Mike Doswell is co-founder at TSP Ventures, a climate-focused venture firm investing in hard science and hardware technologies that strengthen the resilience of supply of critical global resources. In this conversation, he shares TSP’s investment thesis, where he sees the biggest opportunities in cleantech innovation, and what it takes for climate startups to successfully scale.
Could you tell us a bit about TSP Ventures and what you’re building?
“TSP Ventures was formed in 2019 by its two founders, me and our CEO, Chris Smith. Chris had previously been Global Head of M&A at BGC Partners and had also founded several startups, and I was also part of the M&A team. Through our own experiences acquiring businesses, we felt that the advice available to founders was often less than they deserved.
So, our initial idea for TSP was to do something different: invest our own capital into startups and then work closely with the founders as they raised money and scaled toward an eventual exit.
Through that period, we began to see a major opportunity in early-stage climate tech in the UK. There were incredible technologies coming out of UK universities with high-quality founding teams, but there was a lack of capital available at the early stages and a shortage of investors willing to roll up their sleeves and support them.
And so, we decided to narrow our focus. Instead of broadly investing in companies doing good for people and the planet, we concentrated specifically on climate tech, particularly hardware and deep-science solutions. These are real-world problems that ultimately require physical solutions. Software has a role to play, but it only takes you so far.
We were fortunate to have a group of co-investors, mostly friends and colleagues, join us, and so our ticket size grew and we began to look more like a venture capital firm from the perspective of the companies we back.
Today, our thesis focuses specifically on technologies that enable a more resilient supply of critical resources. We define those resources as food, water, energy, clean air, metals, minerals and chemicals. The core building blocks of a functioning society.
For us, resilience means three things: these solutions must be cost-effective, sustainable, and geo-secure. We believe all three elements are required if a solution is going to be truly future proof.”
What major forces are shaping your investment thesis today?
“We see four macro forces driving this shift toward resource resilience.
First is demographic change. The global population is growing, and billions more people are entering the middle class. That means dramatically higher demand for food, water, energy, and materials.
Second is climate change. While the science of warming is clear, the timing and severity of specific impacts remain uncertain. What we are already experiencing are more extreme weather events with greater frequency; droughts, fires, flooding and the disruptions to global systems these bring.
Third is geopolitical uncertainty. We’re seeing a trend toward resource nationalism and partial deglobalisation. Countries are waking up to the need for greater energy independence and are increasingly trying to secure domestic supply of critical resources.
Fourth is artificial intelligence. AI will require huge amounts of computing infrastructure. Data centres consume vast quantities of energy, water, metals, and critical minerals. That creates additional demand for the technologies that make these systems more efficient and resilient.
And critically, each of these forces acts as a multiplier on the others, which is why we believe the technologies addressing resource resilience will become increasingly important.”
Where do you see the most exciting momentum in cleantech innovation today?
“Energy will remain central to everything. Energy independence, meaning reliable, affordable, and shock-resistant domestic energy systems, should be a priority. Renewables paired with storage have already proven they can be cost-effective, but in countries like the UK, we still need to figure out how to integrate them effectively into the grid.
Grid transition and storage will therefore be critical.
Another exciting area is the future of food systems. We need to produce more output with fewer inputs. That includes things like decarbonising fertiliser production or developing modular fertiliser systems that can be produced locally rather than imported.
Fertiliser prices are currently tightly linked to energy prices, particularly natural gas, which creates vulnerability in the system. Decoupling from fossil fuel inputs would make global food systems far more resilient.
We’re also very interested in critical metals and minerals, particularly recycling and resource recovery. We’re sitting on enormous quantities of valuable materials in waste streams. The key to unlocking this value is to find highly efficient, low-cost technologies for processing it.
For example, one of our portfolio companies, DEScycle, recovers precious metals such as gold, silver, and copper from electronic waste using benign green chemistry. Rather than continuously extracting new primary resources at high cost, technologies like this allow us to utilise what we already have more efficiently.”
What’s one assumption about cleantech that you think is widely wrong?
“I think people often assume there’s a trade-off between being green and being cost-effective. That’s a false distinction in our view.
Many clean technologies are already cheaper than incumbents, renewables are a great example. Plus, they have the often over-looked benefit of being far more geo-secure and therefore resistant to external shocks. Moreover, you look at the biggest emissions reductions historically, a large share has actually come from efficiency gains.
A classic example is lighting. Modern light bulbs are roughly ten times more efficient than previous generations, dramatically reducing household energy consumption. The same goes for refrigeration and air conditioning, although there’s still further to go on these two. People don’t always make the connection between cleantech and efficiency improvements.
