The Week in Impact Investing: Love as courage

TGIF, Agents of Impact! We’ll be taking a Brief break to honor the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a holiday in the US. We’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday, Jan. 21.

In today’s Brief:

• Roundup: Love as courage
• Podcast: Insurance meltdown in the LA fires 
• Spotlight: Jigar Shah’s last stand

🗣 Core virtues. President Biden, in his last primetime speaking slot from the Oval Office, offered possibilities as “the one word that defines America.” But his surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, in his own parting prescription, suggested an edgier alternative: Love. “To build community requires love,” Murthy wrote in his 5,000-word elegy to relationships, service and purpose. “Love not as sentimentality, but as a commanding force with the power to build, strengthen, and heal. Love as generosity and kindness. Love as hope and grace. Love as courage.” That’s as good a unifying theme as any for a weekend that spans the college football championship and the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., the inauguration of Donald Trump and the start of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, the possible end of TikTok and the possible start of a ceasefire, finally, in the brutal war in Gaza.

Love is sustaining the people of Los Angeles, where the fires still burn. This week, Roodgally Senatus and David wrote about firetech solutions that can help but not heal, and Climate Proof’s Louie Woodall laid out the wildfire math that is pushing California’s insurance market to the brink. It’s easy to be alarmed by the arrival of an administration that has pledged to roll back the social and climate progress of the past few years, and by banks and asset managers that are beating a retreat from their net-zero goals. “An oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence,” Biden warned in his farewell address, calling out a “tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers to our country.” And it’s easy to hate on Davos, that cliché of corporate globalism (Trump will beam in via satellite on Thursday). “But it is the one place where people from left and right, from business, government & civil society do come together for dialogue,” says Climate Equity’s Saskia Bruysten, who says she is on the hunt for ”solutions rather than political polarization.”

Solutions, of course, are the stock in trade of Agents of Impact. Jenny Berg and Inês Charro of Education Finance Network sketched how outcomes-based financing is changing education in Colombia, Argentina and India. The Emerging Africa & Asia Infrastructure Fund is taking what it learned blending financing for renewable energy and social infrastructure in Africa to make loans for commercial and industrial solar in Vietnam and sustainable aviation fuel in Pakistan, as ImpactAlpha’s Lucy Ngige reported. Open Road Impact’s Caroline Bressan made an impassioned plea to stand up for impact-first capital as Open Road converts to a nonprofit fund. There are signs that impact fundraising could defy the slump in private equity, where the lack of exits is limiting new allocations, writes ImpactAlpha’s Snehal Shah. In his speech, Biden warned of the threats of artificial intelligence and the “avalanche of misinformation and disinformation.” Bioengineering and gene editing present risks as well, but as Amy Cortese reports, the possibility of reviving the tundra-stomping woolly mammoth is pretty damn cool. “Let us never forget that good people with hearts full of love can change the world,” Murthy pleads. “A community grounded in love is a community that will stand.” – David Bank and Dennis Price.

The Week’s Podcast

🎧 This Week in Impact. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: The LA wildfires put a spotlight on wildfire prevention tech and California’s fragile insurance market; the potential of outcomes-based financing to drive systemic change in education; and Colossal Biosciences’ $200 million raise to revive the wooly mammoth, the dodo bird and other extinct species.

• Listen to the new episode of This Week in Impact. Get the podcast in your feed by subscribing on Apple or Spotify.

The Week’s Deal Spotlight

Jigar Shah’s $30 billion final clean tech push. In the last days of the Biden administration, the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office finalized two high-profile clean tech loans. The financing, totaling more than $8 billion, went to electric vehicle maker Rivian and green hydrogen developer Plug Power. The Loan Programs Office also pushed out nearly $23 billion in conditional loans to a half-dozen electric utilities to support energy generation, transmission and grid modernization in 12 states. The LPO, helmed by climate tech veteran Jigar Shah, makes loans and guarantees for innovative climate tech companies looking to build their first plants in order to provide a “bridge to bankability” (listen to our 2022 podcast). Under the Inflation Reduction Act, LPO’s lending authority was boosted from $40 billion to $400 billion. President-elect Trump has promised to claw back unspent funds from the Biden administration’s sweeping climate legislation. Among its top targets: LPO’s unspent billions and any loans and guarantees conditioned on technical, legal, environmental, and financial milestones (see, “Energy Department’s new climate narrative: Creating jobs, lowering prices and beating China”).

