Capital for Climate Announces Launch of First-of-its-Kind Intelligence Platform to Accelerate Climate Investments

Platform is launched in collaboration with the U.N.’s High-Level Climate Champions, and is presenting a free, public-purpose pilot version focused on Nature-based Solutions at COP26.

Nov. 3, 2021, GLASGOW — In answer to institutional investors’ intensifying demand for tools to help convert climate mandates into actionable investment opportunities, Capital for Climate today announces the launch of its unprecedented climate-investment intelligence platform. The version unveiled today, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, is a free, public-purpose pilot that highlights investment opportunities to quickly mobilize capital to where it’s needed most within Nature-based Solutions (NbS). The pilot was requested by, and developed in close collaboration with, the U.N.’s High-Level Climate Champions team, led by Gonzalo Muñoz and Nigel Topping, and Race to Zero.

Capital for Climate’s new platform is designed to cohere a fragmented climate-investment market and to enable investors to shift the trillions into climate solutions that will be required this decade to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

“Many people don’t understand that Nature-based Solutions are available for investors,” says Meryam Omi, one of COP26’s U.N. High-Level Champions Finance Team members, secunded from her post as Head of Sustainability and Responsible Investment Strategy - LGIM. “We need

to make sure there is a place to come to understand exactly what Nature-based Solutions really mean, what types of investments exist, what kind of investment profile they have, and where they exist in the world. Without that information, we can’t move forward in allocating capital.”

Filling a Dangerous Financing Gap

Investments in Nature-based Solutions are a critical lever for addressing the climate crisis: Research indicates they produce the steepest reductions in greenhouse gas emissions per dollar invested. Yet, they’re the least understood by investors, resulting in a major financing gap and an overlooked investment opportunity.

“The math is simple,” says Tony Lent, co-founder of Capital for Climate. “Nature-based Solutions can deliver a third of the emissions reductions needed by 2050 for less than $10 trillion. By contrast, the energy transition is expected to require more than $100 trillion. The bottom line: by investing in Nature-based Solutions, we get one-third of the necessary reductions with one-tenth of the investment.”

Promisingly, institutional investors have already committed $130 trillion in collective AUM to net-zero goals—but most lack the understanding and access necessary to shift their investment allocations accordingly. This is the urgent challenge the Capital for Climate platform was created to address.

Climate Opportunities: All in One Place

The Capital for Climate intelligence platform enables allocators to see the landscape of climate investment opportunities in one place—so that they can build strategy, navigate, source, and execute on investments aligned with science-based pathways to holding global warming to 1.5

degrees Celsius.

The pilot version of the Capital for Climate platform will focus on Nature-based Solutions in Regenerative and Sustainable Agriculture, Forests, Land Use, and the Blue Economy. For the purposes of the pilot launch, the platform has focused on these areas because they are strategic, urgent, and offer investment opportunities today--yet are the least understood by investors. From there, the platform will expand to cover all major sectoral decarbonization pathways.

The Capital for Climate public-purpose pilot will:

• orient investors to why NbS is mission critical, and the investment case;
• provide a landscape view of the NbS solutions, and overviews of each solution;
• profile exemplar funds and vehicles in the NbS space;
• list key initiatives helping to accelerate investment in nature-based solutions;
• register financial institution commitments to Deforestation and Conversion-Free portfolios.

After the pilot’s launch at COP26 today, on Finance Day, in a session on Financing Nature and Curbing Deforestation organized by the Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action in coordination with the High Level Champions team, it will be presented at a panel on Nature Day on Nov. 6, and in a keynote presentation at the World Biodiversity Summit on Nov. 10.

Click here to see Capital for Climate’s Nature-based Solutions platform for COP26!

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About Capital for Climate:

Capital for Climate’s mission is to accelerate capital deployment to the climate solutions that are required to achieve a >1.5C degree/net-zero outcome--and that can provide investors both impact and financial returns. We are building a purpose-designed intelligence platform to enable

allocators to see the landscape of climate opportunity in one place -- to inform strategy, navigate, source and execute investments aligned with science-based net zero pathways. The initial focus is on investment in alternative assets and green credit because these move the needle in the real economy.

Media Contacts:

• Flora Hancox, naturezone@greenhouse.agency
• Marina Faelli, Capital for Climate. mfaelli@capitalforclimate.com +1646-441-7549