Efficiency technologies that allow us to do more with fewer inputs - less energy, fewer raw materials, and because of this, fewer emissions - are a huge part of the clean transition.
And importantly, these solutions often cut across multiple sectors. They shouldn’t necessarily be boxed into a single “cleantech” category.”
What separates cleantech companies that successfully scale from those that stall?
“The most important factor is the team.
It’s much harder to find an excellent team than it is to find an excellent idea. At the early stage, we’re often backing teams with huge potential, but they’re not always the finished article. Part of our role is to help identify and fill the gaps as the company grows.
Many founders in climate tech are deeply technical or scientific. They may need additional support on the commercial side. And as the company evolves, from lab research to building industrial facilities, the required skill sets change dramatically.
The other key element is aligning the funding journey with the development of the technology.
We favour ‘capital efficient’ businesses, but the reality is, some capex is always needed. Founders and investors alike need to understand what milestones will be achieved with each round of funding and how those milestones reduce risk enough to justify the next round of capital.
If the timeline to commercialisation is too long, or capital requirements are too high relative to the de-risking achieved, investors may step away. That’s one reason some companies stall. The other key variable here is the size of the prize. Investors are more likely to stick with a company if the market opportunity is very large.
Access to public funding also plays a critical role. It is much harder for a company to make a funding journey work if they are relying on venture capital alone, particularly to get to that critical ‘first-of-a-kind’ de-risking point. The combination of grants and private investment is incredibly important in climate tech.”
If a founder were deciding whether to build their company in the UK, the US, or Europe, what factors matter most?
“The UK actually has a very strong startup ecosystem.
We have some of the world’s leading universities and research institutions, which produce an enormous amount of high-quality intellectual property. That creates a strong pipeline of technologies and talent.
The early-stage funding environment is also relatively healthy. The UK has one of the largest angel investor communities in Europe, which helps companies get started.
Public funding is another strength. Innovate UK plays an important role, and many of our portfolio companies have benefited from significant grants that help de-risk the technology.
Where the UK struggles slightly is in later-stage capital. The US has historically been able to deploy much larger rounds at the growth stage.
Another area where we could improve is industry integration. Climate technologies often need corporate partners when building their first commercial-scale plants. That requires close collaboration between startups, investors, corporates, and government. This is an area where mainland Europe has done well, underpinned by its strong manufacturing base and industrial clustering.
Corporate involvement is also important for exits. A significant proportion of exits in climate tech come from industrial incumbents acquiring new technologies.”
What would make the UK a better place to scale climate technologies?
“There are a few structural areas that could improve.
First is later-stage financing. Early funding is relatively strong, but scale-up companies still struggle to access large growth rounds domestically.
Second is corporate partnerships. We need stronger integration between startups and industrial players so that new technologies can move from demonstration to deployment faster and line up commercial offtakes earlier.
Finally, there’s the broader permitting and regulatory environment. Climate startups often face long delays when trying to build pilot plants or demonstration facilities. For early-stage companies with limited runway, a six-month delay can be extremely damaging.
Streamlining those processes would make a real difference.”
Looking ten years ahead, which clean technologies could quietly transform entire industries?
“I’d frame this through the lens of our core thesis: which technologies will meaningfully strengthen the resilience of key resource systems – energy, food, water, metals etc. - and can do so cost-competitively.
Water is really interesting and perhaps the most underinvested area in cleantech relative to the scale of the risk. Water stress is moving from an environmental concern to an operational risk for farmers, businesses and governments alike. Technologies that enable more efficient use, recovery, and treatment of water, particularly at industrial scale, are going to become essential. One of our portfolio companies, Wastewater Fuels, is addressing this by using a bio-electrochemical process to release the chemical energy contained within wastewater. Not only does the technology treat the water to river release standards, it generates substantially more energy than it consumes.
Industrial decarbonisation (cement, steel glass manufacturing etc.) will continue to be a focus area of ours, particularly as carbon taxes start to meaningfully impact emitters’ bottom lines. New materials, new fuels like hydrogen and new processes that reduce the energy and carbon intensity of production will be very much needed. But they must be able to win on economics.
Technologies that support grid resilience and long-duration energy storage are crucial. Renewables are already winning on cost, but the real challenge now is reliability. We need storage that can smooth out supply over days or weeks, not just hours. The companies solving that problem — through novel battery chemistries, thermal storage, or other approaches — will underpin the entire energy transition. As AI and data centres drive surging electricity demand, the pressure on grid infrastructure is intensifying rapidly. That makes this not just a climate problem, but a critical infrastructure problem.
Regardless of the specific technology, the big opportunity lies in solutions that strengthen the resilience of the critical systems we all depend on.”
