Open Hydro raises funding to accelerate climate action of hydropower

3 August 2022

Carbon 13, a venture builder dedicated to technologies that reduce GHG emissions leads capital round

Backed by the capital raised from Carbon 13, Open Hydro’s mission to increase private financial flows into hydropower to enable the industry to better renovate and add cleaner capacity to our grids is further boosted.

Open Hydro is focused on the challenge that hydropower must double its capacity to provide clean electricity and balance centralised grid systems to meet our net zero targets by 2050. Yet, concerns about hydropower’s emissions and exposure to climate risks lead to it failing to attract private finance and is only receiving 2% of climate-aligned renewable energy investment. If we do not increase hydropower’s growth rate, we will miss the opportunity to avoid an additional 1.7 Gt CO2e by 2030. Open Hydro is building the much-needed solution to automate processes to unlock capital flows.

The founders of Open Hydro were selected in April 2022 to join Carbon 13’s selective programme for ambitious experts working on solutions that will drive down global GHG emissions. Over the past three months, our founders have benefitted from workshops and one-to-one advice on the services and business model to define opportunities to grow further and accelerate our mission. Carbon13 commits to funding the companies best identified for their chances to achieve over 10 million tonnes of carbon emissions reductions in the next ten years. Open Hydro has been selected as one of these twelve.

CEO of Open Hydro, Cristina Diez says of this announcement that “Open Hydro has already had a great start, having gathered leaders from the industry to define and agree on high impact ways to report and mitigate GHG emissions in the hydropower industry. With the support of Carbon 13, we now have an investor onboard that will open important doors for us to make a real climate impact”.

The next phase in Open Hydro’s story

The funding raised provides Open Hydro with more resources to implement newly identified opportunities so hydropower owners can access greater flows of climate finance to scale their impact to contribute to tackling climate change.

If you are a hydropower owner or developer, please get in touch.

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