Rockefeller Foundation boosts climate funding to $1 bln over 5 years - Reuters
Rockefeller Foundation boosts climate funding to $1 bln over 5 years | Reuters
Rockefeller Foundation boosts climate funding to $1 bln over 5 years
- Companies
NEW YORK, Sept 15 (Reuters) - The Rockefeller Foundation will invest $1 billion over the next five years in projects providing poor communities around the world with resources like electric buses, power grids, and ways to practice more sustainable agriculture, its president said.
Originally endowed with money American magnate John D. Rockefeller made through his Standard Oil refining business, the foundation was worth about $5.7 billion at the end of 2022.
"We are going from spending around 25% over the previous five years on climate solutions to channelling around 75% of our resources over the next five years towards fighting humanity's greatest threat," foundation President Rajiv Shah said.
He said the foundation would try to encourage more investors into projects by acting as a guarantor in some cases.
"In Nigeria we are deploying a local currency guarantee instrument that allows local financial institutions to support entrepreneurs building mini grids… (we are) using high leverage to deploy our finance to get the kind of outcomes and results we seek," he said in an interview on Wednesday.
"The billion we are announcing is exclusively new financial commitment that doesn't account for prior commitments made."
Companies and investors around the world are promising to try to direct flows of capital away from businesses that prolong the use of fossil fuels or carry other environmental and social risks.
The Rockefeller Foundation decided in 2020 to stop investing in fossil fuels. A spokesperson said exiting those investments cost the fund $80 million in 2021, and that fossil fuel exposure was now equal to less than 1% of the endowment.
Reporting by Isla Binnie, editing by Timothy Gardner
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate economics
Climate change is now a driver of the world’s economy. The impact is profound:
- Catastrophic weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, high temperatures — are more frequent and more extreme. The cost can be measured in both the initial damage caused and the longer-term impact on the economy.
- Vulnerable communities are increasing climate-related investments, hardening infrastructure and taking other protective measures.
- Investment in carbon capture and storage technologies is increasingly rapidly.
- Governments are making investments and crafting regulations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
On top of all of this is the cost of uncertainty. As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, says, “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid.”