ImpactAlpha LP/GP: European pensions back climate funds in the name of energy security

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Welcome to this week’s ImpactAlpha LP/GP, where we take you inside the real business of impact investing and the dynamic relationships between owners, managers and intermediaries of impact capital.

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In this week’s newsletter:

• European pensions back climate funds in the name of energy security
• On Edge: More than two dozen European pension funds investing for impact
• Funds for insurance access in Latin America and entrepreneurs in Africa 
• Converting single-family homes to local ownership, brick by brick

Featured: Institutional LPs

Oil shock opens pension fund checkbooks for Europe’s climate – er, ‘energy security’ – fund managers. While the conflict with Iran has choked off the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, it has opened the tap from European pension funds and other investors capitalizing on the increased urgency of the continent’s energy security. Clean energy and other infrastructure project developers, along with climate tech fund managers, are suddenly finding a more welcoming reception from institutional investors in Europe, even as dealmaking in the Middle East has stalled (see, “Middle East sovereign wealth financed massive green investments. Now what?”) European pension funds have long invested in offshore wind and solar for their green credentials. Geopolitical volatility – from the war in Ukraine to the escalating conflict in the Middle East – means they can now claim vindication on the basis of increased resilience of renewable energy supplies. “Energy security and resilience have become increasingly important considerations alongside the green transition,” says Pernille Jessen at AP Pension, the Copenhagen-based manager of 179 billion Danish kroner ($27.7 billion) in occupational pension funds.

• Aging assets. AP Pension, along with PenSam and Lægernes Pension & Bank, together invested 3.3 billion Swedish kronor ($354 million) in Stockholm-based SEB Nordic Energy, which invests in battery storage, hydro and wind power assets in Nordic countries. Earlier this month, the fund acquired Hestenes Kraft, a small-scale Norwegian hydropower plant. SEB Nordic Energy also backs new developments, including a suite of battery storage projects in Sweden. The new funding brings SEB Nordic’s total to $674 million toward a target of $1.6 billion. The fund investment provides pension savers with “stable and predictable long-term returns” and helps ensure “a secure, future-proof Nordic energy sector,” PenSam’s Jeppe Starup tells ImpactAlpha.
  
• Energy security. The impact of earlier renewable energy investments in Europe is showing up in countries such as Spain, where Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has staked out an anti-war position while crowing over the country’s low energy prices in comparison with some of Spain’s neighbors. “Spain is showing how the energy transition and our commitment to renewables is ensuring our citizens, industry, businesses, workers and homes are less impacted than others,” Sánchez said last week. Denmark, which has clashed with US President Donald Trump over his threats to seize Greenland, also has an enviable renewable energy mix, getting more than half of its energy from wind, solar and biomass.
  
• Growth capital. This week, the European Investment Fund, Italian pension funds, CDP Venture Capital, family offices and corporations including steelmaker Lucchini RS, invested €85 million ($99 million) in Paris-based 360 Capital’s latest deep tech fund. The fund, Poli360 2, aims to commercialize technology developed in universities and labs, with a focus on Italy. In Switzerland, the Meili family office and other investors backed an €18 million debut climate tech fund from Vitamin C, which will invest in early-stage ventures in Europe and the US. Munich-based UVC Partners secured €77 million toward a €150 million goal for a new fund for growth-stage ventures in climate tech, robotics, “dual use” technology, AI and other sectors. The fund will help scale early-stage ventures in its portfolio, such as nuclear power producer Proxima Fusion (see, “European climate investors embrace growth-stage deals”).
  
• Keep reading, “Oil shock opens pension fund checkbooks for Europe’s climate, er, ‘energy security’ fund managers,” by Danielle Rossingh.

🟢 Live on Edge: European Pension Funds

More than two dozen European pensions are allocating to climate and impact funds. ImpactAlpha Edge is tracking more than two dozen European pension funds increasing their allocations to climate and impact funds. Swedish pension fund manager AP4 has backed Just Climate’s Industrial Climate Solutions Fund. Nordic pension fund KLP is an LP in Climate Fund Managers’ Climate Investor II. London CIV, which manages the pension assets of London’s local government pension schemes, backed Octopus Investments’ Affordable Housing Fund.

• View the collection of European pension funds on ImpactAlpha Edge.

Fund Raises: Emerging Markets 

Mundi Ventures raises $100 million from industry insiders for LatAm insurance fund. Despite a surge in digital financial and health services in Latin America, many individuals and businesses lack access to insurance coverage. “We look for companies solving real protection gaps in Latin America with products that are already showing evidence of demand,” Rafaela Andrade and Moises Sánchez of Madrid-based Mundi Ventures told ImpactAlpha. The venture capital firm raised $100 million in a first close of its first Latin America fund, which invests in tech companies expanding access to financial and health protection. The firm is targeting startups building proprietary infrastructure, data-driven underwriting and intelligent risk models to underpin new insurance products and models. “In a digital economy, resilience is built not only through insurance products, but also through the infrastructure, data, legal and cybersecurity layers that help people and businesses anticipate, absorb and recover from risk,” say Andrade and Sánchez

• Strategic partners. The fund raised capital from IDB Invest, COFIDES and regional insurance and financial institutions that “can strengthen and expand their core businesses – enhancing products, accelerating digital transformation and unlocking embedded distribution channels,” according to Mundi’s team. In the past decade, Mundi Ventures has grown to €1.5 billion ($1.7 billion) in assets under management and backed more than 70 tech firms worldwide. Its Latin America-based portfolio companies include Chile-based Betterfly, which partners with companies to provide employees with voluntary insurance. Puerto Rico-based Raincoat provides immediate payouts for hurricanes and other climate-related events. Sami in Brazil offers affordable health insurance to small businesses and individuals. “Our LPs help us refine our thesis and diligence,” Andrade and Sánchez said, “while our founders gain access to decision-makers, industry expertise and business development opportunities that many traditional VC firms simply cannot offer.”
  
