Impact Investing | December 2, 2022

TPG Rise’s $7.3 billion climate plan takes shape

Amy Cortese
ImpactAlpha Editor

Amy Cortese

ImpactAlpha, Dec. 2 Jim Coulter has gotten climate religion. Since taking the helm of TPG’s impact-focused Rise fund last year, Coulter has completed his transformation from buyout buccaneer to climate apostle.

This week, Rise Climate stood up Rubicon Carbon, a marketplace for buying and selling carbon offsets, with $300 million and a pair of former Bank of America heavyweights. Rubicon will source carbon offsetting projects from Anew Climate, itself a TPG-led rollup of Element Markets and Bluesource. That sets up a powerful flywheel for carbon offsets, which are projected to reach $50 billion by 2030 as corporations scramble to meet net zero goals.

TPG has also taken a $1 billion stake, with Abu Dhabi’s ADQ, in an electric vehicle spin-off of India’s Tata Motors. 

Climate-tech, Coulter told analysts last month, is “one of the real bright spots” in a complicated investment landscape. Policy tailwinds in the U.S. and Europe and this year’s extreme weather around the globe have highlighted an historic “imbalance between the amount of specialized capital needed and the amount of specialized capital that’s been formed,” he says.

TPG’s Rise Climate fund clinched $7.3 billion in commitments in April to invest in “the “Googles of the climate revolution.” The firm is already looking to raise climate-adjacent funds next year and a follow-on to its climate flagship fund in 2024.

Adds Coulter, “There’s lots of opportunities between now and then.”