The Brief | July 22, 2024

The Brief: Clean energy and affordable housing in Baltimore

ImpactAlpha
The team at

ImpactAlpha

Greetings Agents of Impact! 

In today’s Brief:

  • Restoring a building, and a block, in West Baltimore 
  • Next-gen solar cells
  • Supporting Africa’s female farmers
  • EPA’s community-driven climate grants

In Baltimore, Women’s Home Preservation adds clean energy and affordable housing to the community revitalization toolkit (with photos). Across the street from a tiny yellow grocery store on West Baltimore Street, the dilapidated Ford Building has languished, one of thousands of blighted buildings in West Baltimore’s “Black Butterfly.” A vacant lot behind the one-time carriage factory has become a garbage dumping ground. Once it is redeveloped as a 30,000-square-foot mixed-use space for retail, performances and artist lofts, the four-story Ford Building is expected to anchor a full-block revival of the once-bustling commercial strip of the Union and Franklin Square Park neighborhoods. “People want to live here. I live here, and I’m a Harvard Business School-educated woman,” says Nadine Ngouabe Dlodlo, the developer and West Baltimore resident behind the $17 million Ford Building project. “We deserve to have a thriving community.”

  • Charm City. In the third and final installment of the Real Revitalization series, ImpactAlpha’s Roodgally Senatus takes a visual tour of Dlodlo’s plans for the full-block revival of Union and Franklin Square’s commercial corridor. The immense challenge and opportunity presented by Baltimore’s 15,000 or so vacant buildings has spurred a flowering of approaches to community revitalization without displacement. Parity’s Bree Jones emphasizes the role of “legacy residents” in restoring the Harlem Park neighborhood. WaterBottle’s David Lidz has created a co-op model that cuts in tenants and construction workers on the appreciating value of homes in Coppin Heights. Dlodlo’s project will have 30 affordable apartment units for local residents and a microgrid to power the block with solar energy. “The idea is to make this corridor future-proof and sustainable,” Dlodlo said. “We don’t want to retrofit 10 or 15 years down the line.”
  • Anti-displacement. Women’s Home Preservation, Dlodlo’s development company, draws its name from her experience growing up in Cameroon with a widowed, single mother and being a single mother herself. (Single mothers and widows will get preference for the redeveloped units). Last month, Dlodlo secured a $1.6 million grant from the Maryland Energy Administration to break ground on the Ford project. Longer term, she’s looking to buy the mostly-vacant block before speculative buyers scoop it up and further exacerbate Baltimore’s vacant real estate problem. Through her nonprofit Home Preservation Fund, Dlodlo is looking to raise $20 million to finance the Ford project. The fund would also fill in financing gaps for smaller projects on the block, including a pavilion for its Empowering Next Generations youth workforce initiative, and building a “sustainable green enclave” in outdoor alleys where local artists could hold performances. “Anti-displacement is also building a community that is healthy and sustainable,” says Dlodlo. 

Dealflow: Climate Tech

Japan’s EneCoat raises $34 million to produce next-generation solar cells. The Kyoto-based company develops and manufactures perovskite solar cells, a lightweight, flexible and efficient alternative to standard silicon cells. Perovskite technology has generated excitement because it is made from readily available materials, operates in low-light conditions, and is less energy-intensive to manufacture than silicon-based cells. The adaptability could expand solar power uses, including for Internet-connected devices, mobility and consumer electronics. And perovskite solar’s relative ease and lower cost to manufacture could help lessen dependence on solar technologies from China. EneCoat’s $34.1 million Series C round was backed by Toyota’s Woven Capital, INPEX and Mitsubishi HC Capital. SPARX Asset Management and Kyoto University Innovation Capital also invested. 

  • Early market. SPARX’s Takaki Demichi noted perovskite solar’s “high potential to contribute to the realization of carbon neutrality.” The technology represents just $120 million of the fast-growing $254 billion solar market. The challenges hampering commercialization include translating scalable manufacturing processes out of the lab. Startups including Caelux Corp., Beyond Silicon, and Tandem PV in the US, Oxford PV in Germany, are integrating perovskites with traditional silicon-based cells to boost their performance. 

Aruwa and WIC Capital re-up investments in ventures supporting Africa’s female farmers. Women make up about 40% of Africa’s agricultural workforce. Nigeria-based Aruwa Capital Management is supporting the livelihoods and financial inclusion of female hibiscus farmers with a follow-on investment in agricultural processor AgroEknor. The company, which works with 3,000 smallholder farmers in Nigeria and Ghana, processes hibiscus flowers for the international market. Most of its suppliers are women. AgroEknor has helped farmers more than double their yields through its Farmers Education and Empowerment Project, which provides training, and its YieldPro software to help farmers estimate and manage production and monitor soil health. Aruwa first invested in AgroEknor in 2022. Aruwa’s Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes cited the company’s “capacity for sustainable growth and significant impact” (see, Agent of Impact). 

