Niche level investment challenges for European Green Deal financing in Europe: lessons from and for the agri-food climate transition

Green New Deal (GND) policies aim to tackle the climate emergency by driving climate innovation through financial policy levers. While macro-level financing dynamics are understood, the influence of niche-level dynamics remains unexplored. This research, focusing on the Dutch agri-tech start-up sector, identifies factors reducing the efficacy of these policies from an innovation management perspective, such as project matching issues, socio-ethical factors, and the characteristics of agri-food climate innovations. These challenges represent asymmetries—information, value, and objective asymmetries—between climate innovators and investors. Remedies for these asymmetries involve costs, inhibiting policy efficacy. A partnering approach, leveraging incumbent actors' non-financial resources, is proposed to enhance climate innovation performance.

Thomas B. Long, Vincent Blok