Charlotte Connell is the dynamic energising force catalysing Australia’s climate tech community

Welcome to a transcript of Founder Stories, an impactable.news podcast!

Today’s guest is Charlotte Connell, a literal human dynamo. Charlotte is Climate Tech Ambassador at Sydney's Greenhouse, which recently organised the fantastic Climate Innovation & Investment Summit, a stream of events during Climate Action Week.

As Ecosystem Director for Australia’s leading climate tech network, Climate Salad, Charlotte helped climate tech founders globally scale through community, connection and collaboration. In 2020 she founded The Sustainability Collective to democratise sustainability so that all businesses can create positive change for people, planet and a prosperous future. She served as Fishburners Expert in Residence for Sustainability and developed the Founder Institute’s first global Sustainability Accelerator program.

Charlotte is on the board of One Wave, a fabulous charity which raises awareness for mental health issues through surfing, saltwater therapy and community. She’s also a board member of Surfers for Climate. How does she find time for sleep?!

Today you’ll hear all about Charlotte’s inspiring professional journey, learn why her personal focus is addressing climate change, and get her perspectives on this month’s Climate Action Week in Sydney and Climate Investors Forum in Melbourne. 

Great, righto, let’s get into it. Hi Charlotte, great to see you again!

Charlotte Connell
Great to see you too Simon. You are similarly someone who has lots of energy and it's easy to find time for things that you're really passionate about!

Simon Crerar
Awesome, well I really appreciate you joining. I wonder if you could start by telling us a little bit about yourself, about your value set: how did you end up in this space?

Charlotte Connell
I have worked in sustainability a long time and – for anyone who's worked in sustainability a long time you would know that it really belonged to the realm of the not-for-profit space. So you worked for a sustainability charity or not-for-profit, which I have done. There was such an interesting turning point around 2019. There started to become commercial value in being sustainable, in being regenerative, in being for climate action. And it was so inspiring. I remember taking my, I think she was six months old at the time, baby to the big school strike for climate marches. 

And it was so incredible. It's like, “oh my gosh, this is not fringe anymore”. This isn't just refined to the tiny little circles that I mix in. I found a lot of people reaching out wanting to get into sustainability, saying: “I'm ready to quit my job. I want to do something sustainable and bring more purpose to my life.”

And I was getting so many questions and queries about that. I thought, I need to do something where I can just share the information out generally, like do workshops, create resources. I want to enable you and I want to empower you and you to do it.

Then the Founders Institute reached out to me. It’s the world's largest pre-seed accelerator program. They saw that there was this need and demand for startups in the pre-seed stage, who want to bring some more purpose to their startup, to have a sustainability element. So they reached out to me to develop the sustainability vertical. So that was a really great, fantastic steep learning curve as well.

Then Mick Liubinskas reached out to say “hey, I'm starting this climate tech community, working with founders who are solving the greatest challenge that humanity has ever faced while also solving customer problems.” Like who doesn't want to work with them? Who doesn't want to help them?

So I was employee number one at Climate Salad and we grew that from 45 people in a WhatsApp group to 900 in the community now. We really took that national, then took it global, and took some trade missions overseas. It’s been a couple of years since I left Climate Salad, but I'm still an inaugural lifetime community member, which, you know, I'm so honoured to still be part of that community. And now I help out Greenhouse and the City of Melbourne building their climate tech networks.

Charlotte Connell
I work on Gadigal land and Wurundjeri land, but I actually live, work from and play on Gubbi Gubbi country. So I'm on the Sunshine Coast in south east Queensland. And I think that's one of the greatest things. I guess a gift of COVID was that you don't actually have to be in a city. You can build these networks and create communities online. I mean, nothing beats meeting someone in person but I'm really privileged to be able to live in this beautiful area and work across climate tech in different regions.

Simon Crerar
People seem to gravitate towards natural beauty and, you know, that lifestyle piece. But like there's also so many people who are focused on big global problems coming together [regionally]. And yeah, you're absolutely right. It's an amazing kind of COVID positive benefit that has changed the world of work in that kind of way. If you're lucky enough to be able to do it like this. 

Charlotte Connell
In 2021 with Climate Salad, we were helping build literacy around what climate tech was, like: what is this thing? What is climate innovation? What is climate investment? 

And it's so great to see from that summit that it’s no longer about what is this? What are the parameters, the boundaries? How do we define it? Let's roll up our sleeves and get a lot of stuff done. The Climate and Investor Summit at Climate Action Week was described to me as “the get shit done summit”. And it really felt like that. 

It wasn't just about high-level theories about how we fund first of their kind hardware climate solutions. But actually these are the different pathways to funding. What is the climate capital stack? We had a session on how to drive and accelerate climate solutions from philanthropy right up to the huge pool of super that we have, the fourth largest pension pool in the world, Australia’s $4.2 trillion dollar superannuation funds. 

