ADB invests in Climate Change Technology Venture Capital Funds

ISLAMABAD: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is investing $60 million to help set up three venture capital funds dedicated to nurturing new climate change technologies.

ADB is injecting $20 million each into the three funds including Aloe Environment Fund III, Keytone Ventures II, and VenturEast Life Fund III, that should leverage an additional $600 million-$700 million private sector investment into the funds, said ADB press statement received here Monday.

The funds will, in turn, invest in early stage technology companies that address climate change mitigation and adaptation or environmental protection, also known as climatech. Early stage companies are new firms which have not yet reached annual profitability.

Mitigation costs in developing countries are predicted to grow to over $100 billion per year by 2030, depending on the scale of long-term greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, it added.

Adaptation cost estimates for Asia and the Pacific are in the order of $40 billion per year between now and 2050. The 2007 Bali Action Plan, the Copenhagen Accord, and subsequent climate change agreements have all identified technology innovation and transfer as key to tackling climate change.

However, companies working in these areas have often struggled to access sufficient private capital to get off the ground.

ADB is integrating climate change components into its planning and investments in developing Asia, the statement said adding it has, for example, invested $4.8 billion into clean energy projects in the past

3 years alone - including via private equity funds.

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2011