Greetings Agents of Impact!
In today’s Brief:
- What’s next after ruling against GGRF awardees
- Preserving Nigeria’s cold chain
- Digital tools for musicians’ IP protection
- What works in gender-lens investing
Featured: Deploy!
Green lenders scramble to salvage deals as appeals court OKs freeze on accounts. Green lenders, community developers and clean energy financiers have long claimed that many projects in their pipelines remain economically viable, even without federal funding that was awarded through the Biden-era Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. With the promise of such funding rapidly fading, networks of green bankers are scrambling to find the money to back up those claims. At highest risk: Projects that serve low-income and hard-to-reach communities. A federal appeals court on Tuesday issued a long-awaited decision, ruling that the Trump Environmental Protection Agency was within its rights to freeze up to $20 billion in GGRF financing approved by Congress, awarded by the agency, and placed at Citibank under legal contracts with three coalitions selected to establish a distributed “green bank.” “We will continue to press on for communities across the country that stand to benefit from clean, abundant and affordable energy,” said Beth Bafford of Climate United, which was awarded $7 billion and is the lead plaintiff. “This is not the end of our road.”
- Primed pipelines. About $3 billion appears to have been deployed before the freeze, leaving the amount in the Citibank accounts at approximately $17 billion, as ImpactAlpha reported in July (see, “Coalition for Green Capital places $2.7 billion in ‘green bank’ funds”). Climate United and the other networks of green lenders have been scouring their pipelines for projects that pencil out on their own and can attract commercial capital. And they have been scrambling to find other sources of capital, via state programs or philanthropic funders, to derisk projects that may need subsidies to bring clean energy benefits to marginalized and underserved communities (see, “How local governments are financing climate action without federal funding”). “There is a lot of capital out there, and there are a lot of projects that still can get funded,” Curtis Probst of the New York City Energy Efficiency Corp., or NYCEEC, said on an Agents of Impact Call in June. Justice Climate Fund, which had been awarded nearly $1 billion to help community lenders and minority-owned banks scale up green lending, found that two-thirds of projects in its pipeline, totaling about $1 billion, may be able to move forward, JCF’s Amir Kirkwood said.
- Legal setback. The appeals court, in a 2-1 ruling with two Trump appointees in the majority, would send the case to the Court of Federal Claims, which hears contract disputes. Such a move could set back the grant recipients’ legal battle by a year or more and open the door to the EPA seizing the funds. The court gave the GGRF grant recipients time to petition for an en banc hearing by a fuller slate of appellate judges. In a searing 61-page dissent, Judge Nina Pillard excoriated the majority’s decision, saying their reading of the case as a simple contract dispute “allows the government to seize Plaintiffs’ money based on spurious and pretextual allegations, and to permanently gut implementation of major congressional legislation designed to improve the infrastructure, health and economic security of communities throughout the country.” Last month, the EPA moved to end a separate program, Solar for All, that provides grants to states and organizations to help low-income households and communities access affordable solar energy.
- Keep reading, “Green lenders scramble to salvage deals as appeals court OKs freeze on accounts,” by David Bank and Amy Cortese.
Dealflow: Impact Tech
Koolboks raises $11 million for off-grid refrigeration and recycling in Nigeria. France-based Koolboks launched in 2018 with a line of coolers for European beach-goers and campers. When the Covid pandemic hit, its co-founders spotted a greater need: off-grid refrigeration for vaccines and food in places without reliable cold chains. In Nigeria, for example, health clinics and food vendors “have to spend money around the clock for a generator to power their refrigerators,” Koolboks’ Ayoola Dominic told ImpactAlpha. The company sells solar-powered freezers with sensors on a pay-as-you-go basis, starting at $10 per month. Over 70% of its clients are female market traders who rely on the freezers to preserve the foods they sell. “It’s a major source of income for them. That’s why our default rates are extremely low,” Dominic said.
- Series A+ The startup raised $11 million in a mix of Series A equity, debt and grants to ramp up capacity at its local manufacturing plant in Nigeria and to support its Scrap4New refrigerator recycling program. The equity portion was co-led by Nigeria-based gender-lens fund Aruwa Capital, which reupped its investment, and KawiSafi Ventures, Acumen’s climate tech venture capital firm. All On, an off-grid energy-focused fund manager launched by Shell, also participated. French investment bank Bpifrance, Nigeria-based First City Monument Bank and the French Facility for Global Environment provided debt.
- Impact-linked. Grant funding from the Shell Foundation and two results-based grant programs for clean energy projects in Africa – CEI Africa and Beyond the Grid Fund for Africa – is pegged to outcomes in Koolboks’ expansion efforts, including the number of new solar refrigeration users and users’ cost savings and income increases. Grants from the French Facility for Global Environment, Innovate UK and other development financiers will support Scrap4New and the expansion of Koolbuy, an online marketplace.
