Driven by a deep personal concern for the rate at which climate impacts were
accelerating and feeling "pissed
off" that humanity wasn't scaling
solutions fast enough, actor Robert Downey
Jr decided to take action. In
2019, he founded FootPrint Coalition — an
investment firm funding bold scientific research and improving access to science
funding for non-traditional innovators; followed in 2021 by FootPrint
Ventures — a coalition of
investors and institutions identifying and funding solutions to some of the
world's gnarliest sustainability challenges.
As the company describes in its 2023 impact
report,
it has centered its work around three levers “to modernize existing industries
and create entirely new ones”: media advocacy, venture capital investment, and
nonprofit initiatives funding basic science and environmental justice.
The non-profit ‘science engine’
FootPrint’s non-profit arm —
what the team colloquially calls its "science engine," led by co-founder and
Managing Director Rachel Kropa —
serves as a platform for developing and showcasing novel environmental
technology ideas, and funding groundbreaking research from non-traditional and
outlier researchers.
"In the past, so much breakthrough innovation has happened outside of the
mainstream of science — by people who were often not recognized for their
contributions during their lifetimes, or by their peers," Kropa told
Sustainable Brands®. "It's often only looking back that we recognize the
forward-thinking nature of their work. Our goal is to find these folks earlier
and give them support and recognition, while helping to accelerate and elevate
their work into scalable applications that can solve pressing global
challenges."
Kropa and her team offer fast grants to non-traditional innovators for the
purpose of testing ideas and iterating fast to assess scalability. If accepted,
FootPrint funds 50 percent of the proposal immediately and helps to raise the
next 50 percent through crowdfunding — which allows the research to gain a
public profile and enables funders to participate.
Categories for funding by FootPrint’s science engine to date include
conservation biotech, mycological innovations, metascience, environmental
justice, indigenous futures, cellular
agriculture
and negative-emissions technologies. To date, the coalition has funded 44
projects in those areas; in 2022, FootPrint’s fast-grant model won it
Breakthrough of the Year in Science and Innovation
Management
from international science platform Falling Walls.
As Kropa
explained
at the 2022 Falling Walls Science Summit, the model does several unique
things: It breaks up network effects and encourages high-risk/high-reward ideas;
it encourages transparency for the average person to trust the scientific
process and encourages journalists to mine stories from the results; and it
creates opportunities for future leaders who might not otherwise have had a shot
— particularly, women and people of color.
"We hope this will have a far-reaching impact across many industries, globally,"
Kropa told SB.
Venture capital
FootPrint’s VC arm, FootPrint
Ventures, was launched at
the World Economic Forum in 2021 and invests across a wide variety of
environmental tech solution spaces. The fund pools money from other investors
and high-net-worth individuals, and has invested in 26
companies working in climate
mitigation across the categories of food and agriculture, energy,
transportation, home & buildings, industry, carbon removal, climate change
adaptation, and waste.
One notable investment is in Commonwealth Fusion Systems
— a company building “a real ARC fusion reactor” not unlike the tech in Downey’s
character’s robotic suit in the Iron Man and Avengers movies.
Commonwealth fusion is, according to the website, “bottling the power of the
stars to generate emission-free electricity on Earth” by 2030.
Amplifying impact through storytelling
Along with its strategic investments in potentially game-changing climate tech,
FootPrint is also developing a media
engine
that will amplify these innovations and educate the general public on the
constant stream of developments emerging in the space — which includes a media
and publishing arm run by TechCrunch and Wall Street Journal veteran
Jon Shieber.
“We try to lead with new media and storytelling that helps people see that a
better, more abundant future is possible,” Shieber told SB.
As the Coalition explains in its Impact Report, through its multiplatform media
advocacy it “celebrates and advocates for the emerging climate tech ecosystem
writ large … emphasizing the solutions that are coming to market and creating a
community that can actively embrace them.
“Most of the news about amazing innovations coming from startups and large
corporations ends up inaccessible to audiences — either behind corporate media
paywalls or picked up piecemeal as a smaller item often buried amid other
stories of the day. We believe that the response to climate change is the major
story of our age, and it deserves a dedicated platform where the successes the
world is achieving can be celebrated. ... From corporate decision makers and
policymakers to everyday consumers, we aim to engage millions of people with
stories about the technologies that are transforming every aspect of our lives:
to make real the world of radical abundance that futurists have envisioned since
‘Star Trek’ first premiered on network television.”
In its latest example, Downey Jr.’s new show, “Downey’s Dream
Cars” — which
chronicles the actor’s conversion of his classic car collection to electric,
hybrid and biodiesel engines; and highlights the role of the FootPrint Coalition
in solving sustainability challenges — debuted on Max in June.
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Published Jul 11, 2023 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 7pm BST / 8pm CEST