This paper looks at the climate policy question of whether early investments in low-carbon technologies are a useful first step towards a more effective climate agreement in the future. It introduces a climate cooperation model with endogenous research and development (R&D) investments, where countries protect their international competitiveness via border carbon adjustments (BCA). It is argues that BCA raises the scope for cooperation and leads to non-trivial relation between countries’ prior R&D investments and participation in the coalition. We find that early investments in R&D render free-riding more attractive. Therefore, with delayed cooperation on emission abatement and ex-ante R&D investments, the outcome is often characterized by high participation but inefficiently low technology investments and abatement.