Is Private Capital the Key to Tackling Climate Change?
The printing press, the telephone, penicillin – breakthrough innovations that started with individuals and ended up changing the course of human history. Today, more than ever, the world needs a wave of breakthrough thinking to tackle major global sustainability challenges. And just like in the past, they will need the support of private capital to bring about systemic change.
Start-ups around the world are coming up with innovations that, if scaled, have the potential to push back on climate change, helping to restore balance and put the world on a sustainable path. Yet about 90 percent of start-ups fail, not for lack of good ideas but because they don’t possess the right marketing skills or the right partnerships, or because they run out of money.
Traditionally, private capital has been driven by financial gain. But as the threat of climate change moves ever closer, individuals and institutions are realising that prosperity has to go hand in hand with sustainability, which is why, at the start of 2020, one-in-three dollars under professional management globally employed a sustainable investing strategy. And 70 percent of investors believe their investment choices can impact climate change.
But private capital can go even further. Because new ideas need more than just money to make the leap from a great idea to a solution that can change the world. Transformative ideas need to connect with established players, other industries, and other thinkers from many different sectors. Because only the highest form of collaboration can help breakthrough innovations scale in a way that will change every detail and every habit of the way we live today, and replace them with sustainable solutions for tomorrow.
