The Interview – Christopher Clarke, Inspired Evolution Investment Management: “Cleantech comes of age”

Mr Christopher Clarke, CEO Inspired Evolution Investment Management is a specialized, boutique investment management company and authorised financial services provider established by Consensus Business Group, Pan-African Capital Holdings, Alluvia Group and Capital Evolution, as its four founding partners. Inspired Evolution Investment Management has first mover advantage to lead cleantech investing in emerging markets in southern Africa. The investment team of nine, including six principals, a chief investment officer and two analysts, is based in South Africa and the UK and has over 60 years collective track record in sustainability, private equity and venture capital investing. This experience includes numerous cleantech market segments such as solar, wind, fuel cells, biogas, biofuels, energy efficiency, waste and water investments.

What is your company background and the Evolution One fund?

Inspired Evolution Investment Management(Inspired Evolution is positioned to lead cleantech investments in southern Africa – taking first mover advantage in emerging clean technology and environmental markets.

EvolutionOne has as its mission adopted a triple-bottom-line approach for the provision of creative financing and support for viable, sustainable and entrepreneurial commercial propositions in the environmental goods and services sector in southern Africa.

Recognising that the growth of the environmental goods and services sector will require a compelling mix of innovative financing, direct access to world class research and technology, and an astute understanding of the southern African economic paradigm in which to establish and nurture projects, the founding partners – Consensus Business Group, Pan-African Capital Holdings and Capital Evolution– have created and are set to launch EvolutionOne, a ground-breaking new funding catalyst.

What is your overall investment objective?
To achieve exceptional returns, first mover advantage and brand leadership in sustainability investments using innovative financial engineering to accelerate the advancement of clean technologies and natural capital markets in contribution to mitigating climate change and promoting a net positive environmental and social impact across southern Africa.

What is your investment focus on the clean technology focus?

Energy

We are actively seeking to fund renewable and alternative technology & energy projects such as bio-fuels, wind farms and solar power that match South African innovation and entrepreneurship with the best technology available in the world. We will also focus on energy efficiency and clean coal opportunities.

Air
We are to fund new technology & energy projects that promote cleaner air environments, which reduce carbon emissions and which have the added potential to earn for their promoters carbon credits in the open trading market.

Water
Water is South Africa’s most precious resource and we will look to fund technology & energy projects that promote the optimisation of this scarce resource as well as creating world class technologies for scale-up and replication globally.

Ecotourism
We are actively seeking to fund enterprise and project innovations that set new sustainable benchmarks in ecotourism operations and ventures, eco-estates and commercial and residential ‘green’ settlements and buildings.

Waste
Inspire-Evolution Fund One will support innovative technology & energy projects that effectively and efficiently convert waste into new sustainable resources such as energy and energy by-products.

Soil
The Fund will seek out commercial propositions that promote the remediation of damaged environments and polluted soils, and which also assist in optimising the value of our region’s soil resources for the benefit of agribusiness.

Agribusiness
The Fund will consider actively financing propositions that effectively and cost-effectively contribute to commercially driven solutions to mitigate unsustainable agricultural practices and which promote new biotechnologies that move markets fornatural products, essential oils, organics and natural health.

Forestry
The Fund will consider actively financing propositions that effectively and cost-efficiently contribute to commercially driven solutions to promote a sustainable forestry and certified value-added industries.

What is your investment focus in the cleantech industry?

EvolutionOne’s investment philosophy is based on the concept of additionality whereby accelerated development and use of cleantech products, services and processes not only provide superior performance at lower costs but also reduce environmental and climate change impacts, thereby promoting mutually reinforcing benefits for society.

Inspired Evolution’s investment philosophy centres on long-term equity and equity-related investing based on rigorous sustainability research. Sustainability analysis therefore represents a core principle of our pre- and post-investment cycle. The performance enhancement or turn around to long-run performance is measured within a suite of sustainability indicators defining Inspired Evolution’s differentiated investment strategy and added value.

In Summary:

Inspired Evolution’s investments focus predominantly on the advancement and use of innovative and proven clean technologies (cleantech’s) that are scalable across a number of select industry focus areas. These technologies are demonstrating increasingly large and high-growth emerging market opportunities across southern Africa in the multi-billion rand renewable energy, energy efficiency, biofuel, manufacturing, pollution and waste management, green chemistry, transportation and agribusiness sectors (among others).

The positive impact of these clean technologies is now commonplace in developed economies. Southern and South Africa’s emerging markets are rapidly following suit. The development of progressive policies and stricter legislation, the removal of remaining regulatory barriers combined with government targets and directives, and the introduction of financial and economic incentives, has catalysed and enabled the development and use of clean technologies.

To supplement deal flow in the cleantech investment space and to capitalise on other emerging natural capital market opportunities, Inspired Evolution’s investments also target areas such as sustainable agriculture, natural health, ecotourism, sustainable settlements and green real estate.

The fund will focus on cleaner energy and the environment – aiming to generate an enhanced annual internal rate of return by focusing on the following eight sectors and sub-sectors:

Cleaner energy generation and energy efficiency
Cleaner production technologies and processes
Air quality and emissions control
Water quality and management
Waste management
Agribusiness and forestry
Natural products, organics and natural health
Sustainable buildings and environmental real estate

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The Interview – Christopher Clarke, Inspired Evolution Investment Management: “Cleantech comes of age”

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