Fabian Heilemann (AENU): The 2026 Playbook for Climate VCs

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New Wave | Hugo Rauch | Substack

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🌊 No Green Premium, The 2026 Climate VC Playbook

Why price parity, resilience, and market-rate returns are the only strategy that works now.

In 2022, climate was hot. Capital was cheap. ESG was mainstream.

Today? The pendulum has swung.

In this episode, with Fabian Heilemann, General Partner at AENU, we dive into what has fundamentally changed in climate investing, and what founders and GPs must do now if they want to build real businesses that survive political cycles and LP scrutiny.

Fabian doesn’t mince words:

“If you ask for green premium, go home.”

In our conversation, we covered:

→ Why the voluntary carbon market thesis stalled, and what AENU got wrong

→ Why climate funds must now prove market-rate returns (30%+ IRR)

→ The shift from “climate tech” to energy security, efficiency & resilience

→ Why adaptation and systemic resilience may be the next wave

→ Europe’s structural crisis between the US and China

→ The rise of “Green Infra 2.0”, hardware-led electrification plays

→ The real exit pathways for energy companies (hint: mostly trade sales)

→ What LPs actually think, and why tourist capital is gone

→ Fabian’s founder survival framework: routines, meditation, and long-term legacy

Fabian’s thesis for 2026 is clear:

If your product cannot compete on price parity and feature parity, it will not scale. Climate benefit must be interlocked with commercial ROI, not sold as moral persuasion.

Because the market right now rewards:

Energy resilience

Industrial efficiency

Adaptation

Clear customer economics

Not virtue signaling.

And yet, the physics of the climate crisis hasn’t changed.Only the narrative has.