Major UK climate tech conference expands venture investments: 'Business is where we’re at'

Blue Earth Summit, the fast-growing UK climate tech conference, has recently launched its own venture vehicle – and plans to expand it further this year, its co-founder Guy Hayler tells Impact Loop.

The summit, hosted in London each year, has run five editions so far. The event saw some 5000 attendees last year.

Now it is formalising its direct investment arm. In 2025, Blue Earth created a dedicated investment company and raised its first pool of capital to back the winners of its B100 startup competition.

The target now is to scale the fund to €6–10m this year.

“We want to facilitate cash into innovation,” Hayler tells Impact Loop. “Business is where we’re at.”

'We're not leading on climate'

Hayler founded the summit in 2021 with his brother Will Hayler, and they're good friend Linley Lewis. The trio, all avid surfers, used to run their own surfer media brand.

Despite Hayler self-professed "love" for the planet, he's says they're not leading with words like "climate" in the event or its associated investments, something mirrored by others companies in the space.

“We’re leading with statements like: 'this business can outcompete' and 'this model is more profitable'," says Hayler, adding that he thinks that's also the best way to win over the climate skeptics.

"We've got to lead with the right language in order to take get even the non believers believing in what we're doing," he continues. “If you say right, well, we've got a technology here that is better, and the business model is more profitable, most people can't argue with that."

Narrowing down the best startups

Since launch, the B100 startup competition has acted as Blue Earth’s filtering mechanism for climate and industrial startups. And now its acts like an investment funnel.

Roughly 1,000 companies apply each year. Independent judges narrow the list down to 100, then 30, then six, and finally three winners across startup, growth, and scale stages – spanning pre-seed through Series B.

Until last year, the reward was exposure and investor access. The summit helped winning companies raise millions, leveraging its network of founders and backers. But it didn’t invest directly.

That changed in 2025, and from 2026, Blue Earth plans to expand the model, investing across 10 industries annually.

Each sector would see two winners – one early-stage, one later-stage – giving its LPs exposure to as many as 60 companies over three years.

Blue Earth recently partnered with British VC Haatch to create a fund structure capable of raising from high-net-worth and institutional investors. The pilot vehicle attracted 13 LPs – predominantly exited founders, alongside three GPs and a private equity investor.

“We’re not attempting to become an out-and-out VC,” Hayler said. “We’ve got unique dealflow, we’ve got an interesting process, and we’ve got access to investors. We’re just creating a mechanic to get into these companies.”