ImpactAlpha Open

Climate VCs mobilize co-investments + Acumen’s blend of capital for the hardest to reach

Dennis Price · September 16, 2025

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In this week’s Open:

  • Coalition of climate VCs mobilize to scale climate tech
  • Community-owned “DePIN” networks lower the costs of connectivity
  • Podcast: How Acumen’s Jacqueline Novogratz is blending capital to bring electricity to the hardest to reach.
  • Carbon Collective’s Zach Stein on the Trump-era oil stock side

Let’s jump in. – Dennis Price

Must-reads on ImpactAlpha

  • All Aboard Coalition mobilizes co-investments in climate tech as federal funding falters. “Move fast and scale things.” That could be the motto for the newly launched All Aboard Coalition, which is looking to mobilize $300 million or more to co-invest alongside top climate tech venture capital firms in startups building their first commercial plants. The vision: A new crop of multibillion-dollar climate unicorns able to cut carbon emissions by the gigaton. Learn more.
  • The DePIN model for digital infrastructure: Decentralized and community owned. Althea, a decentralized internet protocol, is allowing communities to pool resources and build wireless networks where fiber providers won’t invest. Such decentralized physical infrastructure networks, or DePINs, “represents the next frontier for impact investors,” Renee Pinto da Silva Barton of the Crypto Council for Innovation writes in a guest post. Hear her out.
  • Fashion brands step into the aid gap to back regenerative cotton in Peru’s Amazon. When USAID pulled out of a sustainable cotton project in Peru’s Amazon, Lululemon stepped up. The athletic apparel giant is not just a buyer of premium cotton, but a funder of the regenerative cotton company Cotton Nation, which works with more than 2,500 smallholder farming families in 150 communities to produce eco-friendly cotton. Keep reading.

Agents of Impact

🏃 On the move

  • The University of Chicago’s Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth welcomed Kristina Costa, previously with Brookings Institution, as managing director of policy and strategic engagement. 
  • Zeal Capital Partners added AlignPact’s Tom Blaisdell as senior advisor.
  • Quadria Capital tapped Alykhan Nathoo as operating advisor and member of its investment committee.

The Week’s Spotlight

🛢️ Why are oil stocks down under Trump?

In a private Mar-a-Lago dinner before last year’s election, Donald Trump touted the “deal” oil executives would get for donating $1 billion to his campaign in future savings, tax reductions and deregulation. One of his first executive orders declared a “national energy emergency” to push for more oil and gas drilling and boost fossil fuels. “Drill, baby, drill” has become the administration’s mantra. That makes the layoffs and sagging stock prices of oil and gas companies all the more perplexing. Or not. In his latest column, Carbon Collective’s Zach Stein breaks down the economics and structural shifts behind the oil industry’s woes. 

The Week’s Podcasts

🎧 This Week in Impact

Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: The All Aboard Coalition’s effort to mobilize $300 million for venture capital co-investments in first of a kind climate-tech deployments; fashion brands stepping up to finance sustainable supply chains; and how decentralized physical infrastructure networks, or DePINs, can support sustainable and affordable community services.

🦸 Agents of Impact: How Acumen’s Jacqueline Novogratz is blending capital to bring electricity to the hardest to reach. The nearly two dozen investors in Acumen’s $250 million Hardest-to-Reach Fund for the world’s 700 million people without electricity range from philanthropic to concessionary to commercial. “At the end of the day, there’s a blueprint for what the private sector can do with the right incentives,” Acumen’s Jacqueline Novogratz explains on ImpactAlpha’s latest Agents of Impact podcast. . LEA porn video

More highlights from the ImpactAlpha Podcast Network:

🏘️ Community Capital Live: Financing a fairer food system with Justin Abbiss. From regenerative farmers to local grocers and brewers, the Fair Finance Fund is closing capital gaps for small-scale food and farm businesses in Ontario. “Our favorite part of the work is understanding the real problems our clients face – cash flow, operations – and making sure they can thrive,” says Justin Abbiss on the latest Community Capital Live.

📯 The Criterion Institute Podcast: Host Joy Anderson is joined by co-workers Sanjana Chhantyal and Susie Pan to discuss Criterion’s report on the future of gender lens investing and preview Criterion’s upcoming Convergence conference and the collective opportunities to advance innovation, imagination and systemic change in gender-lens investing.

Get in the Game

💼 Step up

  • Brookfield Asset Management is seeking an ESG & risk management director in Toronto.
  • Pivotal Ventures is looking for an investments platform manager in Washington, DC.
  • UC Berkeleyis hiring a sustainable and impact finance lecturer in Berkeley.

Dozens of job opportunities are available to subscribers each week on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.

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