The Brief

The Brief: Retail climate investment opportunities in the Global South

ImpactAlpha · February 19, 2026

Greetings Agents of Impact!

In today’s Brief:

Expanding climate investment opportunities in the Global South
Clean hydrogen for hard-to-abate industries
Microlending and climate insurance in Ghana and Uganda
Regional affordable housing authorities in California

Featured: Climate Finance

How US retail investors can find opportunities for climate action in the Global South. US climate action is in retreat. Investors don’t have to be. The most attractive investment opportunities may be in the low- and middle- income countries of the Global South that account for three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions. “Climate investment opportunities in the Global South exist across the supply chain of finance, from the risk-averse bank and credit union lending sector, to the risk-tolerant venture capital sector,” Capital for Sustainability’s Marilyn Waite writes in her first post as an ImpactAlpha contributing editor. Waite until this year led the Climate Finance Fund, hosted by the European Climate Foundation and supported by Hewlett Foundation (disclosure: the Climate Finance Fund supports ImpactAlpha’s global climate coverage). Retail investors have been frustrated by the limited options for climate investing, and for impact investing more generally. But Waite sees an opportunity to widen the set of available offerings. Waite and the team at asset manager Carbon Collective have compiled a database of nearly 1,000 publicly listed climate companies across the globe, focusing on low- and middle income countries.

Structural barriers. There’s a catch: Just under 200 of those listed climate companies are open for investment from US retail investors through mutual funds and exchanged traded funds, or ETFs. What is available is overwhelmingly concentrated in large countries like China, Brazil and India. Carbon Collective shares a list of the top US exchange-traded funds and mutual funds with exposure to climate solutions in low- and middle-income countries, ranked by weight and by number of climate companies. The top three: Van Eck’s ChiNext ETF (CNXT), Global X’s Lithium and Battery ETF (LIT) and Kraneshares’ China Clean Technology Index ETF (KGRN). The universe of available companies is limited because of the structural barriers US-listed funds face in allocating capital in what are considered emerging and frontier markets. Says Waite, “These are all surmountable.”
Institutional investors. For their part, institutional investors cite currency risk, the high cost of capital, and limited pipeline as barriers to investing in renewable energy and climate solutions in emerging markets. Those challenges are being addressed, writes Dazzle Bhujwala of sustainability nonprofit Ceres in a guest post. Brazil’s EcoInvest initiative channels public capital through commercial banks to reduce interest rates. It also incorporates hedges against foreign exchange risk. Infrastructure investors such as Brookfield, the UAE’s Altérra and TPG’s Global South Initiative are backing operating platforms rather than individual assets to deploy capital across hundreds of projects, standardize governance and reduce transaction costs. Read his whole post.
Growth markets. “Some of the best international returns historically have come from countries that see rapidly growing middle classes,” says Carbon Collective’s Zach Stein, who shares his monthly analysis of climate investment trends on ImpactAlpha. “Bet on innovation. Bet on the leapfrog.” Among the publicly listed climate companies that Waite and Carbon Collective identified is Barito Renewables Energy, a geothermal company listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange, which surged more than eight-fold after its 2023 IPO. Kenya Power and Lighting Co., trading on the Nairobi Securities Exchange, is providing investor dividends. United Bus Services in Mauritius is also distributing dividends. Says Waite, “The world cannot seriously move past the climate crisis without mobilizing significant capital for climate solutions in the Global South.”
Keep reading, “How US retail investors can find opportunities for climate action in the Global South,” by ImpactAlpha contributing editor Marilyn Waite.

Dealflow: Energy Transition

APG and Ara Partners join Utility Global’s $100 million raise for clean hydrogen expansion. Utility Global produces clean hydrogen from water and industrial off-gases through a process that eliminates the need for electricity. That has attracted asset owners and operators in steel, chemicals and other hard-to-abate industrial sectors. With its Series D funding round, Houston-based Utility plans to scale up the commercial deployment of its H2Gen technology in the Americas, Europe and Asia. APG Asset Management, a €590 billion ($696 billion) manager that invests on behalf of Dutch pension funds, and Houston-based industrial decarbonization investor Ara Partners co-led the round. “What sets Utility apart is its ability to compete head‑to‑head with conventional fossil‑based solutions on cost and reliability, even as it materially reduces emissions,” said Cory Steffek of Ara Partners, which has been a majority investor in Utility since 2021.

Commercial partners. Utility CEO Parker Meeks says Utility Global has a deep pipeline of commercial projects already in development. In South Korea, the company has a partnership with the city of Seongnam to convert biogas from municipal wastewater treatment facilities into clean hydrogen for cars, buses and trucks. In Brazil, the company has partnered with global steel producer ArcelorMittal to convert blast furnace gas into low-carbon hydrogen. Blast furnaces are responsible for up to 90% of carbon emissions in the steelmaking process.

