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Each year, our friends at CTVC release the iconic “climate market map”—a crisp snapshot of where innovation and capital are flowing across seven key sectors: Energy, Transportation, Food and Ag, Industry, Built Environment, Carbon, and Climate Risk. It’s a roadmap for founders, funders, and policymakers navigating the fast-moving world of climate tech.
But climate is redefining these industries. The lines between sectors are fading, the tech is more advanced, and one critical resource is still flying under the radar: the ocean.
At Propeller, we don’t see the ocean as a standalone sector—we’re not suggesting an 8th sector!—we see it as a cross-sector catalyst for climate innovation. Whether it’s unlocking low-carbon energy, decarbonizing supply chains, or generating critical data for resilience, ocean-based technologies are embedded throughout the climate innovation landscape.
We reimagined the CTVC climate market map and added our ocean insight to each layer. Here’s what that looks like:
Transportation
Ocean tech is reinventing how we move people and goods—at sea, on coasts, and inland.
Amid growing demand for low-carbon infrastructure, water is emerging as a powerful and underused mode of transit. In the ocean, Navier—a Propeller portfolio company—is building sleek, zero-emission marine vessels that make waterborne transportation clean, fast, and efficient.
On land, coastal cities are leveraging ocean climate data to guide fleet placement and infrastructure decisions, especially as they contend with flooding and sea-level rise. Port districts, for example, have begun changing their offloading protocols so that cars or similar cargo are offloaded into well-draining parking lots. Cities are redesigning storm water drainage systems to reduce flooding risk and minimize property damage costs.
Even materials are going marine. Automakers are experimenting with recycled ocean plastics in interiors, and battery researchers are pulling sodium and magnesium straight from seawater. Maritime logistics platforms, marine-grade port infrastructure, and ocean-informed city planning—all of it points to a simple truth: the future of transportation is coastal.
Energy
The ocean supports more than off-shore and floating wind turbines—it’s the next frontier for clean power generation.
While offshore wind has enjoyed the spotlight, marine environments also provide siting advantages for advanced nuclear and fusion systems. Fusion reactors require substantial cooling capacity, which abundant seawater can provide efficiently and sustainably. Coastal siting also facilitates access to critical resources like tritium, which can be extracted from seawater, and allows for physical isolation from dense population centers—an appealing factor from both regulatory and public perception standpoints. Offshore or nearshore platforms may also help address land constraints and grid interconnection challenges, especially in densely populated or infrastructure-limited regions. As marine engineering and offshore infrastructure evolve—spurred in part by advances in wind and subsea energy—fusion developers may find a natural alignment with the ocean as a strategic frontier for deployment.
Propeller portfolio companies are right at this intersection. Aikido Technologies is engineering a lower-cost floating wind platform that increases offshore energy output. Indeximate provides real-time data to subsea energy cable companies, which improves cable health monitoring and increases maritime domain awareness. Blue Energy is building mass-producible nuclear power plants to deliver clean, reliable energy at scale.
Food & Agriculture
Ocean-derived fertilizers and supply chains are making ag more sustainable—at sea and on land.
Ocean innovation is beginning to reshape agriculture from the ground up, with a wave of alternative fertilizer products emerging from seaweed, crustacean shells, or fish processing waste. Seaweed extracts are increasingly used as biostimulants to enhance crop growth, improve nutrient uptake, and build resilience to drought—offering a natural alternative to synthetic fertilizers. In parallel, ocean-derived micronutrients and enzymes are being engineered to increase fertilizer efficiency and reduce runoff, helping to mitigate the environmental impact of conventional inputs and protect downstream marine ecosystems.
Propeller portfolio company Circle Seafoods is taking a different approach to the food and ag sector by building blast-freezing barges. Their ships improve Alaskan salmon quality, cut emissions, and boost fisher incomes.
Industry
The ocean is inspiring cleaner inputs for one of the hardest sectors to decarbonize.
Industrial emissions are notoriously tough—but the ocean is offering creative solutions. Natural compounds found in seashells are inspiring innovations in cement, a material that accounts for roughly 8% of global carbon emissions each year. By moving away from traditional, resource-intensive ingredients, this approach could dramatically shrink the sector’s climate footprint. Beyond cement, there’s an expanding wave of ocean-based technologies helping reduce emissions, recover critical minerals, and replace conventional raw materials with sustainable marine alternatives.
And Propeller portfolio company Allium is taking on rebar, one of the most overlooked carbon culprits in construction. Their stainless steel-clad solution reduces emissions while extending the lifespan of any infrastructure with rebar, but especially in salty, corrosive, coastal environments.
Built Environment
From marine-derived insulation to shell-based binders, the ocean is building greener cities.
Ocean technologies are making inroads across the built environment, with applications spanning energy systems, HVAC, and sustainable construction. One of the most exciting frontiers is the use of marine-derived materials—innovative building components sourced from seaweed, algae, crustacean shells, and other ocean biomass. These materials are being developed into bioplastics, binders, insulation, and composites that offer low-carbon, biodegradable alternatives to conventional construction inputs. Unlike land-based biomaterials, marine biomass can be grown rapidly without freshwater, fertilizer, or arable land, making it especially appealing for scalable, climate-resilient building solutions. As architects and developers seek greener supply chains, marine-derived materials present a compelling opportunity to embed sustainability at the core of construction, particularly in coastal regions where ocean resources are readily accessible.
Carbon & Climate Risk
From data to durability, the ocean is key to resilience and carbon removal.
The ocean intersects with a wide array of climate-related sectors—from risk modeling and earth observation to carbon markets and long-term carbon storage—underscoring its vast and diverse potential as both a data source and a climate solution. While these applications span everything from shipping emissions to tectonic monitoring, some of the most exciting developments are emerging at the intersection of mitigation, monitoring, and financial risk management. Ocean-climate insurance analytics, in particular, is a fast-growing field that leverages ocean data and modeling to assess, price, and mitigate climate-related risks in coastal and maritime regions. By integrating real-time and historical oceanographic data—such as sea surface temperatures, storm surge patterns, and sea level rise projections—insurers and reinsurers can build more accurate risk models for extreme weather events and infrastructure vulnerability. These tools not only inform premiums and disaster financing strategies but also guide investments in nature-based solutions like mangrove restoration and coral reef protection. As climate volatility accelerates, ocean-driven analytics are becoming essential for building financial resilience and unlocking capital for both adaptation and mitigation.
The ocean already does a ton of heavy lifting here—soaking up about a third of our annual emissions—but Propeller portfolio company Calcarea leans into the ocean as a natural store of bicarbonate with carbon capture technology that helps the maritime shipping industry scrub its emissions until alternative fuels can be scaled up. And in the voluntary market, CarbonRun leverages the flow of rivers to draw down carbon, while also restoring the local ecosystem.
Setting Sail
The ocean is an enabler that’s embedded in every part of the climate solutions stack. From floating wind to seaweed insulation to deep-sea sensors, the ocean is key to decarbonizing faster and building a more resilient future.
At Propeller, we believe the most impactful climate solutions will work with and through, not around, the ocean. Because when we look through a blue lens, we don’t narrow the focus—we expand the frame.