Climate Investment

About Climate Investment

Climate Investment was founded in 2017 by the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative with the specific aim to accelerate capital-efficient decarbonization of heavy emitting sectors. Its team of over 60 professionals has executed more than 30 decarbonization-focused investments – its portfolio of investments reduced Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions of more than 57 million tonnes since 2019. The firm’s investment strategy targets early to growth stage investments, with a geographical focus in the US and Europe.

The Challenge

As a market leader in GHG impact investing, Climate Investment (CI) has expertise in GHG impact calculation and reporting. However, CI did not have the internal resources to measure its own Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions as well as financed emissions for their portfolio companies. The existing process it had for their own emissions calculations was inefficient and relied on a third-party provider and manual excel data inputs. CI needed a centralized hub for its internal and its portfolio companies’ emissions calculations which would simplify, automate, and audit the data collection. The firm was looking to save time, streamline workflows and more easily verify its ESG reporting process.

Alongside this, CI has established a SFDR Article 9 fund which requires additional E, S and G reporting to complement the firm’s extensive emissions reporting capabilities.

KEY ESG’s Solution

CI selected KEY ESG as the software provider for its ESG management processes in large part due to the Fund Manager Platform which provides a centralized view of all the data points submitted by its portfolio companies, which in turn are able to submit and view their data in their individual Company Platforms. Furthermore, CI felt that the integrated activity-based methodology and capabilities in the platform were seen as best-in-class among ESG vendors.

Portfolio companies were each assigned their own platform login and were all onboarded within 6 weeks via a combination of group seminars and 1-1 onboarding workshops with our ESG Specialists, with a strong focus on carbon accounting education.

Using KEY ESG’s data collection platform, CI was able to calculate Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions for its internal operations and financed emissions for its portfolio companies during a quarter.

Liz Platt, Strategy Associate at Climate Investment said:

The KEY ESG platform provides us with a centralized view of our ESG data, streamlines data collection and drives ESG engagement across our portfolio companies. It provides a platform which fosters data-driven decision making.”

Liz described how KEY ESG has enabled Climate Investment to achieve their goal of reporting Scope 1, 2 and 3, plus financed emissions; a task which they had not been able to achieve previously.

Of our support and onboarding service, Liz said: "Their onboarding team was very supportive and provided ESG expertise to complement our in-house specialists. They also spent 1-1 time with the portfolio companies that needed extra support."

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What’s next?

Climate Investment will look to conduct a feedback session with all portfolio companies during summer 2023 to share results from the first round of reporting. These sessions will provide an opportunity to share learnings and best-practices on ESG methodologies. CI will also be sharing next steps for 2023 reporting which will see them mandate Scope 3 emissions reporting for portfolio companies, which was not obligatory for the first year of reporting.

Climate Investment has a razor-sharp focus on capital-efficient decarbonization. They invest in innovative companies in high-emitting sectors because they want to create impact, today.

"KEY ESG has been an essential addition to our existing GHG reporting capabilities and we look forward to leveraging its platform to accelerate our commitment to ESG improvement across our portfolio."

Liz Platt, Strategy Associate