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Tomorrow, the American Investment Council is hosting a virtual event with Punchbowl News to highlight private equity’s growing role in investing in renewable energy projects across America. Today, the American Investment Council also launched a new video about how the private equity industry is helping fight climate change and reduce the country’s carbon footprint. The new 15-second video will run on digital platforms nationwide.
As global leaders work to address the climate crisis, today’s private equity firms are investing billions in capital into fast-growing clean energy sectors such as solar, carbon capture, and battery storage. Last year alone, private equity invested nearly $24 billion in renewable energy companies – a four-fold increase over 2019. To put this in context, the total private investment in clean energy was $55 billion in 2020, meaning private equity provided half of that private investment in the U.S.
“Private equity is proud to play a critical role in helping the U.S. cut carbon emissions, mitigate the growing effects of climate change, support thousands of green jobs, and make our air and water cleaner,” said AIC President & CEO Drew Maloney. “Continued long-term success in this sector will be dependent on private capital, and our elected leaders should promote policies that encourage more private investment – not move forward with a 98 percent tax increase that will threaten the investment we need to develop and scale solutions.”
So far in 2021, global investors have already closed as many climate-focused funds as were raised during the previous five years combined. Last year, private equity investments in solar energy totaled a record $5.5 billion and investment in wind energy rose to $13.4 billion, more than the previous ten years combined.
In addition, private equity is delivering long-term patient capital, years of industry expertise, and accountability and oversight to infrastructure projects – many of which will help strengthen our country’s infrastructure to withstand the impact of climate change. In the past two years alone, private equity raised more than $200 billion earmarked for U.S. infrastructure projects, and the industry is already making a difference supporting infrastructure projects across the country. |
