Climate Salad Newsletter for the 9th of September, 2025

The 12 participants for Founder’s Factory accelerator programs in WA have been announced.

Tom Kline is a Partner at climate-focused VC firm Climate Tech Partners (CTP). In June this year they announced a $50m raise for their Fund 1, which included $15m each from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) and super fund Australian Ethical Super, along with $15m in a joint investment by Airbus and Qantas. We spoke to him about CTP’s investment mandate and their unique model of connecting start-ups and industry.

Hi Climate Salad’ers. We’re back with the usual round-up of climate news and events, along with a feature on Lachlan Nixon from Motion Capital where we touch on his article “Climate-Tech in 2025: Don’t use the ‘C’ Word.” We’ve also got two programs by EnergyLab: one for companies in the lithium-battery space, and another for early-stage climate founders. Dive in below 👇

Robert de Burgh-Day is the founder of Brightspace, a start-up that uses occupancy tracking to reduce energy usage from HVAC systems in commercial buildings. He’s also a Climate Salad member and went through our GGP program. Brightspace has since scaled massively with a focus on the SEA market, with plans to install their product in largest shopping mall in Asia. We spoke about the advice he had for hard-ware founders, and tips for companies looking to scale overseas.

Hello Climate Salad’ers 👋 We’ve kept it local this edition with climate news and events from Australia only + Mick is back with another piece on the three big ‘mountains’ facing climate tech companies.

Hello fellow anti-plasticians! This is a special edition to talk a bit about plastics and share some updates on approaches by Samsara, Uluu, Great Wrap, BearHug and RecycleSmart.

Christiaan Jordaan is the founder of Sicona Battery Technologies, a start-up using a silicon metal in the anode side of Lithium-ion batteries to increase their capacity and shorten their charge time.

Welcome to the second May edition of the Climate Salad newsletter 🌱 In addition to the round-up of climate tech news and events, we have a webinar on the 10th of June with Cheryl Mack from Aussie Angels (for members only). Plus, we’ve started a new series profiling Climate Salad founders.