Time for the Planet, the climate investment fund
Time for the Planet, the climate investment fund
Playing on the economic front, but with our rules. This is the slogan of Time for the Planet, a citizen investment fund that, in one year, has already raised just over one million euros
Achieving carbon neutrality will require education, sobriety, but also innovations, says climatologist Jean Jouzel. And "innovations" also means "investment" to help them hatch.
To make a difference, six Lyon entrepreneurs have launched the Time for the Planet citizen investment fund, which already has more than 7,000 shareholders.
At the same time, Time for the Planet launched the quest for innovations with the ambition of finding those that could have a global impact.
This may be a track if you lack inspiration to choose the gift of an ecologically sensitive friend. Buy him shares at Time for the Planet and make him one of the partners of this very young citizen investment fund dedicated to climate. Launched by six Lyon entrepreneurs just over a year ago, Time For the Planet aims to find the most promising innovations on the climate change front and mobilize citizens' savings to turn them into businesses.
Today, the investment fund brings together 7,730 shareholders and has raised 1,259,000 euros raised. And it's accelerating, says Coline Debayle, one of the co-founders. "Last March, over a month, we raised 5,000 euros with 50 associates, today these figures would be those of a bad day," she says. These are mainly individuals (just have to be 18 years old and one euro in your pocket...), "but also a few thousand companies, and we are also now talking with large groups about much larger volumes of shares," adds Coline Debayle. On its website, Time for the Planet is rolling out a specific action plan until 2030. The next levels are to reach 10,000 partners and raise 5 million euros by the end of 2021. "Even ten million," the entrepreneur now aspires.
Collecting money is one thing, it will also be about starting to invest it. Time for the Planet has just launched a call for innovation and intends to select three first ones next year that will give rise to so many companies.
Taking the banks against the odds
This is one of the nerves of war in the fight, says climatologist Jean Jouzel, former vice president of the Giec (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and one of the 7,574 shareholders. "If we want to stabilize the climate, there will be no choice but to achieve carbon neutrality, and by 2050 to limit global warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius," he said on December 2nd, at the official launch of Time for the Planet's innovation selection. This means having at least halved our emissions by 2030. And to achieve this, we will need education, sobriety [to be more careful about what we do] but also innovations and investments dedicated to them.
A role that traditional financial players still play too little? The banks' carbon footprint is regularly pinned by NGOs. Friends of the Earth and Oxfam France estimated greenhouse gas emissions from the financing and investment activities of france's four major banks in 2018 at 2 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2018. That's 4.5 times France's emissions that same year. It's enough to make the savings of the French - specifically the way the banks reinvest it - the first item of CO2 emissions of a household. "More and more individuals are now asking to know how their savings are being used and, when the response of banking agencies is not right, are looking for other solutions," observes Edouard Bouin, managing director of Climate Action,an association specializing in climate finance issues.
Supporting breakthrough innovations with global impact
Many initiatives now allow individuals to use their savings to support local projects. Time for the planet aims for another scale. "Our goal is to support disruptive innovations and ensure that they can be replicated around the world and quickly," says Debayle. And at "innovation," the investment fund gives a very broad definition. "We're not just targeting high-tech projects," said Mehdi Coli, another co-founder, on December 2. It can just as well be a social, societal innovation, or even a business model innovation. The effectiveness of these solutions in reducing greenhouse gases will be what we will look at first.
Time for the Planet says it has already received about 100 applications. "First, they pass into the hands of a network of appraisers, shareholders that we are training," says Debayle. The innovations that pass through this first filter will be scrutinized by a scientific committee composed of 15 personalities with various profiles. "The next step will be to compare the selected ideas with market tests to make sure that it works as much as possible and, finally, to have the proposals validated at the general meeting of shareholders," continues Coline Debayle.
Non-lucrativity of actions, double majority
Until then, the process is broadly the same as in a conventional investment fund. This is the whole idea of the six co-founders: to become part of the capitalist economy as it is today, "but taking care to change the rules to avoid certain flaws," says Coline Debayle. The first is that of the non-lucrativity of actions. A euro invested in the fund will never allow the shareholder to earn one more. "Of course we will try to make a profit with the money invested," says Coline Debayle. But the whole thing will be reinvested in new innovations.
Time for the Planet also has a double-majority decision-making system. "To the principle of 'one euro, one vote', we add a second, on the principle of 'one entity, one vote' and this time puts everyone on an equal footing, regardless of the amount invested," continues the entrepreneur. As there will always be more individuals than large groups among shareholders, this system ensures that the fund does not become anyone's toy and can be diverted from its original ambition.
Open source, a non-negotiable condition
At the heart of Time for the Planet's approach is open source, a condition imposed on project owners, that is, the fact that their innovations can be copied by all. "We will offer a licensing system that will allow any entrepreneur in the world to copy innovation and commercialize it. And it will, in turn, have to open-source the technical improvements it could make to innovation."
Open source is a prerequisite, in the eyes of the six co-founders of Time for Planet, in the fight against global warming. "We only have one generation to succeed, so we need to make sure that the most relevant innovations can spread globally as quickly as possible," says Debayle. In a way, we are not looking to create businesses, but markets.
To guarantee this principle, the investment fund plans to take the majority of the shares in the companies created. "But while the innovator usually gradually loses control of his company as he raises funds, we want to do the opposite," says Debayle. From the outset, a pact will be established with environmental and return on investment objectives. As soon as they are filled, the project owner will be able to take us out at any time. In the long run, the six Lyons hope to raise one billion euros - between shares and returns on investment - and create 100 companies.
Source:- Flash News and News Agencies