Future Cleantech Architects — Cleantech Innovation
Charity

Future Cleantech Architects

Cleantech Innovation

Future Cleantech Architects accelerates innovation towards sustainable solutions in critical industries – such as cement, aviation, or shipping – by supporting and urging policymakers to intensify and better prioritise their R&D activities.

Addressing climate change

What problem is FCA working on?

Many of the sectors that contribute substantially to global emissions, such as heavy industry, baseload power generation, construction, shipping, and aviation, remain “hard-to-abate”. Decarbonizing these sectors requires major technological innovation. Yet the technologies needed are often still in early stages of development and receive relatively little attention from funders and governments. According to the International Energy Agency, roughly one-third of the technologies required to achieve net-zero emissions have not yet been fully developed.

FCA exists to close innovation gaps and ensure that high-impact clean-tech reaches maturity and scale.

What does FCA do?

Future Cleantech Architects is an independent, science-based climate-innovation think tank. Its mission is to accelerate progress in the remaining cleantech innovation gaps where it is needed the most: in neglected, hard-to-abate sectors. FCA focuses on achieving tangible policy interventions that lead to emissions reduction in these sectors.

FCA’s approach combines:

  1. Deep technical and policy research and analysis. FCA’s team conducts in-depth technical and policy research to identify gaps and clean promising technology solutions.
  2. Formation of and participation in high-impact research consortia to advance early-state technology innovation.
  3. Policy engagement, providing decision-making policymakers with independent, science-based and actionable policy recommendations to prioritize research and development, and effective interventions to decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors.
  4. Convening events and stakeholder networks (technology innovators, industry, academia, civil society, policymakers, media), to align stakeholders around innovative technologies.
  5. Continuous learning by tracking the effectiveness of its work and adopting an impact-oriented strategy to maximize the deployment of effective climate solutions.

Since its founding in 2020, FCA has:

  • Helped shape major EU renewable energy legislation, including the inclusion of an innovative renewables target with the potential to avoid ~20 million tons of CO₂.
  • Influenced EU industrial decarbonization policy, contributing to policies or mechanisms that could enable large-scale electrification of industrial heat (impact potential: ~18 million tons of CO₂).
  • Established the Future Cleantech Festival, co-hosted together with the United Nations and other intergovernmental players in clean energy, that brings together innovators, industry leaders, policymakers, and scientists to accelerate solutions in hard-to-abate sectors.
  • Recognized as a trusted science-based advisor by EU institutions and intergovernmental organizations, informing climate-innovation strategies at high levels.
  • Elevated the role of cleantech innovation at global climate negotiations, including active participation at the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP).

Published technical and policy analyses that guide R&D priorities in areas such as long-duration energy storage, high-temperature industrial heat, and industrial decarbonization pathways.

Please note that GWWC does not evaluate individual charities. Our recommendations are based on the research of third-party, impact-focused charity evaluators our research team has found to be particularly well-suited to help donors do the most good per dollar, according to their recent evaluator investigations. Our other supported programs are those that align with our charitable purpose — they are working on a high-impact problem and take a reasonably promising approach (based on publicly-available information).

At Giving What We Can, we focus on the effectiveness of an organisation's work -- what the organisation is actually doing and whether their programs are making a big difference. Some others in the charity recommendation space focus instead on the ratio of admin costs to program spending, part of what we’ve termed the “overhead myth.” See why overhead isn’t the full story and learn more about our approach to charity evaluation.