Chicago backs its climate ambitions with real public infrastructure for startups.
Programs and agencies like Evergreen Climate Innovations and Current offer grants, incentives, testing, and incubation to help climate companies get started and scale here.
Evergreen Climate Innovations
Evergreen Climate Innovations, formerly Clean Energy Trust, has funded early Midwest climate hardware for longer than anyone else in the region, investing catalytic capital through a revolving model in which returns are recycled into the next companies. It runs open application cycles twice a year across clean electricity, water, agriculture, materials, transportation, and fuels, pairs money with technical and commercial coaching, and convenes the region's climate investors at its annual Co_Invest Climate gathering. It is a nonprofit investor rather than a conventional fund.
Current
Current is Chicago's water innovation hub, and it leads the federally funded regional engine building a circular water economy across the Great Lakes states. For founders that means pilots with utilities and industrial water users, research partnerships across a multistate coalition, accelerator programming run with mHUB, and the convening power of Chicago Water Week. It is a nonprofit intermediary rather than an investor.
Illinois DCEO clean energy programs
The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity administers the state's clean-energy programs created under the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, including contractor incubation, workforce pipelines, and grants aimed at equity-eligible businesses. The programming is built for clean-energy contractors and installers rather than deep-tech startups, so its value to a technology founder is non-dilutive money, hiring pipelines, and the demand state policy creates, rather than acceleration.