Britain’s cleantech companies aren’t starving for capital. They’re starving for commitment

Sarah Mackintosh | 10th April 2026 | Comment

Cleantech has received significant investment, but is lacking proper commitment (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

The funding gap is real, but it isn't a shortage of money. It's a shortage of accountability for not deploying it, writes Sarah Mackintosh.

If you work in British cleantech, you know the feeling. A company with proven technology, a credible team and a clear market opportunity spends months, sometimes over a year, in funding conversations. Meetings are positive. Interest is real. Then the process slows. Decisions are deferred. Reasons, when they come, are thin. Ask around, and everyone has a theory about whose fault it is. Investors say that the companies are too early. The companies say that the investors are too cautious. Government points to the private sector. The private sector points back at a public sector that is unwilling to share the risk it is asking others to take. Each diagnosis is, in its own way, correct. That is precisely the problem. What looks like a cleantech funding gap is actually a coordination failure baked into the architecture of British capital markets, and it will not be solved by asking any individual player to behave differently. Most actors in this system are behaving rationally given their con...

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