Last week marked a significant step forward in the global response to Climate Change - during a summit of more than 40 world leaders the Biden administration committed to cutting planet-heating emissions by 50% by 2030, essentially doubling the US' previous commitment.
On top of this, the summit saw an American promise to double financial aid for developing countries struggling with the escalating droughts, floods, heatwaves, and other impacts of the climate crisis, as well as a new US push to work with other countries on clean energy innovation.
It is clear - as we have explored over the last four months of our climate change series - that the heating of our planet and climate disruption continues apace and it is more important than ever to tackle this significant global challenge.
2021 can be, and must be, a turning point in the fight against global warming. In the UK, plans continue apace for the delayed Glasgow Climate Change Conference at the end of the year, and it is hoped that these new commitments by the US will spur other countries to do more.
At Future Planet, we seek the intersection of high return and meaningful impact while addressing some of the world's biggest challenges. As we set out in January, we firmly believe that addressing climate change doesn’t require a smaller economy or a decade-long depression. Instead, transition to a low-carbon economy means primarily less emission-intensive growth; by decoupling growth and emissions.
In this edition of Future Thinking we are pleased to conclude our climate change series and review, as investors, where we have a clear opportunity to support initiatives to build back better, encourage the development of green jobs, and accelerate our path to net zero.
We are also pleased to feature an opinion piece from our Executive Chairman, Douglas Hansen-Luke at the bottom of this edition. We've proved Global Britain is an innovation superpower - now we need worldwide investment. Read on to find out more.
Thank you for joining us on this journey as we continue to look at ways we can introduce new technology, challenge preconceptions, and how we can invest profitably, to be more responsible and sustainable - creating a better Future Planet.
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David Attenborough: 'This is the last chance' to address climate change | BBC News
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FPC's Focus on Tackling Climate Change
Future Planet, working in partnership with scientists and founders emerging from the world’s top universities, is seeking those companies best able to meet this challenge and address the $50 trillion market opportunity created by the challenge of climate change.
The very essence of capitalism is to make more from less and the essence of responsible capitalism is to reduce unnecessary consumption and waste. A sustainable approach to emissions, consumption and the environment is not only profitable but will reduce untold suffering for billions of humans and their fellow creatures.
Future Planet brings together the world’s leading thinkers in these spaces and identities companies in three focus areas most likely to make a valuable difference to climate change, reducing our environmental footprint and husbanding bio-diversity.
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1. Energy & Emissions
The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a short-term reduction in emissions over the last 12 months and recent reports suggest that a number of countries, including Germany, UK, Sweden and Spain, are increasingly generating electricity from renewable sources rather than from fossil fuels. This is positive, but it is clear that there is a lot more that can - and needs to be done - in this area. AI and hardware increasingly drive both investor value and impact and at FPC we're particularly looking at investments around renewables and electric vehicles.
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2. Sustainable Consumption
Embracing a circular, sustainable economy and living within smart cities is a matter of survival. Resource productivity, efficiency and waste elimination will have enormous impact & externality benefits for investors able to deploy & scale physical, digital & biological solutions to recycling and upcycling. Creating sustainable supply chains and new manufacturing methods, value chains will allow us to maintain productivity and create new opportunities in everything from FMCG to fashion. In this category, we're particularly looking at the circular economy, fashion and smart cities
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3. Environment & Agriculture
As humans continue to encroach on natural eco-systems, unless we ensure our practices are sustainable there will undoubtedly be greater environmental destruction, further pandemics and the increase of other diseases. There are some really exciting and positive signs - biotech, CRISPR & new deep tech are offering new opportunities to increase yields while lowering CO2 and waste in the global food value chain. In addition, new meat substitutes and advances in agri/aquaculture are helping to maintain biodiversity and planet health. In this area, we are particularly interested in AgriTech and Food Security & Green Protein.
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We’ve proved Global Britain is an innovation superpower
– now we need worldwide investment
Douglas Hansen-Luke
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Five years ago, we were a different world. Former Chancellor Philip Hammond had just committed £23bn to a National Innovation and Infrastructure fund to catalyse private sector investment. We were still in the EU and COVID-19 was in the distant future.
Since 2016, we’ve demonstrated the principle of investing in British innovation. Oxford remains the world’s top ranked university. The Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID vaccine is proof that UK university-led ventures can be profitable and impactful upon global challenges.
Now, with Abu Dhabi and the UK partnering to invest millions in new technologies, the Government needs to strongly capitalise on our success. We need to bring global investors, public funding and entrepreneurs together to make Britain a technological and science superpower on the world stage.
