On this week’s podcast, host Brian Walsh is back from Glasgow and joined for an institutional impact roundtable by Imogen Rose-Smith and David Bank. They sort out the Marks and the Gretas at COP26 and chew on inflation’s impact on… impact. Plus, the headlines.
November 12, 2021 | Podcasts
Impact Briefing: “The Marks,” “The Gretas,” and Inflation — Oh, My!
ImpactAlpha Editor
Isaac Silk
Stay up to date with what matters to you...
Choose beats that you're interested in, and we'll show you more of them as you explore...
{{beat.name}}Looking Ahead to 2023
ESG | February 1, 2023
How Europe is recalibrating tech, one ESG step at a time
A crisis is usually followed by learning. If in 2022 tech private markets were defined by the crash of some of the highest-valued …
Looking Ahead to 2023 | January 3, 2023
Big ideas and predictions for ESG in 2023
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 3 – ESG – for enterprise operations and investment decision-making that account for environmental, social and governance considerations – took a beating …
Image by GarryKillian on Freepik
Looking Ahead to 2023 | December 30, 2022
Holiday List No. 3: Seven dealflow trends to keep an eye (or two) out for in 2023
ImpactAlpha, Dec 30 — Impact fund managers showed surprising resilience in a tough year for fundraising. That gives them dry powder to deploy …
Looking Ahead to 2023 | December 28, 2022
Holiday List: No. 2: Ten ImpactAlpha podcasts worth another listen in 2023
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 28 – ImpactAlpha produced nearly 50 weekly podcasts and more than a dozen longer-form interviews with Agents of Impact. VC Includes Bahiyah …
Looking Ahead to 2023 | December 26, 2022
Holiday Lists No. 1: A dozen Agents of Impact who broke through in 2022
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 26 – Let’s give all of you Agents of Impact a round of applause. In dozens of profiles this year, we …
Looking Ahead to 2023 | December 23, 2022
Next Year in Impact Investing: Abundance
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 23 – “Americans will always do the right thing, after they have tried everything else,” as Winston Churchill (may have) once said. …
"The Fearless Girl" statue facing Charging Bull in Lower Manhattan
Looking Ahead to 2023 | December 22, 2022
Using ESG and impact to sort leaders from laggards in 2023
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 22 – It’s not about the scores. It’s about the solutions. ESG – shorthand for the consideration of environmental, social and governance considerations …
Looking Ahead to 2023 | December 21, 2022
Abundance, ownership and inclusion hold keys to shared prosperity in 2023
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 21 – Real solutions. Real revenues. Real places. While other investors chased crypto and other tech fads, inclusive investors were finding …
Frontier and Growth Markets | December 20, 2022
2023 emerging market opportunities are locally-rooted, gender-smart and climate-friendly
ImpactAlpha, December 20 – Impact investing’s early advocates imagined a trillion-dollar industry. This year, by one estimate, the industry surpassed that target. Big …
Climate Finance | December 19, 2022
Deadline 2030: Midway to climate marker, time to take deployment exponential
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 19 – Halfway there. When the ball drops in Times Square this year, it will ring in the critical midpoint in the …
Climate Finance
Signals | February 1, 2023
S-curves and tipping points are accelerating the low-carbon future
ImpactAlpha, Feb. 1 – The future of energy is S-shaped. Adoption of technological innovations is typically slow until they hit a tipping point, …
Image credit: LuxWall
Green Infrastructure | February 1, 2023
Startups raise green to reduce the carbon footprints of buildings
ImpactAlpha, February 1 – Buildings account for 40% of total global carbon emissions, because of how building materials are produced, what materials are …
Climate Finance | January 31, 2023
Obvious Ventures backs Senken to finance reforestation through ‘carbon forwards’
ImpactAlpha, January 31 – Berlin and Cape Town-based Senken is a blockchain-based carbon credit trading platform. Its next offering is a form of …
Climate Finance | January 26, 2023
Voluntary carbon markets face a reckoning over credit quality and environmental impact
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 25 – Are carbon markets a key pillar of climate finance, or an empty exercise in double-counting and greenwashing? After soaring …
Frontier and Growth Markets | January 26, 2023
Climate tech venture Ecozen raises $25 million, giving early investors a partial exit
ImpactAlpha, January 26 – Ecozen, in Pune, India, launched a decade ago to provide affordable, clean energy-fueled products for India’s smallholder farmers. The …
Impact Management | January 25, 2023
To catalyze climate capital, development finance institutions are pressed to ‘publish what you fund’
ImpactAlpha, January 25 – Six trillion dollars. That’s roughly how much is needed annually to fight climate change and meet the U.N.’s Sustainable …
Photo by Scythe Robotics.
