Sustainability: GITEX as a launchpad for green tech startups

Digital sustainability often feels like a promise struggling to match the pace of the climate clock. This October in Dubai, that promise faces its proving ground as founders chase capital, pilots and policy partners across North Star Dubai and the broader GITEX universe. The question echoing through the halls is simple. Can innovation close the climate gap. The answers arrive from investors, regulators and founders turning waste into watts, sunlight into storage and data into accountability.

North Star’s new green frontier

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At Dubai Harbour, North Star introduces Green Impact, a first-of-its-kind zone for startups working in clean energy, circular economy, agri-tech, water innovation and decarbonisation. The message is clear. This is where climate tech startups get seen, backed and accelerated. The zone includes a main-stage pitch battle, a cash prize and a front row of impact investors and government buyers.

“Be part of the first dedicated sustainability zone at the world’s largest startup event,” reads the call-out. The momentum is real. In 2023 alone, Mena startups secured more than $631 million in sustainability funding, with the UAE doubling its green-deal activity.

When capital turns cautious

Climate funding remains plentiful but more selective. Globally, investors are directing money toward harder problems and proven business models.

“Funding for climate tech start-ups is down. But patient investors are finding opportunities in ventures harnessing AI, working on climate adaptation and pioneering energy solutions,” PwC notes in its State of Climate Tech report. BloombergNEF adds perspective: low-carbon transition investment topped $2 trillion last year, but that remains far below what net zero demands by 2050. “We need much more progress in industrial decarbonisation, hydrogen and carbon capture,” said Albert Cheung of BNEF.

The Mena funding gap

The Middle East faces its own paradox. Gulf capital often flows into climate projects abroad while regional startups stay underfunded. PwC estimates that the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar invested around $3.49 billion in climate tech outside the region, compared with just $35 million locally. The firm calls it a missed opportunity to nurture homegrown innovation. North Star aims to reverse that pattern by drawing global investors toward regional pilots and giving policymakers a direct view of the innovation pipeline.

Dubai builds the ecosystem

The Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy, which hosts the event with Dubai World Trade Centre, has been clear about its purpose. “Expand North Star accelerates growth, helps companies leverage Dubai as a launchpad to reach global markets, and cements Dubai’s digital ecosystem as the best place to scale bold new ideas,” a chamber statement reads. The government is backing those words with results. In the first quarter of this year, the chamber helped establish and expand 127 startups in Dubai, a one hundred and thirty-five per cent year-on-year increase.

From waste to watts

Inside the exhibition halls, the challenges are tangible. Water stress, organic waste, grid stability and material efficiency dominate the agenda. The responses are equally concrete: smart leak detection systems, modular biogas units for hotels, and solar-storage microgrids for logistics hubs. A signature example stands outside the exhibition itself. Dubai’s Warsan facility processes one point nine million tonnes of municipal waste each year and generates roughly 200 megawatts of electricity, enough for one hundred and twenty thousand households. It is real infrastructure that gives circular-economy founders something solid to reference when pitching city clients.

Investors look for substance

The venture community is out in force. Green funds and generalist investors are chasing ventures that combine infrastructure scale with software efficiency. North Star’s Green Impact zone promotes direct access to “impact and ESG investors actively backing climate tech,” plus matching with accelerators and sustainability programmes. The broader GITEX Green Impact initiative complements it, hosting clean-energy innovators and policymakers in sessions covering technology for net zero, ESG in finance and the energy transition. Founders pitch. Regulators set direction. Investors look for credible execution.

Abu Dhabi adds depth

The push extends beyond Dubai. Abu Dhabi’s Hub71+ ClimateTech is building a specialised track with incentives and an open marketplace for sustainable solutions. “The climate agenda is very important to the leadership of the UAE. So we identified it to be a priority sector which we want to enable,” said Ahmad Ali Alwan, chief executive of Hub71. Masdar’s Catalyst accelerator, a partnership with BP, remains the region’s first sustainability-focused programme. “The Catalyst is looking to empower startups who want to change the world through sustainable, clean tech and AI,” said Stephen Severance of Masdar City.

Policy meets entrepreneurship

Officials are using the week to connect innovation to national policy. “Expand North Star will act as a strategic catalyst to expand the future of the digital economy, reflecting what GITEX Global is to the global technology industry,” said Omar Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence. The Dubai Chamber calls the event a platform that “turns ideas into global enterprises” and aligns it with the D33 agenda for the digital economy. The physical footprint of GITEX and North Star now spans Dubai World Trade Centre and Dubai Harbour, with organisers calling the 2025 edition the largest in its history.

From pledges to performance

Innovation alone will not bridge the climate gap. Procurement, transparency and trust will. Expo City Dubai offers a glimpse of that shift. The city, built as a living sustainability model, is hosting leadership forums to explore how buyers can drive decarbonisation through smarter procurement and measurement. “Decarbonisation is the common thread that runs through our entire sustainability strategy,” Expo City says, committing to net zero by 2050 and positioning itself as a testbed for greener urban models.

The credibility question

Corporate climate commitments still face scrutiny, and the only solution is reliable data. Global reports warn of a persistent gap between climate pledges and actual projects. That is where digital sustainability gains meaning. Automated measurement and verification tools can reduce friction for both investors and regulators. GITEX’s strength in software makes it the right venue for that conversation. It attracts founders who merge sensors, analytics and compliance into systems cities can afford to adopt.

Why Dubai and why now

Few regions combine capital, infrastructure and political will the way the UAE does. The country’s leadership has turned its global events into live laboratories for policy and innovation. The chamber’s tenth-anniversary outreach describes North Star as more than a showcase. It is a matchmaking engine connecting founders with investors, corporates and export routes across the Gulf, Africa and Asia. That practical, international approach is turning Dubai into the default marketplace for the world’s climate-tech entrepreneurs.

Turning ideas into action

The stories likely to linger from this year are the ones that make innovation feel immediate. A circular-economy platform that powers hotel digesters from kitchen waste. A grid-visibility tool that allows logistics hubs to balance rooftop solar and battery storage. A desalination sensor that cuts energy use per litre by double digits. None of these are moonshots. They are measurable, fundable and replicable models that can scale across borders.

The optimism of builders

The final word goes to the organisers who have made climate innovation a central theme.

“By connecting startups, investors and industry leaders from around the world, Expand North Star accelerates growth and helps companies leverage Dubai as a launchpad to reach global markets,” the chamber says.

Omar Al Olama’s message carries the same conviction. A startup event can indeed be an economic catalyst — and in a year of record energy-transition spending paired with persistent funding gaps, Dubai’s optimism feels earned.

Innovation may not close the entire climate gap. But as this year’s GITEX and North Star prove, it can close enough of it to matter.

• The Climate Tech Snapshot

• $2 trillion – Global low-carbon transition investment in 2023

• $631 million – Sustainability funding raised by Mena

• $3.49 billion – Climate-tech capital invested by the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia outside Mena

• 200 megawatts — power generated annually by Dubai’s Warsan Waste-to-Energy facility

• 2050 – Target year for Expo City Dubai’s net-zero emissions goal

Sana Eqbal

Staff Writer

• 

sana@khaleejtimes.com

Sana Eqbal is a journalist with over 10 years of experience and a media strategist specialising in corporate communications, public relations, digital media, and content management.