The Brief

ImpactAlpha LP/GP: Climate VCs collaborate to mobilize co-investment capital

ImpactAlpha · September 9, 2025

Greetings, Agents of Impact!

Welcome to this week’s ImpactAlpha LP/GP, where we take you inside the real business of impact investing and the dynamic relationships between owners, managers and intermediaries of impact capital.

In this week’s newsletter:

Coalition of climate VCs mobilize to scale climate tech
Two-dozen LPs backing hard-to-finance FOAK plants
ResponsAbility’s blended-capital climate fund for Asia
Survey: Institutional investors want GPs to assess climate risks

Featured: Deploy!

All Aboard Coalition mobilizes co-investments in climate tech as federal funding falters. “Move fast and scale things.” That could be the motto for the newly launched All Aboard Coalition, which is looking to mobilize $300 million or more to co-invest alongside top climate tech venture capital firms in startups building their first commercial plants. The venture capital collaborative, made up of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Khosla Ventures and a dozen other climate tech VCs, aims to make sure the companies they back have the capital they need to make the tricky leap from promising technology to commercial success. The vision: A new crop of multibillion-dollar climate unicorns able to cut carbon emissions by the gigaton. The ambition of the All Aboard Coalition presents a stark contrast to the funding cuts, policy reversals and hostility toward climate action that has marked the Trump administration, with investors and other stakeholders looking to shore up finance for climate projects and startups in the US. “We need a few people to join forces and be bold together, and the returns that we’ll get from that will be remarkable,” All Aboard Coalition’s Chris Anderson, the investor and former TED curator who organized the coalition, tells ImpactAlpha. “It’s an index fund for what are going to turn out to be the world’s most exciting companies.”

Hive mind. The Who’s Who of climate tech investors, Anderson says, represents a “hive mind” that can identify the most promising companies, accelerate their fundraising at a key stage of development, and signal the opportunity to a broader range of investors. Anderson expects to close the $300 million fund by the end of October and make the first co-investments before the end of the year. The fund will have the ability to co-invest alongside All Aboard members, which include Ara Partners, Congruent Ventures, DCVC, Energy Impact Partners, Gigascale Capital, Obvious Ventures, Prelude Ventures and Spring Lane Capital. If three All Aboard members create a syndicate to back a climate tech startup building its first or second plant, the All Aboard fund will automatically kick in with matching funds. “We have some incredible investors who are excited by it and want to put in real money,” Anderson says. If the fund is successful, he envisions a larger follow-on fund.
FOAK folks. The All Aboard Coalition is looking at a broad swath of technologies that still carry a risk (and price) premium, from zero-carbon geothermal and nuclear energy to long-duration energy storage, carbon capture and marine decarbonization. The co-investment approach is intended to meet a longtime challenge for climate tech companies: building a first or second commercial plant for a new technology. First-of-kind deployments – or FOAKs, in industry parlance – typically require more capital than VC investors can provide, yet they’re considered too risky for banks and other growth investors. “The challenges of the energy transition are too large for any single firm to solve,” says Aaron Rudberg of coalition member S2G Investments, the investment firm spun out of Lukas Walton’s Builders Vision. “By aligning check size, risk structures and expertise, we can help ensure that growth-stage companies have the funding they need to grow into the next generation of energy market leaders.” He adds, “We see the All Aboard Coalition as a blueprint for how investors can work together.”

Keep reading, “All Aboard Coalition mobilizes co-investments in climate tech as federal funding falters,” by Amy Cortese.

LP Scan: FOAK Financing

More than two dozen limited partners backing first-of-a-kind climate tech funds. From foundations and donor-advised funds, to banks and corporations, ImpactAlpha has identified the LPs putting capital behind growth funds for first-of-a-kind climate tech deployments.

Institutional backers. Transamerica anchored Curvepoint Capital, which spun out from Aegon Asset Management to provide growth capital for climate scale-ups. The team is targeting $250 million, building on a $100 million track record across nine deals… Allstate, BBVA and TotalEnergies are among more than 30 LPs behind Decarbonization Partners, the BlackRock–Temasek joint venture that raised $1.4 billion for late-stage growth equity in companies like Monolith, MycoWorks and Group14… Morgan Stanley’s 1GT Climate Fund has raised $750 million toward a $1 billion target, with global investors such as Mitsubishi TrustMitsubishi Trust Danish pension funds AP Pension and Lærernes Pension backing its strategy.

Philanthropic capital. The US Office of Naval Research, Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective and the Rockefeller Foundation are among the backers of Elemental Impact, the Hawaii-based nonprofit and FOAK funder. The National Philanthropic Trust and the Sergey Brin Family Foundation have also supported Elemental… The Bezos Earth Fund and the Experiment Foundation are early backers of Trellis Climate, Prime Coalition’s FOAK financing initiative. The nonprofit has raised funds from nearly two-dozen private foundations, donor-advised funds, family offices and other donors.

Keep reading.