• Time to build. The nearly $6.6 billion loan to Rivian will help the EV maker construct a nine million square foot manufacturing plant in Georgia that could churn out 400,000 mid-sized SUVs. The plant is expected to support 2,000 full-time construction jobs and 7,500 operations jobs through 2030, with one-quarter of the jobs drawn from the local community. Latham, New York-based Plug Power will leverage its $1.7 billion loan guarantee to build a half-dozen facilities to produce clean hydrogen to power fuel cell-electric vehicles for companies such as Amazon, Walmart and Home Depot. Plug Power’s electrolyzers are designed to operate with variable energy, making them well suited for intermittent solar and wind power.
  
• Scaling partner. The LPO has played an important role in providing low-cost loans to clean tech companies to take critical next-generation technologies to commercial production. “Building a car company, building an energy company, these are businesses that take a tremendous amount of capital,” Rivian founder RJ Scaringe said in a conversation with Shah at LPO’s Deploy conference in December. “The role of the Department of Energy is the scaling partner.” The Rivian and Plug Power loans bring LPO’s finalized loan count to at least 17 loans totaling some $22 billion.
  
• Share this post. Catch up on all of this week’s dealflow reporting.

The Week’s Talent and Jobs

💼 See and share more than a dozen new impact jobs posted this week on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub and view hundreds of more jobs in impact investing and sustainable finance. Have a job listing to post? Submit it here.

GSG Impact added new board of trustee members including Impact Finance Belgium’s Steven Seerneels, Royston Braganza of Grameen Impact Investments India, and Austin Mwape of Absa Bank Zambia… TruFund Financial Services promoted Kim Carter Evans to executive vice president and chief operating officer… Mercia Geises from Standard Bank Namibia was tapped to become CEO of Namibia Hydrogen Fund Managers, which is co-owned by Climate Fund Managers, the Environmental Investment Fund of Namibia, and Invest International.

Narina Mnatsakanian, former head of impact investing at UBS Asset Management, joined Regeneration.VC as partner and chief impact officer… US SIF appointed Jennifer Coombs, previously with Ethos ESG, as head of content and development… New York-based energy transition investment firm Captona added Brydne Slattery, previously with Onyx Renewable Partners, as general counsel… Sara Blenkhorn stepped down as interim managing director of Social Venture Network. 

The Rockefeller Foundation welcomed Lyana Latorre as vice president of program strategy for the Latin America and Caribbean region… Spearmint Energy recruited Michael Weinstein, previously with SunPower Corporation, as senior vice president and head of investor relations… Impact Seed added Heidi Mippy of Curtin University in Australia as a board member… Nicolle Richards, previously with Gary Community Ventures, joined Climate United as a senior investment officer.

Cambridge Associates promoted Justin Fligstein to senior investment associate… Renat Heuberger, part-time chairman of MPower Ventures, launched sustainable investment firm Terra Impact Ventures… Reinvestment Fund welcomed Henry Feinstein, previously with Anavi Strategies, as a policy analyst… Aligned Climate Capital promoted Julia Magliozzo to vice president… Af Hernandez, previously with NextEra Energy, joined Azolla Ventures as a principal… Tracker Group appointed Christine Chow, a former UBS managing director, as its inaugural CEO.

Maximilian Macini, previously with Ilara Health, joined Stanford GSB Impact Fund as a healthcare investor… Overture added Leila Perbay, a former director at EQT Ventures, as a principal. The firm also added Allison Hinckley, previously with F-Prime Capital, as a senior principal… Beatrice Advisors, an independent, woman- and minority-owned multi-family office, tapped Peter Lupoff, previously with Lupoff/Stevens Family Office and Net Impact as a partner. Merv Burton, a former managing director at Carnegie Corporation of New York, also joined the firm as a partner.

Co-Impact added Saadia Madsbjerg, Flagship Pioneering’s Raj Panjabi and Ford Foundation’s Hilary Pennington to its board of directors… Conscious Investment Management recruited Laurie Berrange, previously a responsible investing director with Inspire Impact, as a Sydney-based director… Cooperative Development Foundation welcomed Michelle Schry of the National Co-op Grocers and Spartan Housing Cooperative’s Holly Jo Sparks as board members. 

Nonprofit Finance Fund added Neha Shah, head of community development lending at Charles Schwab, as a board member… Adebayo Ogunlesi, who joined BlackRock last year after the private equity giant acquired his firm Global Infrastructure Partners, is joining OpenAI’s board of directors… Tom Adlam joined Investisseurs & Parternaires’ Financing for Agri-SMEs in Africa, or FASA, as an investment committee member… The Workforce & Organizational Research Center, or WORC, tapped Ruth Turoff, previously with Primary Maternity Care, as project director.

That’s a wrap. Have a wonderful weekend. 

– Jan. 17, 2025