Why We Need a Climate Finance Relay Race

This week we launched a report called The Climate Finance Relay Race. It explores how asset owners are navigating climate investment and their rationale for their approach. We believe the most impactful and perhaps swiftest approach to designing a fit-for-purpose capital market system is partnership with asset owners. The idea of the “climate finance relay race,” is that the handoff of risk and reward across parties can better enable asset owners to underwrite more productive and less volatile economies.

To complement the report, we are excited to share this conversation between S2G managing partner Sanjeev Krishnan, Regine Clement, CEO of the CREO Syndicate, and Tom Rotherham-Winqvist, Co-founder of Featherlight Capital. They dissect the intricacies of this “relay race," emphasizing the pivotal role of asset owners such as family offices, pensions, and sovereign wealth funds in driving the climate transition. Tom and Regine discuss the challenges facing the asset owners they work with and underscore the urgent need for a robust and adaptive capital market system capable of scaling climate investments from billions to trillions. 

If you are looking for insight into the asset owner landscape and how it can evolve to better support climate solutions, this episode is for you.

Key Topics:

1. Strategic Role of Asset Owners: Tom and Regine discuss the role of different asset owner groups in financing the climate transition and what family offices and institutional investors bring to this effort.

2. The intersection of Climate Megatrends and Finance: Asset owners can have an enormous impact on global economic systems, and understanding what they care about is critical to capitalize on emerging opportunities. Tom and Regine discuss the role climate plays in asset owners' investment approaches and what drives those investment decisions.

3. Scaling Challenges: The transition from billions to trillions in climate investments presents formidable challenges, requiring innovative financial instruments and collaborative frameworks. Sanjeev, Tom, and Regine explore opportunities to activate that growth in investments.

4. Capital Market Adaptation: A robust, fit-for-purpose capital market system is crucial for the effective scaling of climate finance. Tom and Regine share why they believe our capital markets can become fit-for-purpose, the question is, on what time scale and how can we accelerate it?

Resources:

The Climate Finance Relay Race Report