Dealflow: Climate Funds

ResponsAbility surpasses $400 million for Asia climate fund with IFC investment. The World Bank’s private finance group committed $50 million to the Swiss impact manager’s Asia Climate Strategy, which makes debt investments in companies and projects supporting the decarbonization of fossil fuel-reliant Asian economies. ResponsAbility launched the fund in 2023, the year after it was acquired by M&G. It has raised $414 million toward a $500 million goal to invest in renewable energy and energy efficiency, electric mobility and circular economy opportunities. The portfolio includes Singapore-based KIS Group, which manages waste-to-energy facilities in Indonesia and India; wastewater treatment company CleanEdge Resources; and India-based EV battery swapping startup Battery Smart.

Blended climate finance. ResponsAbility’s Asia Climate Strategy leverages public concessional capital in a first-loss junior tranche to mobilize private investment dollars for its senior tranche. “This model helps to scale up clean energy projects and fosters a more favorable investment environment in [emerging markets], driving long-term, sustainable growth,” the investor writes in its “Beyond the numbers” impact report. The fund was anchored by KfW and FMO, the German and Dutch development banks. The IFC invested in the fund’s senior tranche.
Adaptation expansion. The new fund primarily focuses on green energy infrastructure in India, Vietnam, Indonesia and other Asian emerging markets. ResponsAbility last month announced that it was broadening its overall climate strategy to include adaptation. The firm makes these investments by lending to other financial institutions with green lending programs for construction, agriculture, water treatment and other key economic sectors.
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Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

Green Investments Partnership, a blended finance vehicle under Singapore’s Financing Asia’s Transition Partnership initiative, closed $510 million from investors including Export Finance Australia, International Finance Corp., the Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank, HSBC, Temasek, British International Investment, Bank of the Philippine Islands and Allied Climate Partners. Pentagreen Capital, a partnership between HSBC and Temasek, manages the fund. (Monetary Authority of Singapore)
Geneva-based Lombard Odier Investment Managers is acquiring Dutch ESG-focused Ownership Capital, bringing its sustainable assets under management to $15.3 billion. (Financial Standard)
Canadian pension fund administrator La Caisse and Australian climate investor Clean Energy Finance Corporation invested A$250 million (US$165 million) to launch an agricultural platform for high-quality Australian carbon credits. British-Australian mining company Rio Tinto signed an offtake agreement. (ESG Today)
Netflix has signed a 15-year agreement with the American Forest Foundation to purchase carbon credits via the foundation’s Fields & Forests program. (Carbon Herald)
Mandates: Under a new investment policy, UK-based nonprofit UnLtd is changing the way its £100 million ($136 million) endowment Millennium Awards Trust is managed. (UnLtd)

Signals: Institutional Investors

Outside the US, institutional investors overwhelmingly expect managers to assess climate risks. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped its proposed rules for climate risk disclosure. But institutional LPs, including pension funds, university endowments and sovereign wealth funds, overwhelmingly expect their private equity managers to assess and manage climate risks in their portfolios, according to a scan of limited partners by Unwritten. The London-based organization has developed a climate data platform used by fund managers and corporations. It surveyed 100 of the world’s largest LPs, which collectively allocate $2.6 trillion to private markets. In most regions, more than 80% of LPs expect quantitative and qualitative climate risk assessments. Singapore-based Temasek, one of the world’s largest allocators to private markets, for example, forecasts “climate change will lead to significant economic losses” for the global economy. The US is an exception: Unwritten found that barely half of US-based LPs expect climate risk assessments. Overall, LPs are less likely to insist on net-zero or other specific emission reductions.

Systemic exposure. Climate risk is becoming a routine aspect of good fund management, according to Unwritten’s white paper. That includes identifying climate-related risks during due diligence, pricing those risks, and managing them in business operations and physical assets. “Such attention can even make climate risk into a strategic advantage, setting a business apart from competitors that share the same systemic exposure but are less resilient to it,” the authors write. GPs can set themselves apart as well. Australian Retirement Trust, for example, “explicitly assesses an investment manager’s maturity on two thematic topics: climate change and modern slavery.” Unwritten has an obvious interest in highlighting LP expectations: “LP mandates on climate risk management are a central reason behind a GP’s decision to procure a climate risk tool,” the company says.
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Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Juan Diego “JD” Vargas, former partner with EQT Infrastructure, joins TPG as a partner and senior member of the TPG Rise Climate Transition Infrastructure team… Energy Impact Partners taps Ben Feldman, previously with Jane Street, as an events and operations associate… Aqua-Spark welcomes Ben Gimson, former investment director with Gatsby Africa, as its Africa lead.

Paul Ramsay Foundation adds Carolyn Curtis, formerly with the Australian Center for Social Innovation, as chief impact officer… Black Farmer Fund welcomes Washington Cuzco, previously with the Andrew Goodman Foundation, as a finance associate… Dearfield Fund’s Aisha Weeks, New Rising Ventures’ Phill Sanders, and Impact Pollinator’s Arani Kajenthira are among the latest cohort of Justice Economy Institute Fellows.

The GIIN seeks a chief partnerships officer in New York… Tthe New York City Comptroller’s Office is looking for a responsible investing officer… USAA is hiring a corporate impact director in San Antonio… IDB Lab has an opening for an investment consultant in Washington, DC… Builders Vision is recruiting a director of investment brand communications in Chicago… The Commission on Racial Equity is on the hunt for a director of operations and administration.