Climate technology rarely fails in the laboratory. It fails between the pilot and the market.
Climate technology rarely fails in the laboratory. It fails between the pilot and the market.
Bristol University Press, Professional Business Series. Published April 2027.
How to Build a Sustainable Startup for Mission-Driven Entrepreneurs
Climate ventures live with a tension they did not choose. Founders set out to solve problems measured in decades, and then raise money from a model built to return capital in years. The result is a sector rich in pilots and short on deployments.
This book offers a different route. It sets out a five-step blueprint for building a climate venture that is commercially viable without giving up its environmental or social mission, tested against real cases from artificial intelligence to green hydrogen, and against the conditions for reaching emerging markets at the sharp end of climate change. For investors and policymakers, it offers a framework for backing the solutions that actually last.
It grew out of my Innovate UK-funded work building a benchmark model for early-stage climate technology in the energy sector, and out of two years working directly with the ventures it describes.
Event discount: use code BUP25 at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk for 25% off until 30 November 2026.
One question, asked in two domains over fifteen years.
When a powerful technology meets the real world, who owns it, who benefits from it, and who governs it?
I spent a decade asking that about biometric borders, digital identity and the surveillance of people on the move. I now ask it about climate technology. It is the same question in a different domain, and it produces a different diagnosis from the one the sector usually reaches for.
The conventional account of the climate technology gap is that there is not enough capital. The evidence I keep encountering says otherwise: capital is available, and the problem is the shape of it. Ownership structures designed for companies that can be built in three years and sold in seven are being applied to technologies that need fifteen. Founders are pushed into a form of forced entrepreneurship. Public innovation agencies increasingly copy investor logic rather than correcting for it. The result is a sector that produces excellent pilots and few deployments.
I write about this at NextBillion and The Impact Loop, teach it at Oxford, and test it through the ventures I work with.
Commissioned through the Oxford Centre for Technology and Development.
Institutions commission me for four kinds of work. Each is delivered by an OCTD team drawn from Oxford and from the sector, not by me alone.
Commissioned studies on climate finance, carbon removal, circular economy and technology adoption, published under your institution's name and launched at a moment that matters.
Market entry, partnership design and venture commercialisation, with particular depth in Türkiye and emerging markets.
Two-day programmes at Oxford and bespoke in-house sessions for corporate and bank leadership teams.
Half-day sessions for boards and executive committees on what is actually changing in climate technology and what it means for their capital.
Details and current programmes at octd.co.uk.
Selected commissioned work. As principal investigator I have led teams of more than fifty researchers across roughly £900,000 of projects.
Keynotes and conference addresses since 2016, across Europe, North America and the Middle East.
Why climate ventures stall between pilot and market, and four models that work better than the one the sector inherited from software.
A market where a handful of purchasers set the price of a public good — and what happens to it when one of them pauses.
What works, what is imported unhelpfully from Silicon Valley, and what COP31 in Türkiye changes.
I speak at conferences, universities and public convenings without a fee, on the basis that travel and accommodation are covered. Private corporate sessions, board briefings and in-house programmes are arranged through OCTD.
Research is one way of testing an argument. Building companies is another.
A research, consultancy and venture-building company working with a portfolio of climate technology ventures and with corporates, banks and development institutions. Executive programmes at Oxford, commissioned research, and commercialisation advisory.
Plastic-free, soil-biodegradable growing products for the UK horticulture industry, and distribution of biodegradable resin into packaging manufacturing. In commercial trials with UK nursery groups and garden centres.
A sustainability reporting and climate risk assessment platform for the Turkish market, as a joint venture with Komunidad AI.
A digital game and animation company telling climate stories through characters drawn from Anatolian myth.
At the University of Oxford since 2016.
Migration and Development; New Technologies and People on the Move; Research Methods in Social Science; Labour Migration and Social Participation. Tutorials on cyber security and policy in NATO, cyber statecraft, and the UNHCR in world politics. Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, University of Oxford.
Workshops and roundtables organised at Oxford, Saïd Business School, Amsterdam and London, with partners including the EBRD, the UK Department for International Development, Top Tier Impact and Duke University — on climate tech and data scarcity, impact investment, digital identity and financial inclusion, and transformative technologies in international development.
Books, peer-reviewed articles, chapters and essays. A full list is available on request.
For commissions, programmes, speaking and press.
For commissioned research, advisory work, executive programmes and board briefings, write to emre.korkmaz@octd.co.uk.
For speaking invitations, please include the date, the audience, the format and what you would like the session to achieve.
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