Investment

With state and federal transportation funding slow, Metro and Caltrans are embracing public-private partnerships to finance and accelerate planned infrastructure projects. Doug Failing, Metro’s Executive Director of Highway Programs, tells VX News about their Accelerated Regional Transportation Improvement (ARTI) program, a series of small projects through which the county transit agency plans to demonstrate its viability and desirableness as a partner with private enterprise. Failing outlines the specific focus of ARTI (including the I-710 gap between the 10 and 210, the high desert corridor from LA to San Bernardino, and the 710 freight corridor), the benefits of P3 funding, and what Metro and Caltrans expect to learn about project delivery under a P3 system.

Newly reelected President Barack Obama and California Governor Jerry Brown both began 2013 - the former in his Inaugural Address and the latter in his State of the State speech - by emphasizing the need for lawmakers to address the issue of climate change. And both also cite the need for critical infrastructure investment and mitigation efforts to act as part of a solution to control the symptoms of climate change. Project funding, ranging from high-speed rail to flood control, they assert, are key to reducing the amount of energy consumed from non-renewable sources of energy, limiting carbon footprints, and protecting posterity from future disasters; thereby creating newer, innovative green jobs and protecting jobs that already exist from being threatened by climate change.

Tom Rand is a well-known investor and entrepreneur and is the Cleantech Practice Lead Advisor at theMaRS Discovery District in Toronto, Canada. Ahead of an LAEDC trade mission to Toronto, VX asks Rand how markets are beginning to reflect the realities of climate change and what parallels exist between cleantech investment in California and Canada. Rand notes that as the pressures of climate change emerge, industries across all sectors, from mining to forestry to manufacture, will have to plan carefully to reduce carbon emissions as part of staying flexible with a changing economy. <See: http://vxcanada.ca/> 

Excerpts from a panel titled Climate Finance Show Me the Money? from VX2011 Los Angeles follow the jump. This panel has taken place all four years of the conference, proving to be one of the most popular panels among attendees of the conference, even if the mood has changed substantially in that time. At VX2011, the panel had good news to report in terms of fund performance, despite lagging clean tech investment due to the effects of the global recession. The panel included moderator Allan Emkin, PCA Managing Partner and panelists included; Brian Rice, CalSTRS investment officer; John Babcock, partner, Rustic Canyon; and Jon Naimon, founder and managing partner, Light Green Advisors.

As the treasurer for one of the world’s largest economies and as a boardmember at two of the country’s largest public pensions, CalPERS and CalSTRS, California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer remains committed to reforming the way that the state does business in the name of sustainability despite the recent failures of the financial markets.

VerdeXchange News is pleased to present the following report, written by Sarah Bernstein, Allan Emkin, and John Charley for PCA, which illuminates the mechanisms by which institutional investors should consider the environmental risks and opportunities associated with the venture capital market.