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Symbiotics lends $5.5 million to Fido for microlending and climate insurance in Ghana and Uganda. Fido has expanded its original suite of microfinance products into savings and microinsurance offerings for customers in Ghana and Uganda. That includes climate coverage for floods, droughts, fires and other weather-related incidents that impact micro-businesses. The 12-year-old company secured a $5.5 million loan from Swiss impact investment manager Symbiotics to build on its AI-powered underwriting capabilities and fraud detection. A portion of the capital came from the Regional MSME Investment Fund for Sub-Saharan Africa, a blended-finance fund backed by Symbiotics, Dutch bank ASN, development finance agencies KfW and FMO and others. The fund provides local currency financing for lenders to micro-entrepreneurs in 20 African countries.

Access to insurance. In addition to micro personal and business loans, the Fido app offers a very low savings account that starts at 20 Ghanaian cedis ($1.80). It offers buy-now-pay-later mobile phone financing in partnership with Ghanaian electronics retailer Maxbuy. And for customers that take a 2,000 cedi line of credit, it offers options for life insurance, short-term disability cover and small business climate insurance. FIDO’s $30 million financing round in 2024 included participation from BlueOrchard’s InsuResilience Fund to support its insurance expansion.
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Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

DG Matrix raised $60 million in Series A financing from Engine Ventures, Helios Climate Ventures and other climate VCs for its solid-state transformer that unblocks “stranded power” for AI and electrification. (DG Matrix)

Switzerland-based Metafuels, a sustainable aviation fuel developer, clinched $24 million in Series A funding led by UVC Partners to make green methanol from hydrogen and captured carbon emissions. (Metafuels)
Kenya-based Arc Ride secured $5 million from the International Finance Corp. to provide battery swapping infrastructure and services to local mobility companies. (TechCabal)

Impact Voices: Affordable Housing

Building regional engines for affordable housing in California. Everything is bigger in… California. The Golden State’s housing costs are among the nation’s highest. California also has the country’s most severe shortage of affordable homes. At the heart of the state’s housing crisis is an antiquated approach to affordable housing finance. Regional agencies are using their authority to bring the state’s housing finance up to speed, the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority’s Andrew Fremier, Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency’s Ryan Johnson, and San Diego Regional Housing Finance Agency Board’s Cody Petterson write in a guest post. A 2024 state law enables the regional agencies to levy taxes and use innovative finance to fund affordable housing development and preservation. The agencies are “building financial engines at the regional level to unlock stalled pipelines, experiment with new housing typologies, and in partnership with new and existing housing development partners, scale solutions,” the authors say.

Filling gaps. By operating at a regional scale, Fremier, Johnson and Petterson say their agencies are able to bridge gaps between limited local resources and broad state affordable housing mandates. Overreliance on low-income housing tax credits has stranded tens of thousands of affordable housing units in California, explain the authors. The recent expansion of the LIHTC credits won’t be sufficient on its own, they add. “Regional housing finance agencies offer a unique opportunity to experiment with financing strategies at a systems level – from revolving loan funds to pooled credit enhancements, or from preservation finance to new construction typologies – all the while ensuring that long-term affordability and community benefit remain central.”
Public-private partners. The authors outline ways that philanthropy, impact investors and senior lenders can crowd in capital to fund housing affordability. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative supported the launch of Bay Area and Los Angeles authorities before pivoting away from housing issues to focus on science and biomedical research. Impact investors can co-invest alongside public dollars through pooled regional funds that generate measurable social returns. Philanthropy “can provide early, risk-tolerant capital to seed and pilot new lending approaches,” the authors write. And senior lenders can enter transactions once early risks are absorbed, lowering overall costs of capital. The model is being tested in Los Angeles, where the regional authority is preparing a social bond to finance more than 1,500 homes. “The nation’s housing affordability crisis will not be solved by incrementalism or private markets alone,” the authors say. “It requires new structures, new partnerships and new systems that match the scale of the challenge.”
Keep reading, “Building regional engines for affordable housing in California,” by Andrew Fremier, Ryan Johnson and Cody Petterson. Disclosure: Chan Zuckerberg Initiative provided support for ImpactAlpha’s coverage of affordable housing.

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Inclusive Insurance Investment Fund welcomes Bethuel Muthiru, formerly with Bamboo Capital Partners, as an investment associate… S2G Ventures promotes Christopher Marshall to head of AI and technology solutions, Mason Leist to food and agriculture senior associate, and Drew Cochran to portfolio valuations and reporting director, among other promotions… New Jersey Redevelopment Authority taps Ken Bland, previously with Prudential Financial, as chief operating officer… Green Impact Exchange appoints Alexis Levenson, previously with Visa, as chief communications officer.

CapShift seeks an impact investing client strategy fellow in Boston… The Hilton Foundation is on the hunt for a strategy, learning and evaluation intern for program-related investments… Hedge Impact Headhunting is recruiting a portfolio management and operations professional in California… Dirt Capital Partners is looking for a senior associate of investor relations.

Beyond Ventures has an opening for a senior investment associate… Daraja Impact seeks an investment analyst in Tanzania… Advans International is looking for an impact officer in France… Sayari Earth is looking for an impact officer in South Africa… Prana Venture Management is recruiting an investment associate and an investment analyst in India… Community Capital Management is hosting a webinar Monday, Feb. 23, to discuss how help foundations can use bonds to extend their impact.