The classic place to launch a tech startup is in a rented suburban garage.
Joey Fiore’s garage is in Beverly. Behind its roll-up door sits the latest prototype of his invention. It’s called the Roav — pronounced “rove” — and it looks like a metal trailer you’d pull behind a car.
That resemblance ends when it’s deployed, unfolding like a huge metallic flower into an array of solar panels.
Fiore runs the startup PowerLabs. The company’s goal is to build a portable solar generator that is cleaner, cheaper and easier to use than a standard diesel generator.
The device is designed to be “really reliable and durable in the field,” said chief engineer Isaac Hamlin, as the panels whirred and tilted. They track the sun throughout the day and fold up if the weather turns bad.
“Folding up solar panels — it’s actually quite challenging to figure out how to reliably deploy and retract the system again and again and again,” said Fiore. He hopes to get the Roav on the market this year.
PowerLabs is part of an emerging group of local startups focused on tackling climate change. Gov. Maura Healey is intent on making Massachusetts the global hub for these innovators, potentially bringing thousands of jobs and massive investment to the state.
Most of Fiore’s funding comes from a U.S. Navy program aimed at spurring innovation. Federal funds have long been the gold standard for young companies. They’re hard to get, but offer a vote of confidence and a big, steady paycheck that helps attract other investors.
Federal investment in clean energy, climate science and green tech hit an all-time high during the Biden administration, and many local companies and institutions reaped the rewards.
That’s changed under the second Trump administration. President Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and a “scam,” has shifted federal priorities away from climate science and clawed back funding.
Many entrepreneurs working on climate tech, renewable energy or environmental justice have found their grants delayed, threatened or rescinded. The Trump administration cut staff at the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Justice and Equity, and eliminated the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. And the often-haphazard rollouts of funding cuts have sown chaos and confusion.
“It has been such a pain dealing with the federal government over the past year,” Fiore said.
He still has his funding and said he has a great relationship with his Navy contacts, but this period has been “nerve-wracking.” When he starts selling the company’s solar generators, he plans to seek markets beyond the military.
“If the Marines or the Air Force comes and says, ‘Hey, we need 10,000 of these,’ I’m not going to say, ‘No,’ ” he said. “I’m just actively making sure that we’re diversifying. We don’t want our destiny to be entirely at the whims of the federal government right now.”
Shifting sand
Fiore’s experience mirrors that of other climate tech startups in the state, which have suddenly found their once-reliable federal funding dissolving. Some have been lucky, especially those in Trump-favored industries like nuclear power and carbon capture.
Trump’s massive 2025 tax and spending bill, for instance, increased the tax credit for carbon capture and re-use, which could benefit entrepreneur Evan Haas. Haas is the CEO and co-founder of Helix Carbon, which is working to cut emissions from steelmaking.
“We want to be a business that stands independent of regulatory incentives,” Haas said. “But certainly right now, while we scale, we’ll take every advantage we can get.”
Other companies are trying to re-frame their goals to align with Trump administration priorities like “enabling energy dominance” and “American technological supremacy.”
But for some young companies, federal rollbacks have led to major setbacks. One example is Somerville-based Sublime Systems.
Sublime makes ultra-low carbon cement, which could help solve a difficult climate problem. Cement is cheap, durable and widely used in construction. But making it generates about 8% of global carbon emissions, according to the World Economic Forum.
During the Biden administration, Sublime received an $87 million grant from the Department of Energy to build a pilot plant in Holyoke. But the Trump administration cancelled the grant. The company cut its workforce last year and paused construction of the Holyoke plant; it laid off an additional two-thirds of its staff in March.
Sublime declined to speak with WBUR for this story, but said in a statement that the company “remains engaged in dialogue with the Department of Energy to restore our award,” and is pursuing projects with partners in North America and Europe.
“The loss of federal funding has really pulled the rug from under many, many companies,” said Jennifer Le Blond, interim CEO at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, an economic development agency supporting climate tech startups in the state.
The uncertainty is especially hard on young companies, said Emily Knight, CEO of The Engine, a technology incubator in Cambridge. Startups need to move quickly to beat competitors to new markets. Scrambling for new funding after a surprise federal rollback is not usually part of the plan.
“It’s all time lost,” Knight said. “And when you are an early stage startup and you are supposed to be moving at speed and accelerating — time lost, you feel that impact quite a bit.”
The Engine was founded by MIT and specializes in what Knight calls “tough tech” — solutions to especially gnarly science and engineering problems. She said the federal cuts, cancellations and uncertainty have caused some young companies to stop hiring or pause experiments.
It’s also made entrepreneurs reluctant to engage with the federal government, said her former colleague Ben Downing. Until recently, Downing was the chief growth officer at The Engine and will soon take the top job at MassCEC.
“The unprecedented pullback of grants — grants that have been awarded — the message that sends to founders is they shouldn’t even think about public sector engagement,” said Downing. And trying to solve climate change without the federal government “is playing with one hand tied behind our back.”
‘In this for the long haul’
In 2024, Healey signed the Mass Leads Act, which invested $1 billion in grants, programs and tax credits over 10 years to support climate tech and clean energy. More recently, Healey filed legislation calling for $400 million in state funding for university-based research to narrow the gap left by federal cuts. But historically, federal research and development funding to Massachusetts has averaged more than $8 billion a year — 20 times amount Healey is proposing, according to a UMass report.
“It’s too much,” said The Engine’s Knight. She said she applauds Healey’s efforts, but sees no way the state can make up for the disappearing federal funds.
“I’m not sure anyone knows how they’re going to fill that hole,” she said.
Despite the headwinds, Eric Paley, the state’s secretary of economic development, said he’s optimistic about the future of climate tech in Massachusetts. He said the federal government’s funding cuts, dismissal of climate change and overall chaos may slow — but won’t stop — the growing climate tech economy in Massachusetts. There’s just too much money to be made and too much momentum.
“There is boundless opportunity here,” Paley said. He pointed out that climate change is a global issue, and he’s seeing international interest in local companies.
“These problems aren’t going away,” he said. “Great entrepreneurs focus on solving real problems. They don’t just focus on what the federal government is doing around these problems.”
MassCEC’s Le Blond said the state is committed to its 10-year plan to grow the climate tech sector, despite the sea changes that happen at the federal level.
“We’re in this for the long haul,” she said.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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