Applications for the 2022-2023 academic year Climate Tech Venture Fellowships are closed! Please revisit this page in the summer of 2023 for information on Climate Tech Venture Fellowships for the 2023-2024 academic year!

The Energy Club at the Ross School of Business is excited to announce the Climate Tech Venture Fellowship program for the 2022-2023 academic year. We launched the fellowship in 2020 to encourage students to explore climate tech venture capital by directly supporting leading early-stage VCs.

Program Information

The Climate Tech Venture Fellowship allows selected graduate student fellows to work with a venture capital firm. The nature of a fellow’s work will be determined by the firm, and agreed upon by the fellow. Examples may include market research, deal sourcing, due diligence, and portfolio company support. Oversight of the program will be administered by the Energy Club at Ross.

• Eligibility: Current and incoming graduate students at the University of Michigan, including, but not limited to, the Ross School of Business, the School for Environment and Sustainability, the Law School, and the School of Engineering, are eligible to apply.

• Application:  Please find the application link here. Applications are due September 11, 2022 at 11:59PM ET. Interviews will be conducted by the VC funds themselves. We will target for offers to be extended by early to mid October.

• Commitment and Timing: Fellows will be expected to commit 8 hours/week, for a period of 10-12 weeks. This application is for Fall semester only, with Winter semester applications coming out later this year. Specific dates will be agreed upon by the respective firm and the fellow. See next section more for information on the application.

• Funding: Each fellow will be granted a stipend of $1,000 for the duration of their fellowship.

Venture capital partners

• Buoyant Ventures: Buoyant Ventures is a female-led, early-stage VC fund investing in digital solutions for climate risk. These investments focus on the energy, mobility, agriculture and built environment sectors. Buoyant looks for entrepreneurs that are customer-focused, digitally native, capital-efficient, and diverse.
• Evergreen Climate Innovations: Evergreen Climate Innovations brings cleantech innovation to market by finding, funding, and growing high-impact cleantech startups from the Midwest. Structured as a nonprofit, Evergreen Climate Innovations makes seed investments and provides patient, hands-on support to help entrepreneurs scale and succeed. To date, Clean Energy Trust has invested in 35 companies across the Mid-Continent region of the United States.
• Powerhouse Ventures: Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to change the way we power our world. Powerhouse believes that addressing the climate crisis requires deploying our most viable market-based solutions today. They've invested in some of the most innovative climate tech startups in our industry, catalyzing a decarbonized, democratized, and digitized energy and mobility future.
• NextEra Energy Ventures: As one of America's largest capital investors in infrastructure, with between $50 and $55 billion in new infrastructure investments planned through 2022, Next Era Energy is helping ensure that the next energy to power our dreams will be American energy. NextEra Energy Ventures is a venture capital group under NextEra Energy

For any questions, please reach out to Jeremiah Eaton, eatonjer@umich.edu.