At the core of it, it was about fostering the innovation ecosystem in climate tech. And what I got a real buzz out of was seeing founders and investors, corporate leaders and people who hadn't met before coming together. It always surprises me the amount of connections and collaborations that can spur on incredible actions and incredible impact. These tiny little meetings have huge ripple effects.

Simon Crerar
I really loved the reverse pitch event you hosted in Sydney, featuring VCs in the climate space pitching founders.

Charlotte Connell
That was such a great exercise to get that many investors in the one room. Like let's get as many climate investors in the one room, because that'll bring all the founders. You know, I had a founder come up to me to say, there were four investors there I had never heard about. And now I've connected with them and this has been brilliant. We even played music if they went a minute over.

Simon Crerar
It’s been a theme this year of the pressure that the global climate tech community is under from the administration change in the USA. There were actually lots of good positive data points at Climate Action Week that pushed against that narrative a little bit. What do you think about the current kind of state of climate tech? How is Australia doing and what does the global environment look like?

Charlotte Connell
You know, there was trepidation about what would happen. And, you know, the Biden administration introduced the Inflation Reduction Act. And that has catalyzed so much capital into this space. It has also taken companies that are brilliant here to the USA to expand, and created so many jobs. But while, you know, the USA is incredibly alluring to a lot of Australian startups, in my experience, they haven't had as much traction heading to the U.S. as they have heading to Singapore. I led a trade mission last year to Singapore and the founders that I took over there, you know, had significant capital raises, are acquiring cornerstone customers, filling their cap tables up. There’s the Go-Green Co-Innovation Program (GGCIP). So that's a program through the Australian and Singaporean governments to help Australian companies partner with Singaporean companies to explore commercialization or explore scaling. So there are a lot of carrots to incentivise companies to go and explore trading in Singapore and Southeast Asia. 

So I think it's, if anything, there's more focus on Asia now: like India is huge, China is the biggest producer of renewable energy. And Singapore is the gateway to the rest of Southeast Asia and has over a thousand family offices. And I think you need USD $20 million to establish yourself as a family office there, so there is a lot of capital that's really keen on the solutions that we're creating. So if anything, maybe just shifting our focus there more [in light of Trump-related trade pressures] is a really good thing. I mean, we talk about green iron as well and our biggest trade partners for that are Japan and Korea, and we'll be doing more of that. 

So while it is disappointing that the USA has taken its focus off climate technologies and climate innovation investment, there is so much happening in Asia. So it's a good thing for climate technology across Australia. 

Just on climate tech across Australia too, 57% of all the capital raised last year by startups came from international investors. So, you know, more capital is coming from overseas than from within Australia. And when I'm talking to founders, it seems like as soon as they sign on an incredible investor overseas, everyone crowds around. And also, climate tech took out the most amount of deals again in 2024. They did it in 2023, and almost tripled the amount of capital raised. 

Good companies are always going to raise, good companies are always going to scale. And the trick with climate tech is, you know, it has to solve a customer problem first and foremost. And I think that's changed the sophistication of how we communicate climate tech as well. It's no longer a slide deck with a polar bear and an iceberg. 

The TCFD is now mandatory [Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures framework]. The climate financial related disclosures reporting is now mandatory in Australia. You know, this carbon accounting software solution will help you report on that. Slide decks are talking about where the size of the opportunity is as well as [the business] being really great for the planet.

So those companies that do really well, it's got to be about the commercials when you're talking to an investor. But similarly, looking at that across the climate capital stack session, if you're talking to philanthropists,  it is a different story you need to talk about. It is the social impact, it is the climate impact that needs to be at the very forefront. So it's really about understanding those audiences. 

And there is still, there is still this misconception that if it's good for the planet it costs us money. In the circles I'm in we understand that climate actually represents an opportunity. It represents economic growth if we invest in the solutions. But there is still a broader misconception that climate is a cost and it's a risk. So we need to make sure that we shift that narrative. We need to invest in solutions so we better plan for climate risk, solutions like the brilliant ClimaSens climate change adaptation and resilience software that understands where heat will hit and the loss of economic income that happens from a heat wave. So that's an opportunity.

So much of climate technologies and climate solutions are just doing things smarter, better and more efficiently. You know, it doesn't sound as sexy to be energy efficient. But there's incredible solutions that help with energy efficiencies in the built environment and save you a lot of money. Like who doesn't want to save money?

Simon Crerar
So I'm interested in understanding a little bit more about The Sustainability Collective. Your mission there is to democratise sustainability. And I'm keen to know what you've learned and what are some commonalities in terms of communication that startups may make and the kind of narratives that resonate more with non-technical audiences.

