Friday Funds: KLP pumps €200m into green infra through partnership with Macquarie

KLP has announced a NOK2bn (€200m) investment in green infrastructure, in partnership with Macquarie. The Norwegian pension giant aims to establish a green infrastructure debt platform to finance solar, wind, hydro and green energy storage.

London CIV, the ‘collective investment vehicle’ for local authority pension funds in the UK’s capital, has launched a Paris-aligned growth fund. The LCIV Global Alpha Growth Paris Aligned Fund launches with £485m seed investment from two of its pension fund clients, and aims to serve as a lower-carbon variant of the existing LCIV Global Alpha Growth Fund. 

Credit Suisse has reached final close on its Climate Innovation Fund, raising $318m to invest in 10 venture funds focused on emissions reduction across North America, Asia and Europe. Sectoral focuses include agriculture, mobility and production and consumption. The fund will report on the positive impact from portfolio companies as well as their alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals.

UBS has launched a Future of Earth fund, focusing on land, water people, health & communities, and sustainable energy. The fund will select companies set to benefit from long-term sustainability trends, and claims to be aligned with the SDGs. This is UBS’ fourth thematic fund.

Impax Asset Management increased its assets under management by almost 50% in the first six months of the financial year, hitting £30bn and doubling its operating profit. According to its interim reports, the specialist investor experienced £6.8bn of net flows, and made a profit of £20.7m up to the end of March, with AUM increasing to £32.2bn in April.

ESG investor and B Corp FORE Partnership has announced plans to invest £300m in sustainable assisted living across the UK. The firm aims for the developments to be carbon neutral and for the communities to be based on the circular economy.

Adasina Social Capital has announced that its Social Justice ETF has passed $50m in assets. The fund tracks Adasina’s Social Justice Index, which invests in global companies whose practices are in alignment with social justice values, based on both traditional ESG metrics and social justice investment criteria. 

The Global Impact Investing Network has released a methodology it hopes will help set a market standard for comparing and assessing impact performance of funds. The Compass methodology suggests investors measure three dimensions: scale, pace and efficiency in a consistent way to enable the comparison of impact results. As part of the work, the GIIN is working on developing prototype impact benchmarks using existing data on the three dimensions.

Infrastructure specialist Pioneer Point has announced the first two investments from its maiden fund, committing €60m to Irish biogas operator Stream BioEnergy and another €60m to solar firm Altano Energy. Both investments will be used in part to finance the acquisition of new assets.

Stonehage Fleming launched a Global Sustainable Equity Fund, replicating the equity component of its Global Sustainable Investment Portfolio, which has outperformed the MSCI ACWI by 16% since its 2019 inception. The fund has $106m of committed capital so far.