The Future of Green Investing. Interview with Chris Webb, GreenGrowth

We’ve moved fast to shift out lifestyles to fit environmentalist values. We shifted to paper straws, switched our dairy products, lessened our plastic consumption and turned to renewable energy  - so why not investments too? 

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In this series, we’re asking key leaders in the green investing community all the important questions about green investing, starting with Chris Webb, CEO & Co-founder at GreenGrowth, enabling sustainable wealth management. 

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How do you personally define ‘green / sustainable investing’? 

Sustainable investing is basically about investing in companies that are doing good things for the world. Sustainable investing is all about aligning your investments with your values and beliefs. It's not just about making money, but also about creating positive social and environmental outcomes. And the good news is that there are many different ways to do it, from screening out "bad" companies to actively engaging with companies to drive positive change.

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Why is ‘green/sustainable investing’ important? 

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We all know by now, climate change is the biggest challenge facing everyone on earth but it’s insidious… It’s slow, gradual and almost invisible so it doesn’t get the urgent action it requires. But I guarantee it will affect, or has already affected every one of us. 

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As a result, the most important, impactful and life-saving businesses of the next 100 years will be those that solve the innumerable issues that arise from climate change, whether it be flooding, food and water shortages, drought and forest fires, rising temperatures or biodiversity decline. How could you not want to be part of the solution for that? However an astronomical climate funding gap exists. Current figures sit at about £1Tn and we need an est. $7Tn more if we’re to achieve net-zero by 2050 (BNEF), so sustainable investing is critical for our planet and society as a whole.

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What shifts / trends do you forecast and/or would like to see for green / sustainable investing in 2023? 

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A big trend we’re seeing in sustainable investing is a shift towards personalisation. ‘ESG’ or sustainable investing can mean different things to different people or organisations. As such there is a much greater demand for investment products and portfolios that closely match client preferences.

If Ctrl Alt could tokenise any ‘green/sustainable’ alternative asset for you what would you love the opportunity to invest in? 

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As we work to address the challenges of climate change, nature-based solutions have emerged as a critical tool in our toolkit. These solutions include things like reforestation, soil carbon sequestration, and conservation, which can help to capture and store carbon from the atmosphere. But while these solutions are promising, they also face significant challenges, particularly around financing and scalability. That's where tokenization comes in. Tokenization also has the potential to make nature-based solutions more accessible to a wider range of investors, including small and retail investors who may not have access to traditional carbon markets.

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Please note that all opinions in this blog are of the interviewee and not Ctrl Alt's own. 

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GreenGrowth enables Financial Advisors, Wealth Managers and their platforms to create bespoke client ESG profiles and invest them in more transparent and impactful portfolios. To learn more about what they do, visit their website here.

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