We’re the world’s largest satellite operator tracking greenhouse gases and we see the climate tech sector chasing the wrong breakthrough

Venture capital has a soft spot for the moonshot story: the single, transformative breakthrough innovation that solves a previously entrenched, impenetrable challenge.

It’s certainly an appealing narrative.

I’ve pitched investors, and I know that a new, dramatic story is easier to sell.

But after fifteen years in climate technology, it has become clear to me that it’s more important to scale than it is to try transform an industry.

Instead of idealizing the perfect breakthrough, climate technology must focus on ensuring its incredible solutions are also adoptable.

The emissions-monitoring field, where I sit, is no stranger to the temptation of the “perfect” technology.

When my team began designing the second generation of our pioneering methane-detecting satellite, we swung for the fences.

We sketched out new spectrometer architecture, new component technology—essentially, new everything—with an ambition to take on all of the lessons learned through feedback from customers and policymakers.

It was exciting.

It was also the wrong call.

Doing it all would have meant a much bigger, far more expensive satellite, ending up closer to a science instrument than a service that our customers could afford to renew year after year.

So, we made a less glamorous decision.

We zeroed in on the features that mattered most, the ones that would still deliver a market-leading improvement, but which would also ensure that industry would be able to actually adopt the technology at scale.

Fifteen years of experience building and launching our first-generation constellation informed that decision.