Why we’re watching these climate tech companies

This week, we released our 2026 version of our Climate Tech Companies to Watch list. It’s an annual project that the MIT Technology Review team puts together. Our goal is to highlight some of the promising, interesting advances and firms we think are worth paying attention to in the world of climate and energy technology.

The list is always a little ray of hope for me—there are some fascinating ideas out there for changing how we power our world or moving away from fossil fuels to reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions that cause climate change. Our chosen companies tend to reflect several aspects of the current moment. Here are some of the companies we picked and the key themes worth highlighting.

Forgive me—I know I’ve made this point before. Feel free to call me Captain Obvious. But I think China’s dominance in energy technology is a global trend that bears repeated mentioning.

China is home to the world’s largest grid, and renewables are coming online more quickly than I can wrap my head around. Contributing to that boom is Envision Energy, a renewables giant appearing on our list for the second time. The company has installed over 100 gigawatts of wind power worldwide, as well as over 50 gigawatt-hours of battery storage.

Like many other Chinese companies right now, Envision is looking beyond the crowded Chinese market and setting its sights abroad, with projects in Germany, Brazil, and Australia and upcoming work in Vietnam. China is also leading innovation in key technologies. I’ve been fascinated by the potential for next-generation batteries coming out of its companies: All the big ones, along with a host of smaller ones, are racing to develop solid-state batteries.

They could be both safer than existing EV batteries and longer in range. WeLion New Energy is particularly interesting. The battery company announced a big lab result last year, achieving 824 watt-hours per kilogram—more than three times the energy density of a standard lithium-ion battery today.