The Global Environment Facility and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs provided a $3 million grant to help New York-based Lightsmith Group advance its new fund for climate adaptation and resilience.
The fund, known as SCALE, aims to provide equity, debt and technical assistance to companies building adaptation solutions.
“Getting the right type and mix of capital needed to scale up each of these companies and technologies — that is the opportunity,” the firm’s Sanjay Wagle told ImpactAlpha from Belém, Brazil, where the COP30 global climate talks are taking place.
SCALE, which stands for Systemic Capital for Adaptation Localization and Expansion, expands on Lightsmith’s work in adaptation and resilience. The firm has mapped more than 100 adaptation and resilience startups, says Wagle. Researchers say spending on adaptation and resilience could exceed $1 trillion by 2030 as planetary warming drives increasingly extreme weather and storms.
“Investors are really focused on adaptation as a new investment category,” said Wagle. His partner, Jay Koh, has called it “the unavoidable opportunity.”
Lightsmith’s $186 million Climate Resilience venture fund, raised in 2022, expects to make its eighth investment by year end, at which time the fund will be fully deployed.
