Rebuilding the Industrial Backbone of a Climate-Safe Economy. How Michael Langguth Is Turning Breakthrough Science into Multi-Megaton Climate Impact
Michael Langguth
Michael Langguth is a founder and investor focused on building climate technology companies from day zero. Through his work at Carbon13, he partners directly with scientists, engineers, and operators to transform breakthrough research into venture-backed companies capable of delivering industrial-scale decarbonisation. His expertise sits at the intersection of deeptech, entrepreneurship, and impact investing, with a clear emphasis on sectors that define the physical economy, including energy, materials, food systems, and the built environment.
Michael’s impact lies in closing the critical gap between promising science and real-world deployment. Since 2021, he has helped launch more than 300 ventures and supported investment into nearly 100 deeptech climate startups, creating a repeatable engine for measurable climate impact. By applying rigorous carbon cases, portfolio-wide emissions tracking, and a strong commercial mindset, his work accelerates solutions that can mitigate millions of tonnes of emissions while strengthening resilience across core industrial systems that underpin a climate-safe economy.
“Impact is not a halo or a narrative. Real impact is industrial, measurable, and commercially sharp, or it does not count.”
Michael, tell us about how your work intersects with the impact space.
I build and back climate-tech companies from day zero. Through Carbon13, I work directly with scientists, engineers and operators to create ventures that can mitigate millions of tonnes of emissions and strengthen planetary-boundary resilience. My work sits at the intersection of deeptech, entrepreneurship and impact investing — turning high-potential ideas into scalable solutions for energy, materials, food systems and the built environment.
We’ve launched ~300 ventures and invested in nearly 100 deeptech climate startups to date, making our work a direct bridge between breakthrough science and real-world impact.
What is your own definition of impact?
Protecting the earth life systems
Michael, what do you see as the most important issue to address in the next 10 years?
One of the biggest issues over the next decade is rebuilding the physical backbone of our economy so it can actually survive in a world of climate stress, while cutting emissions at industrial scale.
For all the talk about AI, consumer apps and productivity hacks, the real crunch points are painfully physical: clean energy that is abundant and dispatchable, materials that do not depend on fragile supply chains, food systems that can withstand heat and water pressure, and infrastructure that does not fail every time the weather throws a tantrum.
Right now, we are running a 21st century economy on 20th century hardware. That is the bottleneck.
If I had to pick one priority, it is this: decarbonising and de-risking the industrial foundations of energy, materials, agriculture, logistics and the built environment fast enough to keep pace with both climate physics and geopolitical instability.
This is not a one moonshot problem, it is a many-moonshots-in-parallel problem. We need new chemistry, new biology, new manufacturing methods, new grid architecture and financing models that can get these solutions deployed instead of stuck in endless pilots.
The next 10 years will determine whether these systems bend or break.
What is the greatest challenge you face to scale your impact?
The biggest blocker is the gap between promising science and deployment at scale. Deeptech founders routinely hit the same walls: slow industrial procurement, risk-averse corporates, underfunded pilots, and investors who want “traction” before the physics is fully proven. Add to that fragmented regulation, weak carbon pricing and supply chains that still favour the cheapest, dirtiest option.
None of this stops innovation, but it slows adoption. The technology is often not the issue. The real challenge is collapsing the time it takes to move from lab validation to bankable, repeatable commercial use in the real world.
“We are running a 21st century economy on 20th century hardware. Rebuilding the industrial backbone is the real climate bottleneck.”
Michael, what is your long-term vision and how do you measure & quantify your impact?
My long-term vision is to build Europe’s most effective engine for creating climate-tech companies, measured through rigorous carbon cases, annual portfolio-wide GHG and planetary-boundary assessments, and clear pathways showing each venture’s potential to deliver multi-megaton, verifiable climate impact.
What are some misconceptions you’ve noticed regarding what “impact” is all about?
A big misconception is that “impact” is a niche add-on, something soft, philanthropic, or somehow separate from building commercially strong companies. In reality, the best ClimateTech founders we work with are solving fundamental industrial problems: energy inefficiency, material scarcity, emissions-heavy processes, supply-chain fragility. These are trillion-dollar pain points. Impact isn’t a halo; it’s a hard commercial edge.
Another misconception is that impact means chasing shiny narratives rather than measurable change. We see the opposite. Real impact is brutally specific: quantified emissions reduction, avoided extraction, resilience built into infrastructure, toxicity removed from materials. Anything else is theatre.
There’s also a belief that impact is slow. Yes, deeptech takes time, but once the underlying science works, scale can hit fast. We’ve watched teams go from whiteboard to institutional pilots in under a year because the problem was so acute and the solution so valuable.
And finally, some assume that “impact investing” is about picking nice companies. Our experience shows it’s about creating them. Additionality matters. Many of the ventures we back simply wouldn’t exist without the right ecosystem, technical support and early capital. Impact isn’t just the output; it’s in how you build the machine that generates those outputs consistently.
In short, the misconception is that impact is soft. The reality is that impact, done properly, is industrial, measurable, commercially sharp and absolutely central to solving the world’s toughest problems.
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