The Brief: Moneyball meets climate policy in this week’s elections

Greetings Agents of Impact!

In today’s Brief:

• Spotting opportunities for climate impact in local elections
• Adding nature conservation to retirement funds in the UK
• Modular affordable housing in South LA 
• Finding the intersection of media and impact investing

Featured: Policy Corner

Using data to identify climate champions for state and local offices (Q&A). As a financial analyst for a solar developer, Caroline Spears saw how state policies could make, or break, clean energy projects. Local elections have “real consequences on people’s ability to live with clean air and clean water and low electricity bills and affordable transit options,” she says. That’s especially true with a climate-hostile administration in the White House. Spears now leads Climate Cabinet, a nonprofit that works to identify and elect “climate champions” to utility commissions, state, city and other local government positions across the US. Spears calls the strategy “Moneyball meets climate policy,” after the data analytics strategy used by former Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane to identify undervalued talent and transform the team. Instead of calculating on-base percentage, Climate Cabinet uses data science and AI to find opportunities for the most climate impact at the local level.

The San Francisco-based nonprofit, which operates as both a PAC and a Super PAC, has backed a slate of candidates in this week’s off-year elections, including Susan Crawford, who won a hotly contested race for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Climate Cabinet’s “high priority” candidates for the city council in Naperville, Ill., were ahead at press time. Since 2018, Climate Cabinet has supported more than 500 candidates. It is nonpartisan, as are many of the races it endorses. The A’s, now playing in Sacramento, are off to a so-so start (maybe they need a torpedo bat?), but Climate Cabinet claims a success rate as high as 75%. ImpactAlpha contributor Clint Wilder spoke with Spears about the elevated importance of state and local policy with federal climate action under siege. Some highlights:

• Local impact. “We have always believed that state and local action is the path toward achieving our climate goals, and I know this personally,” says Spears. Her former employer, Cypress Creek Renewables, where she worked in project finance, built more than 60 solar projects in Massachusetts, but none is sunnier Arizona. The difference, she found, came down to policy. “States can create or destroy entire clean energy markets, that is within their power,” she says. Similarly, public utility policies can be the difference between a project penciling out or not. “Under-the-radar opportunities can have a huge impact,” she says.
  
• Votes, not vibes. Voting records and windows of pro-climate opportunity, not politics, guide the Climate Cabinet’s decision making. “That’s what we come back to every time,” says Spears. “How have you voted to build the clean energy economy? How have you voted to reduce air pollution, solve climate change?” Climate Cabinet ranks candidates on two axes, climate impact and winnability. “Climate champion” Virginia state Representative Michael Feggans, an Air Force veteran and electric car buff, helped block environmentally harmful bills and pass one requiring the government to assess the lifetime costs of procured vehicles, a calculation that favors EVs. In Columbia, Mo., Climate Cabinet endorsed Mayor Barbara Buffaloe in her 2022 election. Buffaloe, now chair of the sustainability working group of the National Conference of Mayors, inked clean energy contracts for the city-controlled utility and eased permitting to electrify buildings.
  
• Keep reading, “Using data to identify climate champions for state and local offices (Q&A),” by Clint Wilder on ImpactAlpha. 

Dealflow: Impact Credit

Legal & General offers retirement savers access to emerging markets impact investing. The UK-based financial services firm has a $1 billion portfolio of impact products geared towards emerging markets. A new debt strategy focused on nature conservation and social infrastructure will be open to defined-contribution retirement account holders in the UK. The Nature and Social Outcomes fund invests in marine, forestry and habitat conservation, as well as health, education and water projects in emerging markets. L&G seeded the initiative with $235 million from two of its multi-asset retirement funds. The strategy offers clients “exposure to a fast-growing and impactful part of the global debt market,” said L&G’s Jesal Mistry. He added that it addresses a “need to unlock financing where it is often most needed with the aim of delivering positive returns for members in retirement.”

• Private credit. L&G’s launch aligns with two trends: investor interest in impact credit opportunities, and private fund managers eagerness to tap the massive retail investor market (for background see, “Larry Fink’s private path to economic populism”). Research and data is debunking long-held misperceptions of emerging markets investment risk, particularly for debt. The fund’s first deal was an investment in Ecuador’s second debt-for-nature swap, which is refinancing $1.5 billion of the country’s sovereign debt and freeing up $460 million for nature preservation. L&G’s investment – and its client’s retirement savings – benefit from guarantees and credit insurance to minimize risk.
  
• Conservation finance. L&G was an early backer of debt-for-nature swaps, investing in Ecuador’s first swap and similar deals in Gabon and Belize. Its emerging markets impact portfolio also includes $350 million for use-of-proceeds bonds for water, renewable energy, housing, education and other social infrastructure in Africa and Eastern Europe. And it committed $100 million to ImpactA Global, a women-led debt provider for emerging market infrastructure projects.

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SoLa Impact secures $12 million for South LA affordable housing. The funding will go toward a new affordable housing development in South LA’s Vermont Square neighborhood, a low-income and historically Black neighborhood sited in an Opportunity Zone tract. The $63 million project is being developed by local real estate firm SoLa Impact, led by Martin Muoto, a Nigerian born entrepreneur and investor who has been acquiring and rehabbing low-income housing in South LA since 2008 (see, Agent of Impact). The equity injection came from the AIC CEI-Boulos Opportunity Fund, a joint venture of Maine-based real estate fund manager CEI-Boulos Capital Management and Allivate Impact Capital, which invests in Opportunity Zones.

