This week, the record for the hottest day was broken for the second day in a row, underscoring the urgent need for decarbonisation efforts to be accelerated.
One firm attempting to assist from a financial perspective is Bankers Without Boundaries (BwB). Founded 11 years ago, the firm brings together those in the investment banking community to focus on the environment and society at large.
Speaking on GlobalData’s Thematic Intelligence podcast, the firm's executive director Allison Lobb explained: “Everything that we look at now has to have an impact lens to it, and we look to put our banking hats on and see if there's a way that we can indeed help move things forward from a climate finance point of view.”
Climate City Capital Hub
Recently, BwB, as one of the main financial partners of the EU’s net zero cities mission, helped launch the Climate City Capital Hub, which is aimed at helping cities involved in the project attract finance to fund their decarbonisation projects.
An estimated €650bn ($706bn) must be raised to fund decarbonisation for over 100 cities across Europe.
Acknowledging how stretched public finances are across the board, Lobb explains that the climate hub aims to bring in private capital alongside public capital to fund the necessary investments for cities to move towards net zero and boost their climate resilience.
Delving into how BwB helps, Lobb added: “Here are a lot of projects which are very attractive to the private sector on their on their own merit, and cities aren't necessarily best placed to reach out to the private sector, or indeed to understand the different arms of financing that are available.”
BwB works to help cities build financial models and investor pitch decks to secure finance, sometimes helping to link investors up to specific projects such as a solar PV project.
Advisory work
Alongside the firm's involvement in the EU’s Net Zero Cities project, BwB also has an investment banking arm that works directly with corporates across the globe.
Lobb added that the investment banking arm engages with a wide variety of companies with societal impact, whether producing sensors to calculate biodiversity or farming seaweed at a commercial level.
“Our financial advisory and investment banking work focuses much more on those niche companies who need that incremental help because they’re not quite commercial enough yet to attract regular banks,” she explained.
