By Nneka Nwogwugwu
Fifth Wall, a venture capital firm focused on real estate technology, has announced commitments of half a billion dollars to close its inaugural Climate Fund, which launched with $116 million in August of last year.
It is the largest private fund formed specifically to decarbonize the real estate industry, according to the firm
Making the announcement on Friday, it said that nearly 40% of global carbon dioxide emissions come from real estate, according to the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative.
Related Posts
The fund aims to invest in software, hardware, renewable energy, energy storage, smart buildings and carbon sequestration technologies.
Brendan Wallace, co-founder and managing partner of Fifth Wall, said, “What we’re looking to do is identify the major spend categories where real estate owners are going to have to deploy capital. And then our business is buying noncontrolling minority positions in those companies.”
“We have some of the largest owners and operators and developers of real estate as LP’s (limited partners) in our fund, so by virtue of those relationships, we can help grow these early stage tech companies, open these distribution lanes for them, where we basically have their largest customers as our LP.
“But financial investors and institutional investors also get that this is one of the biggest opportunities. It’s a generational investment opportunity, because, unlike 20 years ago, this is now imminent, real estate firms have to decarbonize.”
“It’s about to become a retrofitting industry, who admits that his half-billion-dollar fund is just a drop in the bucket against what he says will be an $18 trillion expenditure to decarbonize commercial buildings alone, never mind homes and infrastructure,” Wallace added.