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Guild scores $2 million to help music creators protect their IP and their revenues. The digital service helps musicians design, distribute and track performance of their content across popular platforms like Spotify, YouTube and TikTok. Austin-based Guild’s AI “agent” also helps artists identify new revenue streams and secure their intellectual property rights with blockchain technology. Next, Guild plans to develop a fungible token sharing model to reward music creators with an ownership stake in the Guild platform itself. “Labels often own the rights, [and] tech founders and employees get stock,” said Guild founder Phillip Rather, a former Meta executive and himself a singer-songwriter. “Guild is giving artists what no one else will: rights and ownership.” The early investment capital from Austin-based Capital Factory, blockchain-based payments company Polygon and several ex-Meta executives will help Guild get the token model up and running.
- Creative ownership. Guild is developing smart contracts with the platform’s 2,500 beta users. Creators can buy into the ownership of Guild or liquidate the tokens over time. Early token holders’ ability to cash in their token will be restricted to avoid “dumping and rugpulls” that can be used to manipulate the price of crypto assets. Guild plans to sell tokens to venture capital investors to raise an additional $10 million over the next year; the remainder of the tokens and their earnings will go to its creators. “We’re going to build this thing transparently. It will play out based on who contributes to the platform,” said Rather.
- Learn more.
Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:
- Anthropic, the AI public benefit corporation with impact investor backing, closed a $13 billion Series F equity round led by ICONIQ, Fidelity Management & Research Company and Lightspeed Venture Partners (see, “With stakes in Anthropic, impact investors seek a seat at the AI table”). (Anthropic)
- Australian pension fund manager Aware Super, the UK’s National Wealth Fund and infrastructure investor Equitix will invest £500 million ($668.2 million) in Eelpower Energy, which is developing battery storage systems connected to the UK’s electricity grid. (National Wealth Fund)
- Cisco Foundation invested in the Fractal Farmer Agriculture Regenerative Management Fund, or FARM Fund, an equity fund to help farmers invest in sustainable practices and improve soil health. (Cisco Foundation)
- Mauritius-based private equity firm Inside Capital Partners invested in RDG Africa, a solar home system distributor working in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (Empower Africa)
Impact Voices: Gender Smart
Going beyond the numbers in gender-lens investing. Gender-lens investing, with at least $122 billion in global public assets and $7.9 billion in private markets, has become an established piece of the impact investing pie. With some investors and policy makers pulling back, the field must evolve, argue 60 Decibels’ Venu Aggarwal and Dalberg Advisors’ Rachna Saxena in a guest post. “Metrics on reach or representation can only take us so far,” they write. “The next frontier lies not in just counting women but in listening to them.” Dalberg was involved in developing the 2X Challenge criteria to help standardize gender-lens investing. 60 Decibels has taken a more qualitative approach to impact measurement that can surface unexpected learnings. The authors call for firms to collect data on what’s truly driving impact: “We need data that helps us identify what is and is not working so gender-lens investing capital can go further.”
- Listen to learn. Surveys of women, including customers, suppliers, employees and company leadership across Asia and Africa, by 60 Decibels and BRAC International Microfinance have revealed gaps in financial literacy and unmet demand for tailored savings products. BRAC responded by redesigning its training initiatives and introducing accounts to encourage small, regular deposits, as well as term deposits that help women save toward specific goals. Similar surveys with women entrepreneurs in Aruwa Capital’s portfolio showed that women valued the “confidence, validation and visibility” that came from having gender-aligned investors. Such feedback “doesn’t just validate outcomes; it guides smarter investment decisions,” Aggarwal and Saxena write.
- Keep reading, “Going beyond the numbers in gender-lens investing,” by Venu Aggarwal and Rachna Saxena.
Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent
The Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance welcomes five new members to its Pre-Seed Capital Facility investment committee: ClimateWorks Foundation’s Shilpa Patel, Peter Sweatman of Climate Strategy Partners, Climate Investment Fund’s Matthieu Pegon, Kome Ajegbo of Africa Finance Corp., and Ariane Pevide of MUFG Bank… Nadia Nikolova takes on the role of CEO of responsAbility Investments.
The Skillman Foundation promotes Lenise McWhorter to vice president of organizational design and development, and Mariah Woodruff-Wright to chief operating officer… Octopus Investments appoints Erin Platts, previously with HSBC Innovation Banking UK, as CEO… Flourish Ventures adds Reon Cloete, previously with Google Ventures, as global head of legal… Social Investment Managers and Advisors taps Paul Kingsley, previously with Northern Arc Capital, as senior ESG officer.
Liberty Mutual Insurance has an opening for an impact investing vice president in New York… Capital Impact Partners is recruiting a fund analyst in the Washington, DC area… Media Development Investment Fund is hiring a Latin America-focused senior investment officer… Better Society Capital seeks a senior digital content manager in London… The MacArthur Foundation seeks a senior analyst of real assets and sustainable investments in Chicago.
Triple Jump is looking for an investment risk manager in Amsterdam… Vanguard is hiring an investment stewardship operations analyst… The Native American Finance Officers Association will host its Fall Finance and Tribal Economies Conference, Sept. 22-23 in Portland, Ore… Anirudh Valluri launches SFI Data to provide intelligence on sustainable fixed-income strategies to investors, consultants and asset owners.
👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.
Thank you for your impact!
– Sept. 3, 2025
