CGC Executive Director Jeff Schub spoke to Eve Andrews of Grist for a new post on what individual investors can do to be part of the solutions to climate change. The Ask Umbra column is a regular feature that gives readers advice about actions they can personally take, while putting them in context of larger systemic changes.
“Umbra” frames out the problem succinctly, punctuated by this insight from CGC:
“Greening the banking sector is good and divesting from fossil fuels is good, but what you need is money to be directly invested into projects,” says Jeff Schub, executive director of the Coalition for Green Capital. “If we had 100 years, private capital markets might solve this. But we don’t.”
The piece goes on to discuss possible actions including shareholder activism, investing in consumer-facing “green” funds, and of course, supporting Green Banks and using them directly to make personal investments in energy efficiency and distributed renewables. A National Climate Bank would be a way to expand and support this successful model.
Check out the full piece at Grist for a great overview of clean energy investment from the perspective of an individual.