What Climate Investors Are Saying About Feed Innovation

Key Takeaways From the 2026 Climate Investor Forum

This year’s Climate Investor Forum in Melbourne, Australia, brought together more than 550 investors, corporates, government leaders and climate innovators to identify ways to unlock and unleash capital at scale. In this post, Dr Margaret Hegwood, CFI’s Corporate Engagement Manager, reviews our key takeaways from this year’s forum and their implications for feed innovation. 

1. Capital is abundant, but not mobilising fast enough

In his opening keynote address, Kobad Bhavnagri, Global Head of Strategy at BloombergNEF, reported that global energy transition investment reached a record $2.3T in 2025. The next day, Rebecca Russell, Managing Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), made the optimistic case for the continued growth of the green economy, which could exceed $7T in value by 2030. Ultimately, these positive signals show that climate investment is here to stay as a core, deliberate allocation across various investor portfolios, rather than a niche for impact-driven funds. 

But despite these positive economic signals, Bhavnagri warned that the world is still on track for at least 2.6°C of warming, and that nature continues to decline around the globe. And while there is more capital available than ever before, it lacks the momentum needed to create positive change for climate and nature at scale due to competing priorities. Bhavnagri reiterated that the constraint is not technology or ambition, it's capital mobilisation under credible, durable policy settings. As a result, climate innovators, including those working in feed, will need to demonstrate that their solutions deliver clear commercial value alongside environmental impact, proving they can compete on cost and scale in real markets.

2. Energy is in the fast lane, and agriculture remains in the slow lane

Renewables are now the cheapest source of new power in most markets and are firmly embedded in institutional portfolios. The Hon. Matt Kean noted in his keynote speech that, by contrast, agriculture is viewed as a “hard-to-abate” sector alongside steel and cement.  Some agtech innovations may offer promising emissions reductions but are often capital-intensive, yield lower returns, and carry higher risk. Despite agriculture’s environmental impacts, particularly in methane emissions and on land use, agtech solutions remain underfunded relative to energy technologies. Innovators in this space may face a higher burden of proof to overcome these barriers and secure the capital they need to scale. 

Agricultural innovations may also fall into a “missing middle”: they are too capital-intensive for venture capital and too nascent to be considered infrastructure, notes The Hon. Matt Kean. The missing middle, sometimes also referred to as the Valley of Death, is the financing gap that occurs when venture-backed companies with proven lab technologies struggle to secure suitable capital to scale commercially because their risk and return profile no longer fits early-stage investors or traditional project finance. 

Many investors emphasised that bridging this gap will require blended finance, modular deployment models, and greater access to non-dilutive funding. In CFI’s recent report on the State of the Industry Report on Algal Oil, we identified similar strategies to help support algae production, including securing long-term offtake contracts and modular, lower-cost production models. These combined efforts can help capital-intensive feed innovations risk escape in the missing middle. 

3. Feed innovation to reduce enteric methane is firmly on the radar

At the conference, several companies were working on direct or complementary feed innovations, including in the algae space. Despite the variety of innovations, feed additives are increasingly attracting the attention of investors, corporations, and policymakers as a means to reduce enteric methane emissions from ruminants.  

In particular, there is increasing interest in seaweed-based methane inhibitors, such as Asparagopsis taxiformis (a red seaweed), which has demonstrated significant potential to reduce enteric methane emissions in ruminants. Beyond seaweed-based additives, several companies are focused on other forms of feed additives for enteric methane reduction, such as Number8Bio’s BetterFeed™. Simultaneously, companies like CH4Guard are working to optimise the delivery mechanisms for these additives, which is key for livestock in pasture-based systems. 

As the green economy grows, directing more capital towards scalable, commercially viable climate solutions capable of delivering measurable impact is essential. In particular, agriculture will require innovative funding models that help innovations in this space, including those related to feed, to avoid the missing middle. By overcoming these barriers to scale, we can ensure that the environmental benefits of feed innovation are fully realised. 

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