The Brief  |  January 28, 2020 The Brief: Capital on the Frontier call, guaranteed impact, cash allocations, SDG six-pack, Techstars’ Atlanta impact, all-electric GM, steady pay     ImpactAlpha Greetings, Agents of Impact!  Signals: Ahead of the Curve Funders pool $33 million in credit guarantees to catalyze community investments. Philanthropic commitments to cover loan losses could catalyze hundreds of...Read More

The challenge of accurate renewable energy load forecasting may be helped by utilising Artificial Intelligence, writes Sid Sachdeva. The shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources comes as welcome news for the environment. While plants powered by oil, coal and gas hasten climate change with their carbon emissions, wind turbines and solar panels have...Read More

It was the usual setup for panelists at a finance conference talking about making smart investments. They were all the same gender. In this case, all women. That probably wasn’t surprising, considering the event was hosted by the United Nations-backed Principles for Responsible Investment. Still, Karine Hirn, founding partner at East Capital in Hong Kong,...Read More

Nature has responded to this “suicide war” many times, “as we have seen through hurricanes, fires, and severe drought in various regions of the world,” Mr. Guterres told the ceremony, at which the European Commision honoured Lisbon’s push for a green transformation that could serve as a role-model for other European cities. But the UN chief stressed that no matter how much harm we do to the Earth,...Read More

The Brief  |  January 17, 2020 The Week in impact investing: climate action     ImpactAlpha The Week’s Agent of Impact Samara Hernandez, Chingona Ventures. The first hint that Samara Hernandez is not your typical venture capitalist is the name of her new firm: Chingona Ventures. Chingona is slang for “badass woman” in her native Mexico. She launched the...Read More

Laurence D. Fink, the founder and chief executive of BlackRock, plans to announce Tuesday that his firm will make investment decisions with environmental sustainability as a core goal. BlackRock is the largest in its field, with nearly $7 trillion under management, and this move will fundamentally shift its investing policy — and could reshape how...Read More

As the second decade of the 21st century drew to a close, we saw even greater calls for action and policies to address climate change and pressing societal challenges from the likes of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, Time’s 2019 Person of the Year, to veteran naturalist Sir David Attenborough. As the 2030 deadline draws near, collective...Read More

Governments around the world have committed to dramatically lowering their CO2 emissions, in a bid to combat climate change. With limited supplies of fossil fuels and growing concern over their environmental impact, renewable sources of energy like wind and solar are gaining big momentum. ‘Renewables’ are expected to produce most of the new energy produced...Read More

SAN DIEGO — The mood among economic forecasters gathered for their annual meeting last weekend was dark. They warned each other about President Trump’s trade war, about government budget deficits, and, repeatedly, about the inability of central banks to fully combat another recession should one sweep the globe anytime soon. Among the thousands of economists...Read More

What a difference a year makes. Last year at this time there was talk of recession, in part, because the stock market and yield curve were signaling warning signs. At the end of 2018, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had its worst year since 2008. If the stock market is falling, then investors must think...Read More