  • Clean beauty. WIC Capital, a women-led and -focused fund manager in Senegal, likewise reupped its investment in Dakar-based l’Arbre de Vie, which makes natural cosmetic products from ingredients grown by Senegalese producers. The company sells its hair and skin products under the brand Gold Essences Cosmetics and white-labels products for other companies. A key focus: providing Africans with alternatives to expensive imported cosmetics. WIC’s investment will help l’Arbre de Vie set up a cosmetics laboratory that meets international standards, opening up new market channels. Noted WIC’s Evelyne Dioh, “Arbre de Vie’s growth will significantly impact women producers who are integral to the company’s value chain.”

Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

  • COP29 host Azerbaijan announced a $1 billion Climate Finance Action Fund for emerging markets, to be funded by voluntary contributions from oil and gas-producing countries and companies. (The Guardian)
  • The US International Development Finance Corp. and IDB Invest are partnering on a $30 million technical assistance facility that will support investments made under the Americas Partnership Platform for infrastructure and economic development in Latin America. (DFC)
  • Mexican software startup Popular Power raised $875,000 in pre-seed funding from Amplifica Capital, Dunn Family Impact Capital, Mercy Corps Ventures and other investors to help solar companies manage the performance of their assets. (Popular Power)
  • Hyderabad-based byteXL raised $5.9 million from Kalaari Capital and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation to prepare engineering students in India’s smaller cities to enter the workforce. (YourStory)
  • California-based Lyten snagged $15.7 million from a partnership fund between Luxembourg’s sovereign wealth fund and the European Investment Fund to expand its “3D graphene”-based batteries to Europe. (Lyten

Signals: Deploy!

EPA grants $4.3 billion to support community-driven climate solutions. How to future-proof federal climate policy? Go local. With an upended election season, the Biden administration’s signature climate policies could come under threat, but state and local action may be harder to disrupt. In Pittsburgh today, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Michael Regan is set to announce $4.3 billion in pollution-reduction grants to 25 communities across 30 states. The awards will fund locally-devised emissions reduction projects ranging from climate-smart agriculture in Nebraska, to wildfire mitigation in Montana, to electrifying heavy duty trucking in New Jersey. The Biden administration is making a renewed push to publicize its climate and infrastructure policies that have benefited many Republican-led states. “We see today the block-by-block game-changers for climate, block-by-block job creation that will lift up the middle class, block-by-block delivery of environmental justice,” said White House national climate advisor Ali Zaidi on a call with reporters. “This is what it looks like for the American people to come out ahead.”

  • Fall funding. As with its Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a $27 billion program aimed at establishing a nationwide network of community-based green lenders, the EPA said it will allocate the funds by early fall to reduce the chances that a new Congress or administration will claw them back (see, “EPA seeks ways to mobilize private capital as it races to beef up green banking,”). A first phase of the pollution reduction program awarded $250 million in planning grants to help communities develop climate action plans. The 25 projects sharing in the $4.3 billion in implementation grants were chosen from over 300 applications requesting a total of $33 billion, Regan said, reflecting widespread demand. The program is expected to cut more than 1,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. 
  • Place-based. The projects reflect a diversity of climate resilience approaches being modeled across the country. In the battleground state of Pennsylvania, a $396 million grant to the state Department of Environmental Protection will focus on small- to large-scale industrial decarbonization projects. Alaska’s $38 million grant will help 50 coastal communities replace residential oil burning systems with heat pumps. North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia are teaming up to sequester carbon through coastal wetlands, peatlands and forests. Nebraska’s $307 million grant will target agricultural climate-smart agriculture and reduce waste from livestock. The EPA’s approach, said Lincoln, Neb. mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird, “underscores the important role of local governments in addressing climate change while enhancing access to affordable housing, improving public health, and reducing disparities.” 

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Align Impact taps Greg Tanner, previously with Mobilize Capital Partners, as chief operating officer… Obvious Ventures promotes Kahini Shah to partner… Autodesk Foundation has an opening for an impact measurement and management associate in the San Francisco Bay Area… Blue Owl Capital is on the hunt for a private funds accounting principal or vice president… Calvert Impact is hiring for several open positions, including for its Climate United coalition.

Living Cities seeks a director for its Racial Wealth Equity Center of Excellence… Triodos Bank is recruiting a senior relationship investment manager in Brussels… World Resources Institute is hosting “Discover climate data: From attribution to target setting,” with Climate Central’s Andrew Pershing, Climate Watch’s Leandro Vigna, and Cathline Nagel of Systems Change Lab, Thursday, July 25.

ImpactAssets is hosting “Investing for climate resilience,” with Spencer Glendon of Probable Futures and ImpactAssets’ Margret Trilli, Thursday, Sept. 12… Accion Venture Lab will host its Fintech for Inclusion Global Summit in London, Thursday, Sept. 12. ImpactAlpha subscribers get 20% off with the code IMPACTALPHA20OFF.

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

Thank you for your impact!

– July 22, 2024