ImpactAlpha Open

Pension funds warm to defense + catalytic capital for solar lending

Dennis Price · November 25, 2025

Hi there, Agents of Impact! Welcome to ImpactAlpha Open, a free weekly sampling of the top news and views from ImpactAlpha.

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In this week’s Open:

  • How European pension funds embraced defense
  • Catalytic capital for Indian solar and US employee ownership
  • Podcast: David Bank on making missing markets
  • PluggedIn: How LabStart’s Troy Daley is revitalising the lab-to-market pipeline for climate tech

Let’s jump in. â€“ Dennis Price

Must-reads on ImpactAlpha

  • European pension funds said ‘no’ to defense investments. Then came Ukraine
 and Trump. As drones buzz Europe, pension funds are revising their investment policies to lift long-standing bans on financing defense companies and position security as a “responsible” investment. “A few years ago, before Russia invaded Ukraine, there was a different view on weapons, but that has changed,” Britt Dinesen Christiansen of the industry body Insurance & Pension Denmark tells ImpactAlpha’s UK-based reporter Danielle Rossingh. Dig in.
  • A case study in unlocking lending to small businesses to accelerate solar in India. India’s clean energy transition will run through its 63 million micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. In a guest post on ImpactAlpha, Harvey Koh of the Catalytic Capital Consortium, or C3, draws from their new guide to recount New York-based Encourage Capital’s push to unlock financing for small-scale commercial solar in India, illuminating the persistence of many capital gaps and how they can be bridged. Read more. Disclosure: C3 sponsors ImpactAlpha’s coverage of catalytic capital. 
    • Ownership economy. Catalytic investors have a key role to play in providing “the scaffolding for exponential market growth,” for employee ownership transitions, as millions of baby boomer-owned businesses change hands, write Ownership Capital Lab’s Alison Lingane and Transform Finance’s Julie Menter write in another guest post in the series. Check it out.
  • UK looks to impact investors for private capital to tackle poverty and housing crises. With the creation of an Office for the Impact Economy, impact investing is firmly ensconced at 10 Downing Street, reports Rossingh. The new office said in a statement that it will act as “a single front door for impact investors, philanthropy and purpose-driven businesses to partner with the government and grow their social impact across the UK.” Learn more.

Sponsored by Maycomb Capital

🎓 Expanding student access to college and careers in Texas

The better prepared students in Dallas County are for college, careers and the military, the more state funding gets unlocked for the district’s schools. Some of that money will go to repay an investment in the readiness program that delivers the outcomes, creating a virtuous circle of student success. “By aligning incentives around student outcomes, we’re showing that investing in equitable systems benefits both individual students and their families, as well as the economy writ large,” says Andi Phillips, founder and managing partner of Maycomb Capital. Maycomb provided financing to Dallas’s Commit Partnership to give its nonprofit partner, Education is Freedom, the resources it needs to expand its advising model to several new school systems. Texas’ unique College, Career, and Military Readiness outcomes-bonuses could amount to $125 million in Dallas County alone. 

Agents of Impact

🏃 On the move

  • Ownership Works adds Aksia’s Michelle Davidson to its limited partners leadership council, a cohort of LPs committed to advancing employee ownership across their portfolios.
  •  SJF Ventures welcomes Cameron Mejia, previously with Mercury Fund, as an analyst in the firm’s Durham office.
  • Social Finance adds Gisele de AraĂșjo, former financial analyst at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, as an impact investment associate.

The Week’s Podcast

🎧 This Week in Impact

David Bank riffs on ImpactAlpha’s top stories with host Brian Walsh. Up this week: how Encourage Capital assembled the technical assistance necessary to unlock small business lending for solar power in India; making missing markets for local builders and buyers of health, wealth, and vibrant communities; and how European pension funds learned to start worrying and love defense.

🔌 Plugged In: LabStart’s Troy Daley on the lab-to-market pipeline for climate innovation

Billions of public dollars flow into climate-related research each year. Yet more than 30,000 patents from US universities and national labs sit untouched – never commercialized, never tested in the marketplace and never deployed where they’re needed most. “These patents are just sitting on the shelves,” said Troy Daley of LabStart in the latest Plugged In conversation with host Sherrell Dorsey. “We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars being invested into all of these technologies but not really anything being done with them.”

  • Keep reading and watch, “Plugged In: LabStart’s Troy Daley on the lab-to-market pipeline for climate innovation,” by Sherrell Dorsey.
  • RSVP Today: Latin America is the climate market US investors can’t afford to ignore. From bio-based materials to urban mining and distributed energy, Latin America is a proving ground for bold climate innovation. For the next PluggedIn, Savia Ventures’ Andres Baehr joins Sherrell Dorsey to detail Savia’s investment thesis, as well as practical steps for US and European investors trying to maintain momentum in the face of climate headwinds. Get PluggedIn, Tuesday, Dec. 2, at 10am PT / 1pm ET. RSVP now.

Get in the Game

đŸ’Œ Step up

  • DBL partners is looking for an analyst in Palo Alto.
  • Siegel Family Endowment is seeking an external engagement associate in New York.
  • Rethink Impact is hiring a senior analyst for fund finance and operations in Pittsburgh.

đŸ€ Meet up

Feb. 26 – 27:  Purpose Trust Ownership (Austin, Texas)

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