Clean tech, baby, one more time
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Happy Thursday!
If you’re new here, welcome to For What It’s Worth (FWIW). We’ve had a big week with more new subscribers joining than ever before. Our goal: to bring you news you can use to invest in sustainability and social good.
Here are some tools and resources to help you keep track of the impact space and become a better investor:
- Measuring what matters: how to align your values with investments
- Keep calm and ESG: how you can use negative screening in your investing
- How gender lens investing can give you an edge
And thanks to all of you readers who’ve been with us awhile and spreadin’ the word! And now onto the juicy stuff …
Both unfolded just like a circus, but finally, there’s a definitive outcome: Britney is free and infrastructure is funded.
With crumbling public transport systems and accelerating climate change, the bill could not arrive fast enough. On Tuesday, President Biden signed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill into law, paving the way for critical support for clean technologies that has a lot of impact investors excited.
While some have lost billions in the last clean tech boom, many are betting that this time, greater government support and climate change awareness will make all the difference. The new bill offers incentives for investors to back projects ranging from a clean hydrogen supply chain to new ways of bringing water to the drought-stricken West, all of which lay the groundwork for scaling a nationwide clean energy infrastructure.
Some of the largest investments in the bill go toward the power grid: $29 billion of a $65 billion grid investment (which also includes climate resilience upgrades) will hook up the national network of grids to renewable energy sources. The bill also promises to deliver broadband access for every American and a national network of electric vehicle charging stations.
The bill isn’t perfect. Some are saying gimme more on climate-related investments; others are asking questions about the timing of the broadband rollout, which could alienate the country’s most vulnerable residents who still rely on 3G devices. That said, this is a major milestone for clean tech development in the United States with startups raising a record $32 billion already this year.
We’ll continue to monitor and bring you the latest details on the new infrastructure bill, global ESG guidelines, and why some think we’re entering a new phase for green investing. But, just like Britney, many clean tech enthusiasts are already celebrating being “stronger than yesterday.”
— FWIW Editors
Impact IPOs rising
> Three impact companies are going public this week: salad chain Sweetgreen, that’s on a mission to connect people with real food and build healthier communities, sustainable bitcoin miner Iris Energy, and Germany’s Sono Group, the parent of Sono Motors and the maker of Sion, the electric car that charges itself in the sun and looks like a minivan.
> Millennials and Gen Z investors, who are investing earlier and at a higher rate than previous generations, are holding businesses accountable to shape a better society and a healthier planet. This has left most of the financial world scrambling to catch up. As our CEO Jean Case points out in a Fortune column, “these investors are calling for the democratization of finance–not an evolution but a revolution that accelerates the plodding progress the sector has made on issues they care deeply about.”
