Re-Investment Institute: Moving Forward with Investing in Climate Solutions

Keynote: David Crane, Former NRG CEO and current Senior Operating Executive at Pegasus Capital Advisors

Featuring Presentations from Capricorn Investment Group, The Switzer Foundation & Alternative Investment Group, the Educational Foundation of America & Generation Investment Management

Leaders such as the International Energy Agency and Ceres have identified the need for an additional $36 trillion of investment in clean energy to avoid the worst climate scenarios by 2050. However, President Trump’s recent decision to withdraw from the Paris Accord and cut funding for the Green Climate Fund, a key source of catalytic capital for global adaptation and mitigation, sends a clear signal that public funds will fall short of this goal. In the absence of national leadership, private capital must step in to drive solutions to environmental and social problems resulting from climate change, and philanthropic and family offices are well suited to fill this gap and capitalize on the climate investing opportunity.

Investing in the rapidly advancing clean energy economy is not as simple as it sounds. Along the way many foundations and family offices have found themselves stuck and unable to move forward, while others have made modicums of progress, but still hunger to do more. Barriers to capital deployment include the complexity of due diligence in high tech companies or experimental sequestration technologies; faux-green marketing; early stage high risk; the overall din of the growing sustainability investment industry, and last but not least, politics.

Join us on September 13th at the Surdna Foundation in New York City as we continue a series of regional workshops to help foundations and family offices invest in climate solutions. Convened by the The Climate Solutions Collaborative, a working group of Confluence Philanthropy and CREO Syndicate, this invitation only event will support your organization to accelerate climate investing. In this full day workshop we will create an atmosphere of peer support in a small group setting to discuss and learn from one another about how to overcome some of the barriers to climate investing and explore investment strategies. Discussion and presentation will canvass the full investment spectrum, from program related investments to investing from the corpus. Special attention will be given to finding opportunities in a variety of asset classes and how to proof test a climate investment to ensure it is indeed a climate solution.

Agenda Includes:

• Address by David Crane, Senior Operating Advisor, Pegasus Capital Advisors
  
• Climate solutions investing approaches presented by select foundations, family offices and their investment managers;
  • Capricorn Investment Group (confirmed)
    • Dr. Ion Yadigaroglu, Partner and Managing Principal, Capricorn Investment Group
  • The Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation and Alternative Investment Group (confirmed)
    • Bruce Kahn, Trustee, The Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation
    • Sanford Brown, Managing Director, Alternative Investment Group
  • The Educational Foundation of America and Generation Investment Management (confirmed)
    • Melissa Beck, Executive Director, the Educational Foundation of America
      
    • Michelle Huang, Director, Generation Investment Management
      
• The latest research on climate investing opportunities
• Ample group dialogue, sharing and discussion
• Light breakfast and networking lunch included

This event is for foundations and family office asset owners only. Due to building security, all participants must register in advance. Space is limited to 30 attendees - Register early!

Registration fees

Confluence and CREO Members: $50
Non-Members: $100


CONTACT

Mark Allegrini, Program Manager
The Climate Solutions Collaborative
Mark@confluencephilanthropy.org