​This is a closed-door workshop, following Chatham House rules.

​Hosted by: Green Finance Institute

​Attendees: approximately 10–20 participants, please submit your expression of interest to attend if you are one of the following:

• ​Startup operating in water treatment and recycling, biologicals, and cement alternatives

• ​Investor

• ​Accelerator and academic institution

• ​UK government representative

​Introduction

​Reducing business impacts on nature represents a significant commercial opportunity. A rapidly growing cohort of nature and transition tech startups is developing solutions that can lower operational costs, strengthen supply chain resilience, and unlock new revenue streams for UK businesses. Yet many of these technologies remain early-stage, and the capital required to scale them is far below what will be needed to meet UK and global biodiversity goals. Scaling depends on an enabling environment built around the right financial mechanisms.

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The Green Finance Institute (GFI) is exploring a new programme to help unlock investment into a set of priority transition technologies, with an initial focus on water treatment and recycling, biologicals, and cement alternatives. The aim is to support the development of investable pathways by addressing the financial, structural, and market barriers currently limiting the flow of capital into these areas. GFI brings experience in applying financial expertise to catalyse investment into emerging decarbonisation technologies, and we are keen to build on this by working closely with participants. This roundtable is intended as a collaborative forum to understand the most pressing challenges facing these sectors and to explore how a targeted programme could be shaped to deliver practical, high‐impact outcomes.

​Objective

​The workshop is designed as a collaborative forum to stress-test our early view of the most significant barriers facing the scale-up of UK nature and transition technologies, and to explore potential solutions that could help overcome them. These initial hypotheses will be shared in a short briefing paper ahead of the session and are intended as a starting point for discussion, rather than a fixed set of conclusions.

Discussions will centre on:

• ​The most critical barriers currently limiting scale and investment;

• ​Potential financial, policy, or market mechanisms that could help unlock progress; and

• ​The roles different actors could play, and where collective or coordinated action is most needed.

​Participants’ insights will help sharpen thinking on where intervention could be most impactful, challenge assumptions, surface gaps, and shape credible pathways forward. The emphasis is on co-developing priorities and options that reflect real-world constraints and opportunities across the sector. Contributions from the workshop will inform the direction of future work and help shape thinking on potential government and market-led solutions in this area. This early exploratory phase is supported by Defra funding, and the workshop provides an opportunity for stakeholders to directly influence how subsequent analysis and programme design evolves to best support the growth of UK nature and transition tech.

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Agenda

​A full agenda will be provided upon invitation

​10:00-10:15: Arrival

​10:15-10:25:  Welcome and opening

​10:25-10:55: Roundtable and discussion: Barriers 

​10.55-11.55: Roundtable and discussion: Solutions 

​11.55-12:00: Closing remarks, including next steps for the programme – GFI /  Defra 

​Networking



#naturetech #transitiontech #startups #transitionfinance