Investment firm Vision Ridge Partners has announced that it has closed an investment fund that seeks to deliver competitive returns while meeting the growing demand for sustainable businesses and clean energy. At $430 million, the fund is one of the largest in this space to date and one of the few private investment portfolios focused on later stage clean energy companies and other sustainable assets.
“Our investments demonstrate that sustainable projects can make sense from a climate perspective as well as a financial perspective,” said Reuben Munger, Managing Partner of Vision Ridge. “Critical policy developments in 2015, like the Clean Power Plan and the Paris climate agreement, demonstrate that opportunities in this sector are only going to grow in the short and long term. We believe that that there are real opportunities to make money when we invest to solve our generation’s greatest challenge: climate change.”
The Sustainable Asset Fund (“SAF”), launched by Vision Ridge in partnership with Capricorn Investment Group and the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, aims to deliver market-leading returns and significant environmental benefits from asset-based investment in sectors ranging from renewable energy generation to sustainable agriculture. Investments include a company providing energy efficiency financing for commercial and industrial customers, an electric vehicle fleet provider, solar projects in Massachusetts, Florida, California, and Japan, an industrial energy efficiency project, assets turning food waste into renewable energy in the Northeast, and more.
“Preventing further damage from climate change requires major action and that means major investments,” said Ion Yadigaroglu, Managing Director at Capricorn Investment Group. “The Sustainable Asset Fund is positioned to demonstrate that safeguarding the planet for future generations can be a successful financial endeavor.”
In seeking to capitalize on the changing global field of energy and resource use, Vision Ridge Partners is working with a network of investment, energy, and other professionals who understand the changing landscape and know how to evaluate regulatory and policy developments. These professionals will help investors finance projects which advance the global transition toward a more responsible use of our natural resources with the additional potential of meeting financial goals.
SAF investments are located in both the U.S. and abroad and include:
- Clean Focus, a solar photovoltaic company developing and operating commercial and utility-scale solar energy projects in Massachusetts, California, Florida, and elsewhere.
- GSSG, a solar photovoltaic company developing and operating utility-scale solar energy projects in Japan.
- SparkFund, a fintech company that finances energy efficiency projects and enables OEMs and installers to sell equipment and products as a service.
- A partnership with Tulum Management and Vanguard Renewables, a waste to energy company operating facilities in the Northeast that convert organic waste to renewable electricity.
- Vision Fleet, an advanced transportation company enabling electric vehicle (EV) penetration into corporate and government fleets and others, including an industrial energy efficiency project.
Launched in 2008 to invest in transformative growth companies within the sustainable energy sector, Vision Ridge Partners is an investment firm focused on the future. With a vision ‘to unleash capital markets to solve this generation’s greatest challenge: the threat posed to the planet by climate change’. Capricorn Investment Group was ‘born from a belief that values-based, sustainable investment practices can enhance return rates’. Underlying that principled investment approach is a focus to ‘demonstrate the huge investment potential that resides in breakthrough commercial solutions to the world’s most pressing problems’. The Grantham Foundation supports ‘strategic communications and collaboration in solving the world’s most pressing environmental problems’.
