ClimateHaven Inc., the New Haven-based climate technology incubator, is seeking a new chief executive officer.Ryan Dings, who was hired to launch and lead the organization in April 2022, has taken a new job as the U.S. CEO of EIT InnoEnergy, a global energy venture capital firm co-funded by the European Union.He was named to the […]
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ClimateHaven Inc., the New Haven-based climate technology incubator, is seeking a new chief executive officer.
Ryan Dings, who was hired to launch and lead the organization in April 2022, has taken a new job as the U.S. CEO of EIT InnoEnergy, a global energy venture capital firm co-funded by the European Union.
He was named to the new role on July 11, and will be headquartered in Boston. He announced plans to step down as CimateHaven’s CEO on April 30.
During his entire 18-month tenure, Dings commuted from his home near Boston to ClimateHaven’s offices at 770 Chapel St., in New Haven. He said his new job will allow him to spend more time with family.
An international search has been underway to find Dings’ successor, according to Josh Geballe, the senior associate provost for entrepreneurship and innovation at Yale University, who chairs ClimateHaven’s board of directors.
The search has been aided by Bo Bradstreet, the in-house recruiter for Connecticut Innovations, the state’s quasi-public venture arm, Geballe said.
“We’re conducting interviews right now,” Geballe said. “We’ve narrowed it down to about 12 outstanding semifinalists, and we are on a timeline to announce a new CEO by the end of the summer.”
In the interim, ClimateHaven is being led by Casey Pickett, its managing director for incubation, and Haley Lieberman, director of community and marketing.
Geballe said ClimateHaven knew Dings would not stay forever.
“When we hired him we knew he was not moving down here with his family, and we knew the commute would become a grind eventually,” he said. “But, we still thought he was the right guy for this first phase, and we would hire him again for the same position.”
Dings will remain on ClimateHaven’s board of directors and continue to advise the organization, Geballe said.
Addressing global warming
ClimateHaven, which officially opened its doors in November 2023, provides incubation space, accelerator programming, networking and partners for startup ventures, with the goal of addressing global warming.
It’s part of a broader effort by the state of Connecticut to position itself as a potential hot spot for climate technology companies, which are expected to significantly grow in size and number in the years ahead. Climate tech companies nationwide raised $8.1 billion in the first quarter of this year, according to PitchBook, a resurgence after investment fell off at the end of 2023.
Last year, ClimateHaven was awarded $910,744 by the state to build out its 16,000-square-foot incubator space. It also announced a partnership with investment and advisory firm Kaplak to launch an accelerator program specifically intended for climate technology entrepreneurs. Two separate accelerator programs at ClimateHaven were planned for 2024 to support 10 companies pursuing technology aimed at helping Earth’s climate via decarbonization.
The first program officially launched in March to support five startups: Global Biochar, Tolam Earth, TeamStack.ai, Aich2 and Tesleon.
'Very green process'
ClimateHaven also works closely with Connecticut Innovations, which maintains a $100 million ClimateTech Fund focused on investing in early-stage companies to address a broad spectrum of environmental and climate-related issues, including transportation, carbon capture and removal, waste and recycling and energy efficiency.
Since its 2022 inception, the fund has doled out more than $14.4 million to 14 companies, including Berlin-based Bright Feeds, which has developed a proprietary process to convert food waste into animal feed.
Bright Feeds CEO Jonathan Fife said his company, which he co-founded with President and Chief Operating Officer Tim Rassias, launched its first facility in October 2022 in Berlin, at 76 Fuller Way, and has “scaled up very rapidly over the last year and half,” including opening a second food-waste collection facility in Massachusetts.
The company now has about 30 employees, divided evenly between Connecticut and the Bay State.
Fife said food waste contributes about 10% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide because as it decomposes in a landfill it releases methane. His company converts food waste into animal feed using a process that requires less energy than is required to grow corn.
“It’s a very green process,” he said.
Another company that has received a ClimateTech Fund investment is CREW Carbon, which was born out of research at Yale University.
CREW Carbon has developed a system to capture carbon dioxide from wastewater and convert it to a more stable, benign form. It now partners with industrial and municipal wastewater operators to capture and permanently store carbon dioxide, while also treating wastewater effectively.
CREW Carbon has installed its wastewater treatment system in New Haven.
Joachim Katchinoff, who earned his Ph.D. in geological and earth sciences/geosciences at Yale, said he co-founded CREW Carbon with his former advisor, Noah Planavsky, an associate professor of earth and planetary sciences. Their company was built on the results of research Katchinoff performed while pursuing his doctorate.
In an April interview with the Hartford Business Journal, Dings, the former ClimateHaven CEO, said there are “really meaningful market opportunities” for climate tech companies to deploy their technology in Connecticut and elsewhere.
“There’s just this opportunity for Connecticut, and really all the Northeast states, to use climate tech as a tool not only to decarbonize the state, but to strengthen it from an economic perspective as well,” he said.