Charlotte Connell
When I say the word “climate tech” – I don't even know how to use clickers with PowerPoint. But I actually think of technology as a great unifier. It's like through technology, we're able to build communities across people we can't even see face-to-face or help to educate people that we're not even able to be in the same room with. So technology is actually a great unifier and equaliser as well. 

I've always worked in sustainability and that was just my mission and my purpose was to make businesses more sustainable. But even sustainability, I feel, is just not enough.

Like who wants to be sustainable? I don't want to be sustainable. I don't want to live in a sustainable world. I want to live in a regenerative world. I want to live in a world where nature and climate are at the forefront of everything we do. I want to live in a world where we are prospering, where people, planet and economies are thriving. So I think it's, it's been interesting. That understanding of, you know, sustainability has shifted. Consumers will choose a more sustainable product or a product that has a purpose over one that doesn't if the caveat is if it is of the same quality and similar value, similar price point. I used to work in sustainable seafood and people deeply care about our oceans, but it has to be the same quality and it can't cost too much more.

There's still a perception that if it's sustainable, is it missing something? Is it less than?

Australia absolutely can be a global leader when it comes to climate innovation as well. Just in our ag tech and food space, we've been producing food under the harshest of conditions. So, you know, we are really well positioned to innovate the solutions for climate there because 20 of the last 25 years we have been in drought and when it's not in drought it's flooding. So we can play a really great role in producing more food under harsher conditions, which we're going to have to do in that space. 

Similarly in energy, I mean we have 55% of the world's lithium in our ground. We can be the world leader in battery storage. We can do that from here. But we just need to have the right leadership to really invest in those solutions. To get jobs on the ground and boost our economy in these new solutions, in this new era.

Simon Crerar
Could you tell us what attendees at the Climate Investor Forum in Melbourne were saying about the investment landscape this year?

Charlotte Connell
It really built on the narrative of the Climate Innovation Investment Summit in terms of  who is able to take that risk when it comes to funding first of its kind solutions and creating new industries. So it was really interesting to hear the discussions because we have the Clean Energy Finance Corporation which has $30 billion plus dollars to invest in these solutions. The National Reconstruction Fund has around $15 billion. We have Future Made in Australia, which I think is $22 billion. We need these big government funding pools to invest in those solutions that have a higher risk return ratio. 

So who is going to fund those? Because we need to get them to the point where they are commercially appetising for venture capitalists to come on board, for debt finance to come on board, for private equity to come on board to scale it. But who's prepared to take that risk? If it's not those big pools of funding from the government, then who is it? To solve this, we're going to have to do things we've never done before.

There's a lot of people who have always worked in this area and they've always worked a certain way and always invested in a certain way. But we have to really disrupt that and change the way of thinking because if commercial investors aren't going to take that risk, then who is if the government isn't? So it does come up a lot. You know, who pays? It's gone from who pays to who's going to take that risk. And interestingly, what has come up before our previous forums and summits and dialogues is, you know, this rise of nature-initiatives like the TNFD (The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures). 50% of the world's GDP relies indirectly, the rest directly on nature.

How do we fund nature? 

And while it's talked about as an add-on or value-on of carbon, it's still, there isn't a commercial roadmap for how we value it. [Where I live near Noosa] we have this incredibly rich, biodiverse ecosystem, which is why it's recognised by UNESCO as a biosphere and this incredible koala habitat. We're creating koala corridors across the Great Sandy Bight, the Noosa biosphere, the Sunshine Coast biosphere. It's like, oh my gosh, we can create these corridors for koalas. 

But when you talk to carbon credit places that have koalas, there's so much demand for them they can charge twice the amount of a normal carbon credit. We can't access that because it's not degraded land. It's rich in biodiversity. It's rich in nature. It's protected. And I keep thinking about this like: “what, so hang on, is a degraded piece of land where some koalas may habitat worth more than a beautifully biodiverse rich forest where koalas are actually habiting?” How do we solve this? I don't know, it's like you know there's no methodology.

Simon Crerar
Do you know Wedgetail down in Tasmania, an amazing VC firm? They're doing really interesting work in nature in particular. Their lens is biodiversity. They’ve got some amazing projects underway and they've got this beautiful place up in the northeast of Tasmania that they're really trying to regenerate and restore it to what it was like colonisation. And it's very interesting just to see the kind of care that they're putting into thinking about innovation in this space.

Charlotte Connell
Lisa Miller is an incredible pioneer. The climate capital stack needs innovative blended finance models. And Lisa's a pioneer in that space because she understands that, you know, 70% of nature-based solutions aren't commercially funded. They're philanthropically or government funded. 

So she's come up with really great innovative solutions for using philanthropy to help fund nature projects. So, you know, where that risk appetite isn't, philanthropy can play a role and where there is, you know, low risk and a commercial return, like the investment in Agronomeye or Xylo Systems, you know, they do invest, like they're really paving the way of how we can value nature.