Climate and Clean Tech | January 25, 2023
Scythe Robotics raises $42 million for ‘pay-as-you-mow’ landscaping equipment
ImpactAlpha, January 25 — Gas-powered equipment like lawn mowers and leaf blowers emit more than 240 million tons of pollutants each year, according …
Dealflow | January 25, 2023
Generate Capital raises $880 million to capitalize green infrastructure boom
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 25 – Generate is an investor, owner and operator of green infrastructure, from community solar systems and municipal wastewater treatment to …
Smallholder Agriculture | January 23, 2023
BlueOrchard invests $5.29 million in Brazilian insurer Newe for climate resilience
ImpactAlpha. Jan. 23 – Climate-driven floods, droughts and extreme weather around the world caused more than $268 billion in costs last year. Most …
Photo by GMAC.
Dealflow | January 23, 2023
Bamboo Capital’s Build Fund backs Green Mountain Arabica Coffee in Rwanda
ImpactAlpha, January 23 — In Rwanda’s Karenge region, women-owned Green Mountain Arabica Coffee exports green unroasted coffee beans that it sources from 1,200 …
Climate Finance | January 23, 2023
Variations on a theme: Securitizing fees and taxes to finance climate adaptation
Ghana securitized an education tax to improve access to education and a petrol tax to pay off legacy debts in the banking sector. …
Photo by Living Carbon.
Low-carbon transition | January 20, 2023
ImpactAlpha Deal Spotlight: Nature-based biotech
ImpactAlpha, January 20 — Forests, oceans and soils play a crucial role in absorbing greenhouse gas emissions – and they could use some …
Muni Impact
Roadmap of Memphis, Tennessee
Muni Impact | January 31, 2023
Activest’s FIRE strategy seeks to bend the arc of municipal finance toward ‘fiscal justice’
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 31 – It’s distressingly easy to find places where city finances are distorted by systemic racism or outright bigotry. It’s harder …
Eric Glass
Muni Impact | January 24, 2023
‘You can’t do impact on a passive basis’: Q&A with activist muni-investor Eric Glass
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 24 – After 15 years as an analyst, trader, and portfolio manager at AllianceBernstein, Eric Glass was asked in 2015 to develop …
Muni Impact | January 24, 2023
Market hypocrisy, political opportunism, and the common good
The attorney general of Texas earlier this month accused Citigroup of running afoul of a state law that “bars most government contracts with …
John Podesta, Senior Advisor to the President for Clean Energy (photo: ImpactAlpha)
Muni Impact | January 17, 2023
Overheard at the Public Finance Conference: Investment opportunities in Emerging Market America
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 17 – A computer glitch that snarled air traffic last week presented a fitting backdrop as government and finance leaders gathered …
Muni Impact | January 12, 2023
The billion-dollar cost to the ESG culture wars
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 12 – Banks that use environmental, social, or governance, or ESG frameworks in their investing practice are being targeted by state legislators …
Climate-proofing infrastructure in West Virginia | Credit: Popular Science
Climate Finance | January 10, 2023
Matching local projects with climate capital to deploy community infrastructure
ImpactAlpha, Jan. 10 – The Great Deployment is on. The capital is teed up. The technology is ready. The Inflation Reduction Act and …
Looking Ahead to 2023 | December 21, 2022
Abundance, ownership and inclusion hold keys to shared prosperity in 2023
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 21 – Real solutions. Real revenues. Real places. While other investors chased crypto and other tech fads, inclusive investors were finding …
Napoleon Wallace, Southern Reconstruction Fund
Agents of Impact | December 16, 2022
Napoleon Wallace, Southern Reconstruction Fund: Restorative capital for Black wealth
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 16 – Napoleon Wallace’s presence was all over the recent Mission Investors Exchange conference in Baltimore. …As the co-founder of Activest, which …
Sponsored | December 15, 2022
How impact investments are helping build healthy communities
Our zip codes play a big part in how long and well we live. It’s easier to lead a healthy life when you …
Memphis, TN | Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash
Muni Impact | December 12, 2022
What Adasina learned about advancing ‘fiscal justice’ by investing $60 million in muni bonds
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 12 – San Francisco-based Adasina Social Capital calls itself a “bridge between financial markets and social justice.” But even an organization accustomed …
Muni Impact | December 12, 2022
Cities embrace ESG in muni bonds even as overall market dips
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 12 – Municipal bond issues are down 17% this year compared to 2021 as interest rates have spiked, according to SIFMA. But …
Muni Impact | December 8, 2022
S&P Global acquires Shades of Green’s climate-risk assessments for bonds
ImpactAlpha, Dec. 8 – Issuers of social, green and other sustainability bonds seek “second-party opinions,” or SPOs, from ratings agencies like S&P Global to …