Carbon Pulse: Pegasus Capital looks to invest in nature opportunities with system-wide impacts

Pegasus Capital looks to invest in nature opportunities with system-wide impacts

Published 13:53 on August 8, 2024 / Last updated at 11:31 on August 12, 2024 / Thomas Cox / Africa, Americas, Biodiversity, EMEA

US-headquartered private equity investor Pegasus Capital Advisors is looking to invest in nature-related companies via its land and ocean funds to help improve the sustainability of entire economic systems.

The firm seeks to deploy capital towards specific interventions in companies, with the aim of affecting entire regional systems, tackling sustainability challenges in food, water, and reefs, Paola de Almeida, operating advisor at Pegasus told Carbon Pulse.

Pegasus manages two blended finance funds focused on the Global South:

-The Subnational Climate Fund: Specialising in mid-sized ($5 million – $75 mln) green infrastructure, across renewable energy, energy efficiency, waste and water, and nature-based solutions.

-The Global Fund for Coral Reefs: Investing in mid-sized projects across the sustainable blue economy.

The New York-based company would not disclose the funds’ total assets, or the amount they are looking to deploy into private equity, as they are still fundraising.

The coral fund has said (https://carbon-pulse.com/303360/) it aims to leverage up to $3 billion in blended finance, while the infrastructure fund receiving an anchor investment of $150 mln from the Green Climate Fund at launch in 2020.

Pegasus can help entrepreneurial organisations in countries across the Global South to mature by bridging key gaps, said de Almeida.

“For us to be able to mitigate some of these issues, we are going to have to take an approach in thinking in terms of a complete model intervention,” she said.

“A lot of these businesses know precisely the problems that they’re trying to resolve, which makes it very easy to understand the completeness of the solution. Sometimes all they need is some maturing.”

Companies in the Global South are eager to adopt innovations in sustainability tech, she said. There is a great opportunity to help them adapt solutions, she said.

“For example, in some countries in Africa we are actively working on dry and cold storage chain facilities, that will help minimise significant food loss,” she said.

“In Africa, around 40% of food loss happens at farm level. If you can remove that sort of waste from the system, that has a real economic impact.”

The top countries invested in across both funds are Mexico, the Bahamas, Ecuador, Senegal, Morocco, and Albania.

The infrastructure fund collaborates with organisations including the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Gold Standard, while the coral fund is backed by 50 nations and the UN.

International network the Coral Reef Breakthrough plans (https://carbon-pulse.com/226947/) to raise at least $12 bln in public and private finance this decade toward supporting coral reefs.

By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com

The content of this article was not created by Pegasus Capital Advisors.