Four Cambridge and Somerville climate technology incubators received over $1.3 million in Innovation Ecosystem Program grants to support initiatives that advance climate tech startups through commercialization.
Cambridge-based incubators Activate Global and The Engine as well as Somerville’s FORGE and Greentown Labs each received $120,000. Activate and Greentown also received $600,000 and $300,000, respectively, to support their fellowship programs.
The four were among 10 organizations given a total of $2 million by the Mass Clean Energy Center, the state economic development agency. Grants were also awarded to Berkshire Innovation Center in Pittsfield, InnoVenture Labs in Beverly, UMass Lowell, and MassChallenge, MassRobotics, and Leading Cities, all in Boston. All of them provide support to entrepreneurs.
Climate tech innovation is important because it produces “first-of-its-kind technologies” that can “stabilize and maintain a healthy environment,” said FORGE Executive Director Laura Teicher.
Activate Global
Activate Global is a nonprofit “dedicated to turning scientific discoveries into real-world impact,” said Josh Martin, managing director of Activate Boston. “Activate builds the cross-sector community that drives hard-tech innovation, equipping scientists and engineers with world-class resources, training, and peer connections to bring their work from discovery to deployment.”
The $600,000 fellowship grant will go directly to support Activate’s Boston fellows. The rest of the funding will help cover operational costs for the fellowship program.
Since its founding in 2015, Activate has supported 350 fellows working to develop technology to advance climate, 275 of whom went on to start climate companies.
Greentown Labs
Somerville’s Greentown Labs bills itself as the world’s largest climate tech incubator.
“Greentown Boston is currently home to nearly 200 climatetech startups and our mission is to remove friction for them as they grow their teams, advance their technologies, and scale their solutions here in Massachusetts and beyond,” said Julia Travaglini, who was named head of Greentown Boston in January.
The grant will support Greentown’s programming and operations for its member companies, such as Go Grow, which develops methods to reduce waste and emissions in food production, and Go Make, which works on sustainable manufacturing.
Additionally, the additional $300,000 grant will provide stipends to Greentown’s First Valley Fellowship cohort who are working to develop their business through prototyping, fundraising and more.
FORGE
Based in Eastern and Western Mass. as well as Connecticut, the nonprofit FORGE is a climatetech accelerator that helps companies bring their technologies to markets..
“We help with the physical product development, the manufacturing strategies, and even accessing and building local supply chains,” Teicher said. FORGE acts as a startup’s partner in navigating manufacturing from buying supplies through entering the sales market. Teicher said the grant will help it support at least 30 climatetech companies in Massachusetts during this fiscal year.
In its 10-year history, FORGE has supported more than 1,100 emerging hard tech companies, or companies that create hardware that involves deep research and engineering.
The Engine
The Engine is an incubator in Cambridge started by MIT.
Its grant will “support early stage climate teams in our blueprint accelerator program,” said Katherine Otway, its Chief Marketing Officer. The blueprint program is an 8-week virtual initiative aimed at defining and shaping intellectual property, product development, fundraising and more.
Since the blueprint program’s launch in 2020, The Engine has hosted 800 climate teams from 140 institutions to teach them how to get their climate solution to market within the next 12 to 18 months.
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