News
Press release - Climate Capital Network to speak at EBAN
March 31st, 2008 - Michael Mathres, Director, Climate Capital Network will be speaking at the European Business Angel Network's annual conference. He will talk about the investment opportunities offered by climate change and what roles business angels have to play in driving this "Third Industrial Revolution". “Business angel investing: Entrepreneurial Capital for the 21st Century” will take place on 14/15 April in Arnhem, Netherlands. More than 250 participants are expected to attend this year’s Congress, dedicated to all interested actors in early stage finance willing to broaden their knowledge, experience and network of contacts in the sector of risk capital. "This will be a great opportunity to educate European business angels about the investment opportunities offered by climate change", says Michael Mathres, Partner, Climate Capital Network.
Climate Capital Network will join the movers and shakers of the
business angel world at EBAN's 8th Annual Congress. The 3rd Award
Ceremony on the evening of the first day, will aim at celebrating the most
promising achievements in the European informal venture capital, and will be
animated by Richard Lewis, one of the world’s most renowned inter-culturalists
and linguists. Click here to register.
PRESS - Climate Change Corp - Climate Capital Network launches website
March 28th - A website launched last week called Climate Capital Network aims to connect investors, entrepreneurs, governments and donors to financial ventures at companies that are implementing renewable energy, clean tech, or other low-carbon technologies. The Network hopes to garner at least 3500 investors by 2009, and also plans to research the state of environmental markets in different countries.
PRESS - THE TIMES - Ushering in the ‘Third Industrial Revolution’
IMPORTANT NOTE: This is an edited version of the original article. Michael Mathres was wrongly misrepresented in the original as the Founder of LiveEarth.
March 31st, 2008 - Michael Mathres has called on business to usher in “a third industrial revolution” if global carbon emissions are to be reduced.
Michael Mathres, a former UBS banker and serial entrepreneur, who first developed the idea of a global concert to raise awareness of climate change, has started a service designed to accelerate global investment in low carbon and renewable energy technologies. He said that new technologies to tackle climate change were critical to saving the environment and represented the biggest commercial opportunity of the century.
“The Kyoto Protocol is simply not enough,” he said. “We have to massively reduce our global emissions and have only ten to twenty years to fix things. We need to start a third industrial revolution predicated on, and driven by, low-carbon energies and technologies.”
He believes that there is a vast shortfall in the investment required to reduce global CO2 emissions. The Stern Review projected that 1 per cent of global GDP must be spent every year for the foreseeable future - roughly $350 billion to $480 billion (£240 billion) – on the task. United Nations figures indicated last year that only $100 billion to $150 billion was invested. Climate Capital Network will help to accelerate the global transition to a low-carbon economy by connecting investors and entrepreneurs offering solutions such as renewable energy, clean technology, energy efficiency and recycling.
About 25 British and American entrepreneurs and companies providing climate change solutions have registered on the company’s website. A similar number of potential investors and philanthropists have also registered.
Climate Capital Network conducts due diligence and offers strategic advice, intelligence and assistance with fundraising. It charges a success fee for matching investors and businesses as well as for research and consultancy work. Mr Mathres said that the service had conducted research on 400 projects and had a database of 2,000 investors eager to invest in the sector. He said: “Climate Capital Network will mobilise global investors and connect them with these low-carbon solutions.”
The company is chaired by the environmental finance guru Peter Fusaro, of Global Change Associates, who coined the term “green trading”.
Mr Mathres, who has been active in the campaign to tackle climate change for seven years, believes that Britain has a unique chance to develop a world-class industry based on expertise and new technologies that deal with the climate. He said: “The UK has the investment expertise and the researchers. What we need now is much more leadership and real, grass-roots entrepreneurism. If we don’t take the chance now, it won’t be there in five to ten years’ time . . . This huge experiment we are conducting with our species is only going to happen once.”
Mr Mathres originated the idea of a global concert to raise awareness about climate change with the One Earth project. The organisers of Live Earth borrowed the idea and invited him to develop it jointly. In 2006 he also helped to form Climate Change Now, a cross-sector coalition encouraging low-carbon lifestyles supported by the UN and the European Environment Agency. More recently, he brokered the foundation of Global Cool, an awareness campaign that attracted the support of Sienna Miller, Josh Hartnett, KT Tunstall and others.
