Backing innovation

Climate Investment looks for opportunities that can deliver strong, quantified GHG impact and an attractive risk-adjusted return. Our funds have their own targets for impact and returns.

We believe that the climate challenge can be addressed through investment in innovative companies and driving their accelerated adoption to achieve global impact at scale.

Since our establishment, we have built a differentiated platform to deliver the capital efficient solutions needed for the decarbonization of high emitting sectors.

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How we invest in early-stage companies
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How we invest in growth-stage companies

Why investwith us?

There are many capital allocators.
Why choose us? Here are a few reasons.

When you invest with us, you join a differentiated platform that believes the climate challenge can be addressed through innovation and accelerated adoption of capital efficient decarbonization solutions.

Climate Investment has built a business model to deliver scaled impact. We proactively support our portfolio companies through their growth stages to drive their success, provide access and insights to our investors and innovators that can help achieve their low carbon commitments, and collaborate widely so we can all realize our decarbonization goals.

We work with our large, global network to accelerate the adoption of our portfolio companies’ innovations, which enhances their commercial success and ensures our decarbonization objectives are met.

Rigour is applied through our investment process which is guided by the quantified impact potential of an opportunity. We share our impact measurement methodology with our portfolio companies and help them operationalize their reporting.

Access and insights

We believe our Investment team is differentiated in two key aspects: access and insights.

  • As a specialized decarbonization investor, we have a proven ability to originate new investment opportunities. Our extensive networks within our sectors of focus provide valuable introductions and investment referrals, including from investees, co-investors, and member companies. We believe that our demonstrated ability to deliver both capital and engaged post-investment growth support creates demand from companies seeking investment.
  • We have considerable experience and capabilities in effectively evaluating and executing deal flow introduced by investors and other intermediaries, as well as managing co-investment opportunities. Working through our investors’ Investment Champions, we can explore and understand customer opportunity gaps to ensure we are pursuing market-based solutions.

Our Investment team benefits from broad operational, technical and entrepreneurial experience along with deep principal investing experience. These skills are further supported through collaboration with our Technology and Commercialization colleagues and underpin our confidence and credibility to act as a lead investor in investments.

We provide patient capital and look to participate in the capital expansion of our investees throughout their growth cycles. Rigorous capital forecasting forms part of our engaged model which is focused on maximizing impact and commercial success.

A systems-thinking approach is required, in our view, to deliver capital-efficient, low-cost decarbonization solutions. We invest across a wide range of sectors, actively seeking out innovations that can expand into adjacent markets.

Our access, insights, patience, and value-chain perspective are delivering results. Portfolio companies in our Catalyst Fund I are growing and delivering impact, with the overall portfolio delivering more than 57 MT of CO2e1 emissions reductions between 2019-2022.

*Carbon dioxide equivalent or CO₂ equivalent is a metric measure used to compare the emissions from various greenhouse gases on the basis of their global-warming potential (GWP), by converting amounts of other gases to the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide with the same global warming potential. MT means million tonnes. 2019-2022 cumulative emissions are calendar year and prepared internally in consultation with our portfolio companies.

Portfolio construction

Impact potential underpins our investment approach. We invest in venture capital and growth equity stage companies that can demonstrate significant reduction in methane or carbon dioxide emissions (CO2), carbon capture, recycling and/or storage, and which can be scaled and deliver material impact in the near term.

CI takes a holistic approach to decarbonization. This includes solutions that integrate digital with physical innovation because we believe those can deliver the most efficient, low-emitting results.

For example, our methane reduction portfolio includes companies that detect, measure and mitigate emissions; our CO2 emissions reduction portfolio includes smart digital solutions that monitor and optimize real-time energy usage across a company’s plants; and our carbon dioxide recycling and storing portfolio has technologies and innovations to either safely store away emitted gases or turn them into useful products.

We currently invest principally in North America and Europe, and also China through our investment in China Climate Investments. Our team is actively opening opportunities in other investment regions within Asia and expects to cover more markets as low-carbon innovation evolves and matures.

CI provides capital at different stages to maximize impact and financial returns potential and often participates in the capital expansion of our investees. This enables us to fund early-stage opportunities as well as provide growth capital to companies with proven technologies and business models that have achieved initial commercialization and are on the cusp of greater adoption that may propel their emissions reduction impact delivery.

*Throughout this website, Climate Investment, CI, We and Our are used interchangeably. Please refer to the Terms of Use for additional information. Hyperlinks to external websites throughout this website are for informational purposes only and our Terms of Use apply.

Our three core themes:

Methane is responsible for more than a quarter of global warming. Methane molecules are more absorptive, with up to 100 times the short-term warming effect of carbon dioxide. But methane stays in the atmosphere for a much shorter time, with a half-life of approximately a decade. So, reducing methane emissions can result in an important near-term reduction in the pace of global warming.

Carbon dioxide is a particularly stable molecule and it lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. CO₂ is both generated and absorbed by nature, but our society has increased the amount that is being emitted to a level where it has not been fully accommodated by natural ecosystems, leading to a surging concentration of CO₂. More than half the energy the world produces is wasted due to inefficiency. Therefore, increasing efficiency is a great way to reduce CO₂ emissions.

Carbon capture, recycling and/or storage (CCUS) platforms capture carbon dioxide from power generation and industrial facilities, or directly from the atmosphere. The captured CO₂ can then either be used in many applications or injected deep underground for permanent storage. CCUS is an important transition technology as well as a long-term solution for high-emitting sectors. The world needs to reduce GHG emissions through energy and process efficiency and use CCUS for the remaining GHG emissions that cannot be abated otherwise.

Insights platform

Our innovators and investors have exclusive access to our Insights Platform where we are building an extensive practical resources hub covering global regulatory and incentives policies and frameworks; third-party, as well as CIimate Investment and OGCI research papers covering markets, sectors, technology innovation, business models etc.

We also plan an exchange area where our innovators will be able to share and interact with one another’s published media; business development best practice guidance; and access expert network listings of key professional services firms.

The platform will also be a hub for our portfolio companies’ current vacancies along with an awards, events and conference tracker that those innovators may enter, exhibit or present at.  

 

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