ImpactAlpha Open | October 15, 2024

ImpactAlpha Open: Looking ahead to COP29 + beyond carveouts for racial justice

Dennis Price
ImpactAlpha Editor

Dennis Price

Hi there, Agent of Impact! Welcome to ImpactAlpha Open, our free weekly newsletter to keep you in the loop and ahead of the curve in impact investing and sustainable finance. 

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In this week’s Open:

  • On the docket at COP29 in Baku
  • Endowments investing in racial justice
  • A revolving fund to fill in forests 
  • Deal Spotlight: Sustainable AI data centers

Let’s get to it. – Dennis Price

Must-reads on ImpactAlpha

  • Crafting a global financial architecture to meet Paris climate goals. ImpactAlpha’s Amy Cortese outlines the stakes at next month’s COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, as well as at this month’s World Bank and G20 meetings and, of course, a crucial election contest in the US. One key marker: what climate negotiators call a “new quantified collective goal” for financing climate mitigation and adaptation in countries that have contributed little to climate change but are bearing the brunt of it. Get prepped.
  • Moving endowments beyond carveouts for racial justice. In the four years since Black Lives Matter catalyzed support for racial equity investing, corporate commitments have waned. But for many foundations, racial equity is now an even greater focus. A conversation between Andrea Dobson of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation and Ian Fuller of Westfuller explores how racial equity can become a lens through which all investments are assessed. Read their chat.
  • Enabling field agents to build trust in emerging markets. Many tech innovations of recent years have focused on cutting out intermediaries to drive down costs. Investors like Accion Venture Lab and Elevar Equity, however, are learning an interesting lesson in Africa and other emerging markets: to reach customers and build trust, it helps to cut in middlemen and women, reports ImpactAlpha’s Jessica Pothering. Find out why.
  • Getting land trusts fast cash to ensure conservation. It can take the US Forest Service a decade to acquire important parcels of protected forest held by private land trusts. “The extensive waiting period often leads to missed opportunities, as landowners may not be able to wait on federal bureaucracy,” write Kavita Kapur Macleod and Phoebe Higgins of the Environmental Policy Innovation Center and Liz Adams and Peter Stein of Lyme Timber Advisory Services. Their solution: a revolving fund to speed National Forest land purchases to support conservation and public access. Read more.
  • Blending corporate philanthropy to backstop water innovation. A new fund from Water Unite Impact is bringing in corporate foundations (largely of UK retailers) as first-loss capital to crowd in financing from development finance institutions and commercial investors for water entrepreneurs in Africa, reports Roodgally Senatus. The fund has raised $3 million in such first-loss capital, enabling a $7.5 million loan from the US International Development Finance Corp. Check it out.

Sponsored by SOCAP Global

The ImpactAlpha team will be all over this year’s SOCAP agenda, convening discussions across diversity, ownership, climate and artificial intelligence and more. Thousands of Agents of Impact will be in San Francisco, Oct. 28-30 for more than 100 sessions across three full days, organized across eight tracks with 240+ speakers (here’s the agenda). This year’s event has a renewed focus on matchmaking and dealflow opportunities, a dedicated event app, discounted hotel rates and more. Learn more about SOCAP24 and join a global community of funders and founders across the impact ecosystem. SOCAP has just released 100 discounted tickets ($300 off!).

Agents of Impact

🏃 On the move

  • Trillium Asset Management brought on Kathleen Bochman, formerly with Moderna, as portfolio manager in Boston.
  • Illumen Capital added Viridiana Santacruz, an MBA candidate at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, as a bias reduction intern.
  • Justice Climate Fund tapped Shiva Patel, previously with DC Green Bank, to lead the design and implementation of its Clean Communities Investment Accelerator initiative, which is backed with nearly $1 billion from the US’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

The Week’s Podcast

🎧 This Week in Impact: Another petrostate COP

Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: What’s at stake as climate negotiators prepare for COP29 in oil-rich Baku, Azerbaijan; how inclusive fintech ventures are cutting in middle men and women to build trust; and, a look at innovative financial models for forest conservation and water startups.

Deal Spotlight

🤖 AI data centers tackle the sustainable energy challenge

Global electricity usage is spiking after decades of stable demand. The culprit: the proliferation of energy-gobbling data centers that power cloud computing and artificial intelligence. More than $18 billion in private capital was invested in the construction of data centers in the US last year, a 44% annual increase. Private equity has sunk nearly $800 billion into digital infrastructure, meaning data centers and telecoms, during the past four years. The increasingly urgent question: Can data centers go green? “If you are trying to deliver capacity for a client who’s only lukewarm on sustainability stuff, speed to market is going to trump everything,” Peter Freed, former energy strategy director for Meta, told ImpactAlpha. Right now, that means natural gas, he says. “We’re just hoping that we’ll see some creative thinking.” 

Get in the Game

💼 Step up

  • The Schmidt Family Foundation is seeking a portfolio manager in San Francisco.
  • GreenLight Fund is searching for an executive director in Philadelphia.
  • The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is hiring a senior program manager in Redwood City, CA.

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