Educational Impact Investing Insights

Deep beneath your feet is a molten ball of energy the same temperature as the surface of the sun -- an immense clean energy source that could power the world thousands of times over, says technologist and climate activist Jamie C. Beard. But how do we tap it? Jamie lays out a surprising solution, and an unlikely alliance, to harvest geothermal energy from the Earth's core anywhere in the world.

For years, African countries relied heavily on their exports and foreign aid to fund vital infrastructures such as roads, power, and clean water. This changed in 2006, when the Seychelles became the first sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) country, ex-South Africa, to make its way into the international financial markets with the issue of its $200 million Eurobond. Since then, Eurobonds have become an important source of development finance for African countries, particularly in terms of infrastructure funding.

Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) describe the movement of money that is illegally acquired, transferred or spent across borders. They can vary by origin, complexity and intent, but they all have the same eroding effect on a country’s tax base, particularly for resource-rich developing countries which do not have the means to invest in public health, education, and sustainable development. These assets represent vast untapped wealth in the form of civil claims arising from historic grand corruption and fraud which belong to governments and their people. 

The 'Paris Agreement Capital Transition Assessment' (PACTA) was launched in 2018 by the 2° Investing Initiative (“2DII”) to measure the alignment of stocks, bonds and bank loans with a range of climate scenarios under the Paris Agreement. By aligning portfolios with the Paris Agreement, financial institutions can help limit global temperatures to 2 °C (2.7 °F) above pre-industrial levels.

Blended Finance is a structuring approach aimed to strategically mobilize private capital alongside development funding to finance sustainable development in emerging and frontier markets. The approach reduces the riskiness of an investment for private investors, thus leveraging the developing funding provided to accomplish certain United Nations SDGs.

When it comes to choosing values-based investments, it’s important that investors understand the differences between SRI, ESG and Impact Investing. Impact Investing is among the newest terms, coined by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2007. It is used to describe investments that generate a measurable, beneficial social or environmental impact alongside a financial return. However, this form of investing is often confused with Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) or ESG. To understand the differences, let’s take a step back and look at the evolution of these concepts.

I launched Impact Capital Partners because I obviously agree with Bill Gates that it is important to address the world’s most difficult issues. The essence of How To Avoid A Climate Disaster is that we are putting 51 billion tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere every year, and to avoid a climate disaster, we need to get the net number to ZERO within 30 years. Importantly, Bill is optimistic that we can solve these problems because of his belief in innovation, but we need breakthroughs to get there. Bill is focused on this challenge, and one of his goals for writing this book is to spark conversations so that we are all focused on it too. I highly recommend this book and I’m even placing it on my MUST READ LIST!

The Age of Sustainable Development, an online course by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, is a wonderful introduction and overview of WHY we need the sixth Kondratiev Wave to be a wave of sustainable technologies. In Prof. Sachs words, we need to find ways to produce energy, ways to mobilize energy, ways to transport ourselves and transport goods that take the massive pressure and the destructive forces off of our ecosystems. This is the great challenge ahead of us, and this course is an amazing way to better understand this challenge!

This is a great explainer video by The Conservation Fund on land-based fish farming. 90% of US seafood is currently imported and 2x the current supply will be needed by 2050, so there is a growing need for new ways to provide high-quality, local fish without putting more pressure on our oceans. Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS) is one solution.