ImpactAlpha Open

Climate tech’s buying opportunity + playbook for shared prosperity

Dennis Price · May 6, 2025

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In this week’s Open:

  • Tom Steyer on climate tech’s buying opportunity
  • Digitizing small businesses in emerging markets
  • Johannes Lenhard welcomes “selective green hushing”
  • The Call: Plays in the playbook for shared prosperity

Let’s jump in. – Dennis Price

Must-reads on ImpactAlpha

  • Galvanize’s Tom Steyer on why now is a good time for climate investors with cash (Q&A). As the US dismantles its leadership on climate action at least one committed climate investor smells a buying opportunity. “If there’s a big supplier of capital who has decided, ‘I’m out,’ that’s a good thing,” Tom Steyer, the billionaire turned presidential candidate turned climate tech investor at Galvanize Climate Solutions told ImpactAlpha’s David Bank in his San Francisco office. Hear him out.
  • How digitalization is – and isn’t – helping small businesses in emerging markets. A survey of 4,000 informal and small businesses in Delhi, Lagos, Addis Ababa, Jakarta and São Paulo suggests that “digital tools can help local low-income businesses survive climate shocks, economic disruptions and rising trade barriers,” says Edoardo Totolo of Accion’s Center for Financial Inclusion. The caveat: “Many of these platforms remain ill-suited to the realities of low-margin enterprises.” Learn more.
  • Hidden champions: The case for selective green hushing. Facing political headwinds in the US, leading European asset owners are embracing a strategy of “selective green-hushing” – limiting their disclosures to receptive stakeholders while continuing environmental, social and governance practices, as well as diversity, equity and inclusion strategies, explains Johannes Lenhard in VentureESG’s latest column for ImpactAlpha. Read more.

Agents of Impact

🏃 On the move

  • CapShift promoted Liz Sessler to president and chief operating office.
  • Devon Wolfe, previously with Rothschild & Co., joined Social Finance as an impact investment associate in its New York office.
  • Kate Cochran, who stepped down as CEO of Upaya Social Ventures last year, joined Valtas Group as a senior consultant.

The Week’s Call

Worker solutions, community insurance and other strategies for shared prosperity (video). Capital and services for businesses that employ working-class people in working-class places equals impact, says Damien Dwin of Washington, DC-based Lafayette Square. “Increasing the number of high-quality jobs – good income and benefits – is really the first step in shared prosperity,” Dwin said on this week’s Agents of Impact Call. Other featured plays in ImpactAlpha’s growing “Playbook for shared prosperity” are tools to manage and preserve homeownership as a vehicle for intergenerational wealth, and community-embedded insurance to help residents weather emergencies and capture the economic value of their climate resilience efforts.

The Week’s Podcasts

🎧 This Week in Impact. Host Brian Walsh takes up ImpactAlpha’s top stories with editor David Bank. Up this week: Some initial entries in the playbook for shared prosperity. How inflation and economic instability is affecting pay-as-you-go financing in off-grid solar. And, why Tom Steyer sees now as a buying opportunity for climate investors with dry powder to deploy.

🗺️ The Activest Podcast: The origins of Next World Assets, part two. Activest was created in response to police killings and the extractive nature of fines and fees in places like Ferguson, Mo. The Activest spinoff, Next World Assets, was created to answer the question: What if the powers-that-be instead used huge municipal investments to make people’s lives better and easier. The origin story continues with part two. 

🧑🏽‍🎓 Impact(ed): Season Two preview. Hosts Eric Horvath and Lucas Turner-Owens launched the Impact(ed) podcast to highlight the work of BIPOC investment professionals and to inspire others to join the field. In a brief trailer, the pair preview their second season, which features conversations with Todd Leverette of Apis & Heritage, Kim Lyle of Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation, Alicia Delia of Delia Impact Advisors, and other Agents of Impact. While you wait for the first episode to drop next week, catch up on Impact(ed)’s first season and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen.

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