Mapping the significance of green venture capital for sustainable development: A systematic review and future research agenda

Sustainable Development has become a key concern throughout the world after the United Nations set 2030 as the SDGs deadline. A lot of concerted efforts have already been taken and currently undergoing to combat the global menace of climate change, carbon dioxide removal, adoption of renewable energy, and many more. All of these cannot be achieved with the sole support of public funds or traditional sources of finance. This is where venture capital (VC) steps in and fulfill the gap. Over the past few years, VCs have also been channelizing their investment flows as per the 'triple bottom line' towards startups and businesses which comes under the aspect of cleantech, sustainable entrepreneurship, technological innovations, green innovation, and sustainability. These VCs which focus on environmental protection are the Green Venture Capital (GVC). This research study provides a holistic overview of the available literature to highlight the significance of GVCs for attaining sustainable development. The present study has summarized 179 research articles from the time period 2002 to 2022 through a systematic literature review. The research articles gave four major thematic clusters, namely- Tran-sition towards GVC, GVC and Cleantech, GVC and Sustainability, and Policy-Push for GVC. The present study provides a brief summary of these themes and the future research directions which can be explored.