Your first pilot may be closer than you think.
Washington, D.C.'s utilities, energy companies, and industrial players actively partner with climate startups. These are the organizations opening their infrastructure, grids, and customers to new technology.
Exelon: Climate Change Investment Initiative
Exelon's Climate Change Investment Initiative, known as 2c2i, is an early-stage corporate investment vehicle with strong DMV presence, making equity investments into for-profit startups whose solutions benefit one of Exelon's utility markets, which include Washington and Baltimore. Beyond capital it offers mentorship in capital access, business planning, and regulatory navigation, plus pilot access at Exelon utilities through a co-designed impact project, across mitigation, adaptation, and urban resilience. Nonprofits are ineligible. Suits for-profit climate founders who can pilot with or sell into a large regulated utility.
Maryland Clean Energy Center
The Maryland Clean Energy Center is a quasi-public state agency and financing and economic-development body rather than a cohort program, but it is the parent of the MEIA accelerator and a co-founder of MEI2, and administers a climate-technology founders fund. Its founder value is delivered through those vehicles rather than directly. Founders route to MEIA for acceleration and the founders fund for early capital targeting minority, women, and veteran founders. Suits Maryland clean-energy founders, entering through MEIA.