011 and was made the first fund manager to the Government’s Green Investment Bank a year later.

Institutions that are home to more than 4,000 scientists, researchers, and conservationists have signed up to the initiative. As well as the University of York, those involved include the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, charity ZSL, the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, and the Anglia Innovation Partnership.

Along with Norwich, York will be a regional research hub for the project. The fund will invest in relevant businesses linked to institutions and give them access to leading scientific expertise.

A spokesperson said: “The wider arrangement will see partner organisations benefit from any new spinouts through profit share (via co-ownership) and license fees which allows organisations to fund future research and further build their organisational capacity. The spin-out companies should also provide a virtuous loop of valuable data from operating environments for scientists to refine and improve intellectual property.”

Divya Seshamani, managing partner at Greensphere Capital, said: “In the face of the global climate and biodiversity crisis, we urgently need more investment into solutions based on the best available science. Mitigating these real risks requires evidence-led, science-based solutions, not anecdotes and spin.

“Britain is home to many of the world’s best bio and environmental science researchers, but the commercial potential in their breakthroughs is too often being overlooked.

“We want to unlock a pipeline of exciting ventures that are based on brilliant ideas, that operate with scientific integrity, that are grounded in a contextual understanding of the complex natural systems and are alert to the risks of unforeseen consequences.”

Professor Charlie Jeffery, Vice-Chancellor at University of York, said: “We have some of the best researchers working on solutions to many of society’s most challenging environmental issues.

"This vital collaboration highlights the university’s commitment to creating a fairer and more sustainable future for all by harnessing knowledge from our discovery-led research to provide innovative solutions in the global fight against climate change and biodiversity loss. We look forward to working with Gaia Sciences Innovation on a range of exciting projects that have the potential to make a real difference to the world we live in.”

The fund will focus on investments in three key areas; making agriculture and forestry more sustainable; green fintech and improving supply-chain resilience in areas such as the creation of climate-resilient food crops.