Trends Watch: Clean Energy

EisnerAmper’s Trends Watch is a weekly entry to our Alternative Investments Intelligence blog, featuring the views and insights of executives from alternative investment firms. If you’re interested in being featured, please contact Elana Margulies-Snyderman.  

This week, Elana talks with Peter Fusaro, Partner ESG & Impact, AV Group.

What is your outlook for alternatives?

We are quite bullish as investors are still looking for uncorrelated returns to other sectors. We feel that climate change solutions in clean energy, food and water offer much upside opportunity.

Where do you see the greatest opportunities and why?

The greatest upside returns for investors are those that get ahead of the curve on ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance), particularly in private companies which are not covered much by analysts but are 90% of the investable market.

What are the greatest challenges you face and why?

The greatest challenge is the lack of knowledge capital in the sustainable finance sector. The data providers focus only on public companies tracking S&P 500 and Russell 1000. The heavier lift is in private company evaluation to scale and commercial clean technologies. This requires deep knowledge of the sectors.

What keeps you up at night?

The sector needs to triple investment in clean energy to $1 trillion per year and was still at $363.3 billion last year. Similarly, in sustainable food and clean water there is a need for better projects and a great commercial scale. Why? Because the impacts of climate change are starting and this is the decade to start scaling solutions.