Simon Crerar
I have been really struck by how powerful the community is in this climate space. And obviously you've been there at inception with Climate Salad and also very involved in Greenhouse. I've been involved as a journalist and a founder in the startup community for quite a number of years, but it doesn't seem to be as collegiate elsewhere as it is in the climate space. There seems to be something very special there.

Charlotte Connell
It’s bigger than anyone's ego. It's bigger than any one capital raise, any one individual success story. It's about climate. Like if climate wins, we all win. Right? And I think about Rachel Yang, who is such an incredible leader in the space from Giant Leap. I remember she was saying that beautiful quote and I'll probably murder it, but “a rising tide lifts all boats”. We want everyone to be successful. You want all of the climate tech companies to be in this together. And it, I do feel like there is such genuine support and celebration when companies do well, even if they consider each other as competitors, because if you do well and I do well, you know,  let's not fight over a piece of the pie, let's grow the pie. This problem is bigger than all of us, but together we can all come together to solve it. Sometimes in startups, there are egos, definitely, because you're not just talking about a business, you're talking about someone's passion that they've poured their entire life into, their startup. But it's for a bigger cause, you know?

Simon Crerar 
In the last few years, every single month has been a record month. Every single month has been historically unprecedented. The temperatures are out of control. The one hundred year flood is happening every few years. All these things are scary. As a parent, human being and a leader in this space, what are your strategies for resilience?

How do you stay motivated when you know the science better than most people, you know the reality of the world we're kind of living in, and yet you've got this kind of drive and I'm just interested in your personal kind of resilience strategies.

Charlotte Connell
I know, and I was thinking about this. What kind of world am I bringing my children up in? My son was born in a one hundred year storm. He was born on World Environment Day in 2016 during one of those storms. We were living in Bondi and the Bondi to Bronte walk was washed away and all these huge houses, swimming pools, were all washed into the ocean and you know how many of those “hundred year storms” have we had since he was born? Like nine, almost nine years ago. And like the hottest years on record have been since they've been alive. 

But since they've been alive. Climate tech has become a thing. Climate investment is a thing. Two trillion dollars was invested into climate solutions last year globally. That wasn't around before. We’re actually progressing on some of those targets. Climate Action Week is only in its second year. The summit was completely sold out. So I do find hope. I feel solace in seeing the people actively working in this space, actively creating and innovating these amazing solutions. We have all the solutions. What we need to do now is to help them scale. We need to buy from them, invest in them, connect them to a customer. And we all have the ability to do that. 

Simon Crerar
And while we don't know what the next few decades are going to bring, at least we can look my kids in the eye and say, we’re trying to do something about it. I feel very motivated by that. I feel so encouraged, like I said, by the community that we're in.

You can do all sorts of tiny little gestures at the local level. You can make consumer decisions. And in particular, you can make a decision at a ballot box that can have a profound difference potentially to what the government can do. There’s more hope by doing stuff than sitting there just accepting it and feeling: we all can do something.

Charlotte Connell
I think about that too. In my children's lifetime, you know, despite policy inertia on climate, Australia still became, you know, the global envy of rooftop solar penetration, because it costs less. And more of those examples will happen where it just makes good economic sense to invest in the solutions to help scale those solutions. So yes, the government will do these things because there are many different ways to advocate for change and push big systems change. There are so many glimpses of hope that we can look to. The e original projections for 2030 were that we'd be seven degrees above pre-industrial levels of global warming. And now we're “only” looking at three. Three is catastrophic. But it was like, OK, so we've actually made progress. We can do this. All hope is not lost. Every little bit of action matters.

Book recommendation from Charlotte 📚

Simon Crerar
Thank you so much indeed for the time you've taken to talk to me today and for all the insights and positives that you’ve shared. Can you recommend a book that the readers, watchers or listeners would find interesting?

Charlotte Connell
I'm so hopeless at the moment. I read my kids books and then I fall asleep before I get a chance to read my book. But I've been reading Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls. And there's a boy equivalent as well about boys who are rebels and rule breakers.

I encourage any parent out there to grab those books because it's so important to share these stories.  I was reading the story about American abolitionist and social activist Harriet Tubman and – while I know her story – for the first time it really sunk in that the Underground Railroad was a network of people. And I think about that so much at the moment – that no matter how dark it gets, there's good people out there.

I needed to hear that more than my children, I needed to know there's good people out there. You know, we're louder and prouder and bigger and better now, but even in times of darkness there are always good people doing good things.

Simon Crerar
That's wonderful. Well, thank you so much. Thanks so much for your time and I look forward to seeing you soon. Cheers, Charlotte.

Charlotte Connell
So good, thanks Simon. I need to come to Tassie!