70+ sustainable infrastructure and tech deals
Plus, why BlackRock's ESG is challenged, free renewable energy entrepreneurship course, controversial seafood documentary, Parkinson's Law of efficiency, and 340+ resources for women entrepreneurs
70+ sustainable infrastructure and tech deals.
Thanks to our friends at Nomura Greentech you get the chance to dive deep into 22 pages of recent corporate M&A, asset, VC, and SPAC deals, plus highlights on enterprise values, EBITDA multiples, revenue multiples, and stock price trends for public companies organized across 30+ subsectors in climate and cleantech.
Here’s the PDF and below is the teaser from page 1.
Why BlackRock's ESG push may be challenged.
We all love Larry’s letters to CEOs each year. The sound bites make for delicious nuggets to validate the mainstreaming of ESG…
“Climate risk is investment risk. But we also believe the climate transition presents a historic investment opportunity.”
“We are asking companies [in which we invest] to disclose a plan for how their business model will be compatible with a net zero economy.”
But the reality may not be as rosy as we’d like to believe.
Or so says Tariq Fancy, BlackRock’s first and former chief investment officer for sustainable investing.
“ESG creates a giant societal placebo where we think that we’re making progress even though we’re not.”
“It does not — work in most [investment] strategies, since many are short-term and don’t care about long-term issues, and also because, frankly, acting irresponsibly is often profitable.”
“For climate, you need real regulation. If you don’t want Goldman Sachs to finance something, just make it illegal. Or far less profitable. But don’t ask them nicely or rely on them to suddenly be ethical.”
“COVID-19 is a global systemic risk, and we were able to use extraordinary government measures [to address it]. You couldn’t leave it to the free market and let everyone do what they wanted to do, otherwise countries like the U.S. would have lost millions of people unnecessarily. With climate, we’ve not seen any aggressive action from governments. And that’s why we’re in a position where the current estimates are we’re going to increase emissions by 7.5 percent in a decade when we need to drop by 2 percent.”
Unfortunately, the truth is usually quite complicated relative to our increasingly short attention spans and intolerance for ambiguity.
Read more from Greenbiz here: “BlackRock’s former head of sustainable investing says ESG and sustainability investing are distractions.”
340+ resources to support women entrepreneurs and investors.
You may think that I’m including this information for the women in the ZERO community.
But I’m really posting it for us gentlemen.
Action item, dudes:
Which women entrepreneurs can you forward this to right now?
Seriously, the author, Joshua Henderson, has put a ton of time in creating and updating this list, which is only partially represented by the graphic below.
Why does it matter?
Only about 2-3% of VC dollars go to female-only founders (Crunchbase).
Wait, what?!
For all the details, click here. Please share widely.
50,000 votes for learning about renewable energy and green building entrepreneurship.
OK, this may seem like self-promotion, but this course is basically free, so…
A few years back, I created a Coursera course via Duke University on these topics. I’ve been blown away by how many hungry entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs there are with interest in these sectors. It gives me hope that we’ll figure this sh*t out.
If you know a career changer, student, or emerging professional wanting to start something new in clean energy or green real estate, here’s a starting point.
Controversial documentary — Seafood’s bad, too?
If you’ve ever said this to yourself (as I have) — “Ah, instead of beef or pork, I’ll choose seafood. It’s healthy and more sustainable.” — then this will be 90 minutes well spent.
The documentary is call Seaspiracy. We forced our kids to watch it for Documentary Sunday — “thanks, dad…so uplifting” — and it’s made me rethink my food choices…again.
Oh, and it’s also been criticized for mispresenting the people interviewed and using outdated statistics. More on that here.
But even if they’re off by [25%], these stats from their website are hard to swallow.
Fishing has wiped out 90% of the large ocean fish.
Fishing kills 30,000 sharks per hour. (Not a typo.)
70% of macro plastic in oceans comes from fishing gear.
Forced labor in fishing has been reported in 47 countries.
In you’re looking for next steps, try this resource from Forks Over Knives. (Clever name, right?)
By the way, it doesn’t mean going fully vegan. Think “flexitarian” or “climatarian” instead.
Are you following "Parkinson's Law?"
Time management for you and your team => If you haven't heard of this, I'm sure you aware of it.
It states that "work on any task expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."
A task, if given 2 hours to complete, often takes 2 hours.
But if given 30 minutes or 8 hours, the same can also be true.
I raise this as a way to think about you allot time for tasks you work on, but mostly to think about project and time management for you team.
Can they be challenged to allow shorter allotments to complete tasks, if for no other reason to boost more and quicker iterations on important work or get out of analysis paralysis?
What do you want to learn this summer?
I draft these newsletters on email-free Fridays to help you start and scale world changing companies, supercharge your personal productivity, and become the leaders that our kids need.
To help me frame content for future issues, I have a quick question for you:
What do you want to learn this summer — think climate topics, business skills, personal development goals?
You can just respond directly to this email with 1-2 bullets before your next coffee break.(Caveman or cavewoman brevity is totally acceptable.)
Or connect on LinkedIn and drop me a note there.
Can you forward ZERO to 2 of your favorite people today?
It takes a village and all that jazz.
If you’ve found anything in ZERO to be helpful, I’d like to ask you to share it with 2 folks this morning.
And as always, I appreciate the many shares, sign ups, and emails. Keep ’em coming.
Make it a great week (because it’s usually a choice).
— Chris
P.S.
We’ve got three spots left for the July launch of the next cohort for our private climate CEO and investor groups. If you’re creating tens of millions of dollars of value towards a climate solution, and you realize that “if you’re the smartest person in the room, then you’re in the wrong room,” consider setting up a time for a Zoom chat with me to learn more.
See the alluring green button here.
—
Dr. Chris Wedding
Founder and Chief Catalyst, Entrepreneurs for Impact
Peer-to-Peer Advisory Groups + Executive Coaching + Investor Intel for Climate CEOs
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Securities offered through Finalis Securities LLC Member FINRA/SIPC. IronOak Energy Capital and Finalis Securities LLC are separate, unaffiliated entities.