Can Climate Change Be an Investment Opportunity?
You've seen the news. Fires and drought on the West Coast and flooding on the East Coast. In the South, hurricanes and tropical storms are a frequent occurrence. In the North, bitter storms leave much of the country under crippling snow and cold weather during much of the year. Even Texas is getting their fair share of freak snowstorms while the Pacific Northwest battles heat waves that have sent the mercury rising well into the triple-digits for days or weeks on end.
These are the effects of climate change, and they're only going to get worse. Just in the last couple years, weather has become a significant concern, and it's not only happening in the U.S. The entire world is in the middle of battling a climate crisis never before seen by humans, and climate change investment research provides an opportunity to actually do something about it, as well as to make a return on those investments.
With various climate change technology companies leading the charge, climate tech has made our failing climate the number one concern, and new research indicates that we must do something about our climate and the world we live in, which is becoming more inhospitable to humans with each passing day.
What Can Investors Do About It?
For investors, climate tech is an aspirational field that seeks to go much farther than the cleantech investment craze of the early 2000s. Today, there are billions of dollars being invested in climate change, and investment research has indicated this growing field as an opportunity to investors that want to put their money to good use while earning a return on that investment. After all, we've only got one planet and climate, and responsible stewardship of that climate now needs big solutions and big money to help move us forward.
From climate tech funds to new climate change technology companies that will lead the charge, investors can help play a role in saving our planet from the activities and actions that are collectively doing us in. Indeed, climate change investment research is only getting started, and in 2021 investors have already closed climate-focused funds at a rate greater than the last five years combined.
The Great Climate Opportunity
As a new wave of climate focused investing is underway, climate tech companies are on track to reach a record of $50+ billion in equity funding raised in 2021. In the same way that every company today is a technology company, the need for persistent global monitoring and coordination will see every company of tomorrow be a space company. Featured in the The Great Climate Opportunity report, co-written by Space Capital and Silicon Valley Bank, there are several companies who are utilizing satellite technology to create a solution for the climate issues facing our planet.
- GHSat is a Montreal based company that provides global emissions monitoring services intended for remote sensing of GHG (Greenhouse Gas), air quality gas, and other trace gas emissions. The company's services use geographic coordinates to measure gas concentrations from industrial facilities around the world. and helps in GHG and air quality gas measurement with better accuracy at a fraction of the cost of comparable alternatives, enabling businesses to keep the environment clean.
- Muon Space is a space-based constellation platform intended to transform the ability to see through the fog of climate uncertainty, anticipate the impacts and act with conviction. The company's platform comes up with multi-modal satellite remote sensing systems for predicting and modeling a changing planet, enabling individuals in the aviation industry to know and understand about space insights through remote sensing.
- Regrow has developed an automated agriculture platform designed to track, monitor, and manage crops. The company's platform provides remote sensing imagery by using precise hyperspectral cameras onboard drones or satellites to estimate crop performance and diagnosis, enabling farmers and agronomists to know about the problems of modern crop production such as stress identification which saves on chemicals and increase their yields.
- Pachama is based out of San Francisco and has developed an AI and remote sensing platform intended to verify and monitor carbon capture by forests to help finance conservation and reforestation. The company's platform combines machine learning, satellite imaging, drones, and LIDAR technologies to scale up the protection and restoration of the forests, thereby enabling clients to offset their carbon emissions into those protecting and restoring the forest.
To learn more about these companies and the impact satellite technology can have on climate, watch the video above and download The Great Climate Opportunity below.