PRESS - Environmental Expert - Climate Capital Network launch
Today sees the
official launch of a global network mobilizing and accelerating
investments to tackle climate change at http://www.climatecapital.net. Climate
Capital Network™ will attract and facilitate massive capital flow from
investors and philanthropists, to ventures and projects that mitigate
and compensate greenhouse gases (GHG) globally.
Michael
Mathres, Partner & Co-Founder says: “The Kyoto Protocol is simply
not enough. We have to massively reduce our global emissions and have
only 10-20 years to fix things. We need to start a Third Industrial
Revolution predicated on, and driven by, low-carbon energies and
technologies. Climate Capital Network will mobilize global investors,
and connect them with these low-carbon solutions.”
Climate Capital Network (CCN) will accelerate our global transition to
a low-carbon economy, by connecting investors and
entrepreneurs/companies offering solutions that tackle climate change
(e.g. renewable energy, clean technology, energy efficiency, recycling,
CDM, JI, CCS, geo-engineering, forestation etc…). Investors interested
in such ventures, and entrepreneurs and companies providing them have
to register for FREE at http://www.climatecapital.net. Climate Capital Network
will then conduct due diligence, strategically advise them, provide
intelligence, and help them with fundraising.
Over the past year CCN has conducted research in the scale and size of
this low-carbon economy and values it at more than a Trillion Dollars*.
Michael Mathres, Partner & Co-Founder says: “We need to massively
increase and accelerate capital flow into solutions tackling climate
change if we are serious about dealing with this problem and Climate
Capital Network will do just that.'
PRESS - Cybermarket opens to link emission-offset projects, investors
Michael Burnham, Greenwire senior reporter
Washington, March 20th - A European brokerage firm today launched Climate Capital Network, an online marketplace that aims to connect investors with developers of projects that reduce or offset greenhouse gas emissions.
The site, www.climatecapital.net, is the creation of London-based entrepreneur Michael Mathres and his Paris-based managing partner Alan Ocana. The pair founded Climate Capital Ltd. in London last fall to broker deals between risk-taking investors -- among them, venture capitalists, banks and hedge funds -- and entrepreneurs and companies that offer solutions to mitigating climate change.
Such solutions, Mathres explained in a telephone interview, will include renewable energy, energy efficiency, recycling, reforestation and carbon capture-and-sequestration projects around the globe. The projects could come in the form of unregulated carbon offsets, as well as clean development mechanism (CDM) and joint implementation (JI) carbon credits that are regulated under the Kyoto Protocol.
About 150 investors registered with the company while it was in stealth mode, Mathres noted. He said he hopes to broker the new company's first deals by May and have at least 3,500 investors registered with the Web site by the end of the year.
In the meantime, Mathres plans to open the company's third office, in San Francisco, a short trek from Silicon Valley's venture capital heavyweights. Notable Silicon Valley investors such as Vinod Khosla and John Doerr have helped steer billions of dollars into cellulosic ethanol, solar photovoltaic power and other emerging technologies in recent years.
Yet, Mathres said, there is a "void" in the market for helping independent investors find and vet low- or no-carbon projects. That is where middlemen such as the Climate Capital Network can come in and provide due diligence and sector expertise, he said.
"The Kyoto Protocol is simply not enough," Mathres contented.
"We have to massively reduce our global emissions and have only 10 to 20 years to fix things," Mathres added. "We need to start a third industrial revolution predicated on, and driven by, low-carbon energies and technologies."
Veteran corporate consultant and author John Elkington will launch a similar initiative, called Volans Ventures, next month, with offices in London and Singapore.
In a recent interview with Greenwire, Elkington described Volans as a "social venture capital fund" that would marshal financial and human-capital support from corporations, nongovernmental organizations and governments for early-stage entrepreneurs who are engaged in anything from mitigating climate change and biodiversity loss to improving access to clean water and energy