Point proved
Brits have a reputation for letting home-grown inventions slip through our fingers. We’re often seen as understated inventors, unwilling to commercialise, and with a tendency to fail to recognise marketable talent.
Back in 2016, I argued that British inventiveness had significantly contributed to the success of two of the world’s biggest companies – Google and Apple. Yet, as a country, we only captured a fraction of that value, with much of the profit realised overseas.
Today Vaccitech, the university start-up behind the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID vaccine, is one of the many companies showing how Britain can profitably address global challenges in areas such as healthcare, clean energy and infrastructure.
Vaccitech is developing new drugs to fight cancer and other infectious diseases that could emerge as global threats. The company recently secured its largest private investment, $168 million to take three therapies into first-in-human studies. Vaccitech isn’t alone. Another blockbuster British biotech, Oxford Nanopore, is about to list on the UK stock market. Its rapid COVID-19 tests have proved critical to the pandemic response in Britain and elsewhere.
Taking success forwards: Priming the pump
So, what can we do to build on this success? The Government needs to continue to fund the best of British inventiveness.
The UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S) is a great example of how public money can help boost strategically-important sectors of the economy and help innovative new technologies reach a global market.
UKI2S invests Government funding in innovative, often risky, research with global implications. Among the rising global stars in their portfolio is Tropic Biosciences in Norwich, who are using cutting-edge science to save the humble banana from a fruit-ending pandemic disease.
Another company in their portfolio, Tokamak Energy, near Oxford, is leading global efforts to commercialise the holy grail of energy production – fusion power, with the aim of providing a source of limitless clean power.
Attracting overseas investment
Yet, Government funding can only prime the pump for private sector investment. And, to make the most of our technologies, we need the rest of the world to recognise our potential and to invest in the UK.
In late March, the Financial Times reported that the United Arab Emirates had agreed a multibillion-pound investment partnership with the UK. This includes £800m from Abu Dhabi state fund, Mubadala, to invest in life sciences, to be matched by £200m from the UK.
It’s a huge boost to UK innovation, and to post-Brexit Britain. The Vice-Chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge both had concerns about losing funding from Horizon, the European funding agency, but – in fact – the appetite of international investors, with an estimated £5bn from a single sovereign wealth fund, should more than compensate for the shortfall.
As public sector funding, Horizon is a distraction. The profit-first approach to funding innovation is always going to produce better results.
Replicating Silicon Valley
Around the world, there are multiple innovation ‘hot spots’ where new companies are born ready to meet a global market.
Professor Jerome S. Engel, from the University of California, Berkeley and an advisor to Future Planet Capital, calls them Clusters of Innovation – “global economic hot spots where new technologies germinate at an astounding rate and where pools of capital, expertise, and talent foster the development of new industries and new ways of doing business.”
One such example is Silicon Valley. And, through two decades of study, he has distilled the elements that make this tech cluster a worldwide success.
US Government funding contributed, of course, to the stratospheric rise of California’s tech industry. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) funded the developers of ARPANET, the first computer network designed with the foundational technologies that underpin today’s World Wide Web.
But private sector funding was also critical to superpowering today’s Silicon Valley, along with a culture of entrepreneurship.
Can we turn Britain into a superpowered version of Silicon Valley? Certainly. Lord Gerry Grimstone, the UK’s investment minister, is not alone in thinking – as he told the FT – that the future opportunities are sizeable.
We have top universities, world-beating research, and a burgeoning culture of commercialising inventiveness.
A decade ago, David Willetts talked about the eight great technologies that would propel Britain forwards. Five years ago, I talked about driving Britain’s ‘innovation mojo’. Now, let’s go and do it.
Our future place in the world will not be defined by our warheads, but by the inventiveness of our minds.
Douglas Hansen-Luke is the Executive Chairman of Future Planet Capital, where he is focused on connecting the world’s large investors, including sovereign wealth funds, with hard-to-access opportunities in technology and life sciences. Previously, he has held senior managerial positions across the Middle East and Asia and also stood as a Parliamentary Candidate at the 2015 UK General Election. Future Planet Capital is the third largest investor in Vaccitech after the University of Oxford and M&G plc, and is partnered with Midven, the manager of UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund. |
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Challenge Investing
Within our universe, we have a significant number of companies that are helping to profitably address this significant and vitally important global challenge. If you’d like to invest in some of the most promising growth companies based on top research then please don't hesitate to get in touch.
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