Blackrock, a platform worth over 100 billion to invest in the transition – Corriere.it

Finance and the environment can no longer ignore each other. Governments have noticed it, banks have noticed it: investing money now has a responsibility towards the planet and if anyone hasn’t noticed it yet, just read the letter that Blackrock – the world’s first asset manager with 117.6 billion dollars of assets and an ever-growing penchant for sustainability—he sent to his clients. In his speech to the CEOs, the same founder Larry Fink had taken a position of no small importance: Companies achieve better results when they are aware of their role within society, he remarked and then added The decarbonization of the global economy will create the biggest investment opportunity of our life. That’s why today’s letter is worth keeping in mind.

According to our recent survey, 56% of global institutional investors plan to increase their allocations to transition strategies in the next 1-3 years, write Vice President Philipp Hildebrand, Head of Europe, Middle East and Africa Stephen Cohen and the ‘head of sustainable and transition solutions Jessica Tan. So what is the investment fund founded by Larry Fink doing? It is expanding the choice of products and strategies to access the transition to a low-carbon economy. We currently have a transition investment platform of over 100 billion dollars – note the three top managers -. We continue to innovate, for and with customers, to meet their demand. In June we started raising funds for our Climate Infrastructure franchise for the fourth year. The strategy includes investments in infrastructure that favors the transition, including wind, solar, battery energy storage and sustainable mobility; launched a new active strategy offering exposure to carbon-intensive companies with credible transition plans and/or providing the materials needed for the low-carbon transition; announced five new index products to offer choice to investors looking to incorporate index investing into the transition, including 2 ETFs with broad climate exposure and 3 strategies focused in critical minerals, including lithium and copper.

Blackrock is also investing to achieve the best risk-adjusted returns in line with clients’ objectives. Last year it launched Transition Capital, a unit that brings together experts to identify and invest in transition-related opportunities across the spectrum of capital investing. And also in June, at the company level, he created a Transition Capital Investment Committee, which includes some of the company’s most senior investors. To give some concrete examples, BlackRock Equity Private Markets also recently announced investments in portfolio companies, such as the largest electricity grid stability project in Scotland; a super battery in Australia that, when built, will be the largest of its kind in the world; a Swedish manufacturer of electric vehicle batteries; a joint venture to develop, install and operate a zero-emissions public charging and hydrogen refueling network in the United States; an industrial gas supplier in South Korea; a Canadian provider of environmental and waste management solutions; a renewable energy developer in the Philippines who is building large-scale solar plants.

Furthermore, according to the US fund, the structural changes associated with the low-carbon transition are reshaping production and consumption and stimulating capital investment. We expect average annual investments in the energy system to increase to $4 trillion by 2050, up from $2.2 trillion in recent years, write Hildebrand, Cohen, and Tan. To help investors evaluate and navigate these changes, we have built a suite of proprietary models, powered by Aladdin that aim to provide an input-based prediction of how the low-carbon transition is likely to unfold across technologies, sectors and regions. We publish the BlackRock Investment Institute Transition Scenario (BIITS) using these models, based on input assumptions BII considers realistic today, including proprietary energy, climate and macroeconomic information, and third-party research. The BIITS is designed to help investors analyze the “tipping points” and “tipping points” of the transition.