impact investing, infrastructure
ESG - doing good with your money?
Much of our development and transactional work involves green infrastructure. This often delivers a social and environmental impact alongside stable economic returns. Sometimes the return is really straightforwards to calculate and verify. Sometimes much more of a challenge.
Our role on such projects is varied and described on other pages. When managers are spending other people's money and promising some non financial positive return they need skilful crafting of the investment criteria and robust analysis and reporting. This is where we can help.
For example our founder Steve was the environmental leader on the team which advised the UK Green Investment Bank on the first managed fund arrangements for the GIB (which was set up to drive investment in the UK’s green infrastructure) - in that case the funds invested in waste management projects. Steven advised on the drafting of the green investment criteria for these first funds. On a number of international projects he has been involved in Equator Principles compliance criteria drafting.
We are familiar with the hard and soft law that governs this area and the other service providers in the market .
To get some hands on experience one of the Cadre set up an impact investing charity that manages money for various 3rd parties investing in the community energy sector. Leapfrog is an award winning charity that helps communities deliver high social impact renewables and energy efficiency projects and supports international least developed country carbon projects. Chairing that charity gave a great insight into the impact investing world.
See www.pureleapfrog.org for more info.