How we picked promising climate tech companies in an especially unsettling year

And what distinguishes the firms that made the 2025 edition of our annual list of Climate Tech Companies to Watch. 's reporters and editors faced a dilemma as we began to mull nominees for this year's list of Climate Tech Companies to Watch. How do you pick companies poised to succeed in a moment of such deep uncertainty, at a time when the new Trump administration is downplaying the dangers of climate change, unraveling supportive policies for clean technologies, and enacting tariffs that will boost costs and disrupt supply chains for numerous industries? We as a publication are focused more on identifying companies developing technologies that can address the escalating threats of climate change, than on businesses positioned purely for market success. But we still don't want to lead our readers astray by highlighting a startup that winds up filing for bankruptcy six months later, even if its demise is due to a policy whiplash outside of its control. So we had to shift our thinking some.