Just Climate closes inaugural industrial climate solutions fund at $1.5b

Just Climate, an investment business established by Generation Investment Management to address the net-zero challenge at scale, has closed its inaugural fund, Climate Assets Fund I.

The fund exceeded its $1 billion target, raising $1.5 billion in institutional capital to invest in the highest impact solutions that can radically reduce or remove emissions, while generating attractive risk-adjusted financial returns. It will be part of Just Climate's industrial climate solutions focus and will pursue investments in growth-stage, asset-heavy companies globally that 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.

The fund closed with a diverse set of institutional investors with a far-reaching geographical spread, including California State Teachers' Retirement System, 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 Asia Pacific.

The fund's founding investor group included Microsoft's Climate Innovation Fund, which anchored the fund, IMAS Foundation, Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, Harvard Management Co., the Imprint Group of Goldman Sachs as well as Hall Capital Partners and its clients.

Just Climate has made three investments from the fund to date: ABB E-mobility, a Swiss-based global leader in electric vehicle charging solutions; H2 Green Steel, a Sweden-based producer of green steel; and Meva Energy, a Sweden-based provider of gasification technology for the development of renewable energy from small fraction fuels.

“We start with climate impact, identify solutions that will make the biggest difference, and then direct and scale institutional capital to those solutions that we believe can generate attractive risk-adjusted returns,” said Clara Barby CBE, senior partner of Just Climate. “We’re grateful that many of the world’s most significant institutional investors see the opportunity that climate-led investing represents — for capital markets, for the planet and for people everywhere.”