• Modular build. Model/Z, a modular construction company founded by Muoto and his SoLa Impact co-founder Gray Lusk, will build prefabricated units at a South LA factory for the project at West 43rd St. and Vermont Ave. “By leveraging Model/Z modular units, we can do this faster, more cost-effectively and much more sustainably,” said Muoto. The approach was hailed by new Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner, who visited Model/Z’s factory last week. “The thoughtfulness that has gone into Model/Z, from the people that you hired, the expertise, and then the precision by which these are produced – I’m just amazed,” Turner told Muoto. The US is four million homes short of meeting national demand, a gap that has nearly doubled over the past decade. Model/Z employs 150 local factory workers at fair wages to build the modular units. 

• Subsidized rents. The SoLa Impact project will create 188 units of affordable housing, with priority for locals who have experienced homelessness, a challenge exacerbated by the recent wildfires that swept through LA. SoLa Impact will leverage Section 8 vouchers to subsidize their rents. Most of the units will be restricted to renters earning less than 80% of the area’s median income and that affordability covenant will remain in place for 55 years. SoLa Impact’s nonprofit affiliate, SoLa Foundation, will partner with other nonprofits to provide financial education and job training and placement to residents.
  
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Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

• France’s Removall Carbon and Japan’s Sumitomo Corp. launched Summit Removall to spur investment in nature-based projects worldwide. The partners’ first investment is in a mangrove reforestation project in Mozambique. (Sumitomo Corp.)

• Ultium Cells, an EV manufacturing partnership between South Korea’s LG Energy Solution and General Motors, is selling $2 billion of its assets to LG Energy’s US subsidiary. General Motors is scaling back its involvement due to uncertainties in EV production and government incentives. (Reuters)

• Finnish startup Fiberdom, which uses wood fiber as a substitute for plastic packaging, raised €3.5 million ($3.8 million) from Finnish food and beverage company Heino Group and other investors. (Tech.eu)
  
• Lafayette Square made a strategic investment in and refinanced debt for Edison, NJ-based Daida, an enterprise content management services company. (Daida)

Signals: Creative Economy

For investors, media remains an overlooked opportunity for impact and financial returns. Growth in the number of impactful titles, production studios and entertainment companies is not being met by an increase in impact-focused capital, according to Upstart Co-Lab, which shared its latest research with ImpactAlpha. The nonprofit last year raised $15 million for its Inclusive Creative Economy Strategy to invest in companies and funds across the creative industries. To deploy the capital, Upstart reviewed 50 investment funds for a cross-section of media and social impact, “but could not find a single one we will invest in,” Upstart’s Laura Callanan tells ImpactAlpha. Funds investing in media lack a focus on impact, while most self-described impact funds are not investing in entertainment. That’s a missed opportunity, says Callanan. Funds with goals around access and inclusion, quality jobs, community development, and environmental sustainability “can deliver the impact you seek through the media and entertainment industry without compromising on financial returns,” Upstart argues.

• Capital gap. Filmmaker Ava Duvernay mobilized a blend of philanthropic financing for her film, Origin. Impact investing platform LOHAS has teamed up with Cinelaunch to match impact-driven films to financing from donor-advised funds. Making Space, a media talent acquisition company for people with disabilities, is backed only by impact investors (including Upstart). “These examples are the exception and can be misleading, suggesting there is more impact capital actively targeting media and entertainment than there is,” Upstart’s research shows.

• Strong signals. Some impact funds have made one-off investments in media. Supply Change Capital backed food culture-focused Whetstone Media. BBG Ventures invested in Latino-owned Canela Media. And Radix Innovation Capital got behind film-lending platform FilmHedge. A number of emerging managers, acknowledges Upstart, are also zeroing in on the opportunity. Upstart suggests to foundations investing in media: “Do not do it alone or only partner with other philanthropic institutions. Invite impact funds to invest alongside you.”
  
• ICYMI: Impact and sustainability themes are infiltrating the box office as well as the small screen. To bring more attention and scrutiny to these storytelling efforts, ImpactAlpha has launched Pop Impact with contributor Dmitriy Ioselevich, a Rotten Tomatoes-style column that reviews the buzziest films and streaming series. Check out Dmitriy’s Pop Impact reviews. 

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Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Fathia Murphy steps down as head of ESG solutions for Swiss financial services firm SIX to launch Fractional Impact Partners, an ESG advisory firm for corporate sustainability reporting and product development… Apis & Heritage Capital Partners welcomes Tobi Adewodu, previously with Morgan Stanley, as associate director… Anna Fogel, previously with the US Department of Health and Human Services, returns to Social Finance as a senior advisor… SustainVC promotes Kendall Bedford to senior associate.

Inatai Foundation seeks a strategy and impact program officer in the state of Washington… Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is looking for a public investments analyst in New Jersey… Brookfield Renewable is hiring an asset development manager in New York… Also in New York, Arup is recruiting a sustainable investment advisory manager, and Global Impact Investing Network has an opening for a human resources associate… Capital Impact Partners is on the hunt for community development lending interns in San Diego, Oakland and Los Angeles.

The Principles for Responsible Investment is looking for a progression and innovation specialist, a sustainable financial system associate, and a digital marketing associate in London… FMO is recruiting an associate for agribusiness, food and forestry in the Netherlands… Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is on the hunt for a climate investment associate in Beijing… Viriti Capital has an opening for a sustainability specialist in Mumbai.

The Investment Integration Project is hosting its fourth annual “Symposium on System-level Investing” in New York and on Zoom, Tuesday, April 8. Request to attend in-person or register for the Zoom link… The Aspen Institute and Rutgers University’s Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing are co-hosting their third annual “Employee Ownership Ideas Forum,” online and in person in Washington, DC, April 9-10.

👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.

Thank you for your impact!

– April 2, 2025