Mapping Climate Tech, Identifying Opportunities
Tuesday, August 5, 2025
Energy + Mobility
WDI is empowering entrepreneurs with its recent comprehensive analysis of Chihuahua’s climate tech landscape
Businesses, academic institutions, and governments are uniting to push innovation in technology to address climate challenges in Mexico. WDI’s Energy and Mobility team is helping. It recently completed its Climate Tech Ecosystem report and online map. The assessment and report are part of a collaboration with local leaders Startup Chihuahua and Startup Juárez, along with other partners in Mexico. Its goal is to boost awareness of the region’s climate tech landscape, connect key players and further empower entrepreneurs across Chihuahua.
This work builds on years of collaboration between WDI and partners in the region. In May 2025, Diana Páez, Senior Director of Energy & Mobility at WDI, presented findings from the report at the inaugural Climate Week in Chihuahua. Her presentation highlighted the region’s climate tech strengths, identified critical gaps, and outlined opportunities for growth and collaboration.
“Climate tech is an umbrella term for a vast range of innovations across renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, climate-resistant infrastructure, and water management—among other areas,” Páez said. “Companies working in climate tech face more uncertainty and complexity than in other sectors, so developing ways to strengthen the ecosystem in which they operate will be especially crucial for addressing climate challenges.”
The team investigated the players involved in and planning to engage with the state’s climate tech space. Located in northern Mexico near the Texas and New Mexico borders, Chihuahua’s primary economic drivers are agriculture and manufacturing—industries that are both vulnerable to climate change and key contributors to it. WDI gathered data through surveys, interviews and desk research between February and April of 2025 to capture a comprehensive view of the region’s emerging innovation network.
After understanding how each of these organizations is engaged in climate tech, we turned to an analysis of the overall ecosystem. WDI explored the strengths and weaknesses of the landscape, from the breadth of accessible mentors to the lack of sufficient funding.
Finally, WDI compiled these findings in an interactive map of over 80 organizations, including companies, universities, entrepreneurship incubators and accelerators, government agencies, NGOs and more. In addition to the map, the team analyzed and reported on other dynamics of the ecosystem, including a consideration of current climate tech offerings and an examination of the supportive programming available.
A Tool for Growth
The finished product encompasses multiple sectors, including clean energy, food and agriculture, air and environment, clean industry, energy efficiency, energy storage, water and transportation. The research reveals a dynamic and rapidly evolving climate tech sector. Climate tech companies in the state are engaged across these sectors and are exploring varying business models, with 80 percent currently generating revenue from carbon credits or expecting to do so soon. Half of the climate tech companies included in the report were founded in just the last five years, indicating that new players are enthusiastically entering the space, and most plan to add products or services related to climate tech to their businesses.
The research also covers opportunities and challenges in areas such as available talent, stakeholder knowledge, the strength of existing networks, policy frameworks and funding for climate tech innovation. These are areas where climate tech teams can build better foundations and structures for their systems and products to succeed.
“Startups, industry, government, academia, and others all have roles to play in growing a dynamic climate tech ecosystem,” said Andrés Guzmán, CEO of Startup Chihuahua. “This research can help bring visibility to key players, and also help us develop new strategies to increase our impact through innovation for climate.”
The project is indicative of WDI’s commitment to supporting both climate tech entrepreneurs and the environments that foster the investment, launch and scaling of their enterprises. That includes backing efforts to advance clean energy and sustainable mobility across the globe through strengthened markets and scaled innovation.
“At WDI, we’re dedicated to strengthening local innovation ecosystems by working hand-in-hand with our partners,” Páez said. “This mapping effort shows where Chihuahua’s ecosystem stands today and will help inform the region’s next steps in driving climate tech innovation forward.”
WDI is a solutions-driven non-profit affiliated with the University of Michigan that operates at the intersection of education, entrepreneurship, and impact across emerging markets. We are dedicated to unlocking the power of business to tackle critical global challenges and drive inclusive economic growth. We mobilize entrepreneurs, investors, governments, and academia to drive pioneering solutions across sectors, with a special focus on health, climate-health, and energy.
Startup Chihuahua is a collective organization created to strengthen and energize the technological entrepreneurship ecosystem in the state of Chihuahua. It emerged thanks to DESEC and Chihuahua Futura as a result of Chihuahua’s participation in the MIT Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (MIT REAP) in 2022, where local leaders defined a strategic plan to transform the regional economy through innovation and technology. This initiative, supported by multiple stakeholders such as the government, academia, and private industry, is dedicated to attracting, promoting and supporting technology startups and companies.