UnaTerra Venture Capital and EIT Climate-KIC Join Forces
The partnership would represent a shared commitment to support businesses enabling them to meet the climate challenges and forming the building blocks of a new economy.
In July, UnaTerra Venture Capital Impact Fund and EIT Climate-KIC, Europe’s leading climate innovation agency, have signed a strategic investment partnership. As reported, both parties intend to work together “on accelerating climate action with a shared ambition to generate transformative climate impact and respond to the pressing biodiversity loss challenge”.
Both organizations are collaborating as part of the new Investing for 1.5-degree Celsius initiative, led by EIT Climate-KIC. According to the information, UnaTerra joins the EIT Climate-KIC community, providing further momentum to the implementation of the European Green Deal and Horizon Europe Innovation Missions, while EIT Climate-KIC joins the ecosystem of UnaTerra as one of the selected partners for this European impact investing platform.
Under the partnership, EIT Climate-KIC would provide UnaTerra with strategic guidance, climate impact advice, and portfolio-shaping support. The initiative includes “the generation of a uniquely diverse pipeline of investment opportunities through the ClimAccelerator programme, unparalleled reach across the EU innovation landscape through place-based innovation programmes and systemic impact guidance drawn from across the EIT Climate-KIC network”, a press release pointed out. UnaTerra would aim to inject additional innovation capital and “provide scale support to the most promising innovators from across Europe”.
“We know that a just, climate-resilient, beautiful future is possible. But to get there, we need to invest in it,” Kirsten Dunlop, CEO of EIT Climate-KIC, was quoted. “We need to create and connect solutions in integrated ways, and we urgently need to mobilize funds and investors who wish to bring that future into being.” Limiting global warming below two degrees Celsius (C) would only be possible through profoundly transformative innovations in business and economic models.
“At UnaTerra we want to scale solutions, at speed, that lift the world out of climate change and biodiversity loss,” Luca Zerbini, CEO and Founding Partner of UnaTerra, concurred. “This requires investing as a means, not an end, to go where markets have failed and impact has fallen short. Delivering both, a fair financial return, and more importantly, promote and scale prosperity for both people and the planet.”
(Published in GLOBAL RECYCLING Magazine 3/2023, Page 8)