• Check it out. 

Adenia closes Africa Entrepreneurial Fund at $180 million. The Mauritius-based private equity firm hit the hard cap for its first fund for African mid-sized businesses. International Finance Corp. anchored the Entrepreneurial Fund with $30 million, and was joined by the African Development Bank and other development finance institutions, as well as undisclosed European family offices, multi-regional fund-of-funds and African pension funds. Adenia will make equity investments in businesses in light industry, consumer goods and services, renewable energy, and other sectors with strong job creation potential. Adenia is going downmarket from the types of businesses targeted for its other funds. “In essence, we are going back to our roots,” Adenia’s management team told ImpactAlpha. “There aren’t many African fund managers active in the small business space that can call upon a successful track-record across multiple vintages, with deal-makers based on the ground across most of the major African economies.” The firm said it reached its fundraising goal less than a year after starting fundraising. The IFC also pledged $20 million for co-investments.

• Growth pipeline. The Entrepreneurial Fund’s investments of $10 million to $20 million are small by Adenia’s standards but larger than many African businesses can absorb (see, “More of the right kind of capital for growth firms in Africa“). Its first investment is in 40-year old, female-run bakery Maymana in Morocco. With the Entrepreneurial Fund’s close, Adenia has surpassed $1 billion raised across its portfolio of funds. It closed its fifth fund in 2024 at $470 million; that fund writes checks of $30 million to $50 million, generally for a majority ownership stake. Adenia Capital V was backed by about 30 investors, including Blue Earth Capital, Casey Family Programs, South Africa’s Public Investment Corp., pension funds from Kenya and Ghana, as well as several European family offices and development finance institutions.

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Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

• Generate Capital exited Equinox Growers, a Virginia-based operator of high-tech greenhouses, to fresh food producer Taylor Farms. (Taylor Farms)
  
• Somerset Indus Capital Partners closed its third fund at $288 million to improve access to affordable healthcare in India. (Somerset Indus Capital Partners)

• BKR Capital reached a $20 million first close for its second fund for Black-led tech startups in Canada. Investors include the Royal Bank of Canada, Boann Social Impact Fund, Cap Finance, the Business Development Bank of Canada and Canada’s export credit agency. (BRK Capital)

• Actis acquired a 90% stake in Singapore-based 800 Super, a waste management and recycling company. (Actis)

GP Snapshot: Ownership Economy

Brick by Brick is reclaiming homes from private equity to restore local ownership in the Twin Cities. Private equity real estate firms have been gobbling up single-family homes to turn them into rental units. Nonprofit Brick by Brick is buying them to transition them back to individually owned homes. As President Donald Trump (and others) take aim at the concentration of homes in the hands of institutional investors, Brick by Brick demonstrates the opportunities, and challenges, in unwinding such concentration and spreading ownership more broadly. Brick by Brick has raised $90 million for two funds to acquire and rehabilitate 345 single-family properties previously owned by Pretium, the New York-based firm behind Progress Residential, one of the country’s largest single-family home landlords. “We are managing a rental portfolio with the goal of providing home ownership opportunities to tenants that are in the portfolio, as well as the larger community,” says Brick by Brick’s Scott Fergus.

• Place-based investors. Local foundations, such as McKnight and the Pohlad Family Foundation, along with Land Bank Twin Cities, Grounded Solutions Network and the Housing Partnership Network, stepped in with grants, program-related investments and patient, flexible debt to help Brick by Brick acquire the portfolio. “We couldn’t put the capital together in 2007 and 2008 to buy these houses. This [was] our chance to participate in repositioning this portfolio of really problematically managed homes and get them back into the hands of local owners,” says McKnight’s Chad Schwitters. The strategy also allows them to “figure out what it would take for us as a housing community to reabsorb these back into community ownership, and position us better for the next time something like this happens.” Along with Pretium, other investors that have aggregated large portfolios of single-family homes include Invitation Homes, Blackstone and AMH Homes.
  
• Keep reading, “Brick by Brick is reclaiming homes from private equity to restore local ownership in the Twin Cities,” by Roodgally Senatus. Catch up on all of our coverage of the Ownership Economy. 

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Sofie Käll is promoted to partner at the Footprint Firm… The New Mexico State Investment Council appoints Kristin Varel, previously with the Employees’ Retirement System of the State of Hawaiʻi, as chief investment officer… UBS seeks a sustainable and impact investing specialist for its GWM Alternatives group in New York… The Climate Policy Initiative has an opening for a project delivery role in the US. 

The Nature Conservancy is looking for a climate finance specialist… CGC is on the hunt for a clean energy analyst in San Francisco… Rubicon Carbon seeks a vice president for its carbon investment group based out of Singapore… The Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia is holding a climate resilience symposium on urban greening in Philadelphia, today. 

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

Thank you for your impact!

– March 25, 2026