A Look at Boulder Climate Ventures

Marc Manyé Ibáñez (MChemEngr’24; PhD’27) founded AnodeWorks, a burgeoning startup that uses electricity to turn plant waste into eco-friendly plastics and green hydrogen. He credits CU Boulder’s Boulder Climate Ventures (BCV) with helping him launch it. 

“Boulder Climate Ventures helped me take a step beyond science and start thinking about how a promising technology from the lab could become a real business — who the customers are, what problem we’re solving and what it would take to scale,” said Manyé Ibáñez. 

In 2025, the Leeds School of Business started BCV to bring together engineering, business and entrepreneurship to help transform clean technology innovations into meaningful impact. 

“As a PhD student,” said Manyé Ibáñez, “having that bridge between research and entrepreneurship at CU has been incredibly valuable.” 

BCV engages students through a speaker series with clean technology experts. The students also work through an entrepreneurial toolkit and gain skills to build their networks and pitch their ideas. 

“Colorado has an exceptional clean tech scene, and CU has the research and entrepreneurship capabilities to accelerate this ecosystem in ways that can have a profound impact,” said program manager Katherine Ratledge. 

Led by Leeds School of Business’ Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility, Deming Center for Entrepreneurship and the College of Engineering and Applied Science, BCV gained founding support in 2025 from Breakthrough Energy, Bill Gates’ global climate initiative. Ashley Grosh (Econ’03), the initiative’s former vice president, said it was the entrepreneurial strength of the university that inspired the funding: “CU Boulder has built an extraordinary pipeline of entrepreneurial talent.”