Just Climate, an investment business established by Generation Investment Management to address the net-zero challenge at scale, closed its inaugural fund, Climate Assets Fund I, with $1.5 billion in capital commitments exceeding its $1 billion target.
Just Climate, an investment business established by Generation Investment Management to address the net-zero challenge at scale, closed its inaugural fund, Climate Assets Fund I, with $1.5 billion in capital commitments exceeding its $1 billion target.
Just Climate says the fund will target investments in “high impact solutions that can radically reduce or remove emissions, while seeking to generate attractive risk-adjusted financial returns.”
The fund attracted support from a diverse set of institutional investors with a wide geographical spread, including California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), PSP Investments, AP4, Colonial First State Investments, Builders Asset Management and AP2; as well as other pensions, sovereign wealth funds, insurers, financial institutions, endowments, foundations and family offices from North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region.
The fund’s founding investor group included Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund which anchored the Fund, IMAS Foundation, Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, Harvard Management Company, the Imprint Group of Goldman Sachs as well as Hall Capital Partners and its clients.
The Fund will be part of Just Climate’s industrial climate solutions focus and will pursue investments in growth-stage, asset-heavy companies globally which have the potential to deliver transformational climate impact across some of the highest-emitting, hard-to-abate industries — including energy, mobility, industry and buildings — in order to generate outsized emissions abatement in the next decade.
Just Climate has made three investments from the fund to date: ABB E-mobility – a Swiss-based global leader in electric vehicle (EV) charging solutions; H2 Green Steel – a Sweden-based industrial start-up which aims to accelerate the decarbonisation of the steel industry; and Meva Energy – a Sweden-based provider of an innovative gasification technology to generate renewable energy for manufacturing sectors.
Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP served as fund counsel. Aztec Financial Services (Luxembourg) SA is administrator for the Fund.
