BlackRock launches programme to spur net-zero transition and strengthen energy security
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The world’s biggest asset manager BlackRock has today launched a new investment infrastructure programme designed to help boost energy security and drive the transition to cleaner energy among high-polluting firms.
The perpetual infrastructure strategy will pursue investments in the “megatrends of energy transition and energy security”, BlackRock said today, alongside digital and community infrastructure, sustainable mobility, and the circular economy.
A number of cornerstone investors had provided initial cash for the strategy in the “single-digit billions” the FT reported, with plans to ramp up the amount significantly.
Bosses said the new programme will allow it to take an “active approach” in helping companies transition to lower-carbon business models over time.
“We believe the intersection of infrastructure and sustainability will be one of the biggest opportunities in alternative investments in the coming years. At the same time, recent events have sharpened the focus on energy security and further compounded the need for infrastructure investment,” said Edwin Conway, Global Head of BlackRock Alternative Investors.
“Private markets will continue to play a pivotal role in the energy transition, and we are pleased to offer our clients another way to go beyond simply navigating the transition to driving it forward.”
The new programme comes as the latest move by BlackRock to champion investment in the energy transition, after its chief Larry Fink wrote this year that that a focus on sustainability was an essential part of asset managers’ fiduciary responsibility to clients.
“We focus on sustainability not because we’re environmentalists, but because we are capitalists and fiduciaries to our clients,” he wrote in his annual letter to CEOs,
An estimated $125tn of investment is needed globally by 2050 to reach net zero, including over $4tn per year compared to $1tn per year currently, according to the Glasgow FInancial Alliance for Net Zero, a body launched launched in April 2021 by UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance Mark Carney.
BlackRock said today that the market shocks of the war in Ukraine had also given added impetus to the need for energy security in the past few months.