Ideas

Since the beginning of the year, the market's attention has focused on challenges confronting the energy sector, which is in turmoil following Russia's military attack on Ukraine in February. The embargoes imposed as a result of this offensive have heightened fears, already palpable in the preceding months, of tensions between energy supply and demand, causing a further surge in prices, particularly for oil and gas.

When growth capital builds the clean mobility of tomorrow At the heart of social and societal issues, cities and urban areas are one of the drivers of climate change, causing collateral damage to biodiversity, resources, air and health. At the forefront, the transport and construction sectors are facing a challenge of unprecedented magnitude: to transform themselves fundamentally in order to drastically reduce their impact on the environment. In this context, Mirova’s Impact Private Equity strategy focuses on solutions and technologies that will help to make sustainable cities a reality. In this article, we take a closer look at mobility.

Natixis Investment Managers and Mirova invite you to join a journey towards a more sustainable world. Because many opportunities arise from the most profound upheavals, Green Vision invites you to discover how players from different sectors can contribute to the transition towards a more sustainable model and revolutionise the way you think about your investments. Mirova's ESG experts will provide you with the insight to identify the risks and opportunities of these sectors.

The gradual reduction of public support measures is ushering renewable energies into a new era: that of autonomy on electricity trading markets. The way in which the associated risks are managed (volatility, cannibalisation effects, modification of the supply/demand equilibrium, buyer consideration, etc.) therefore becomes a fundamental issue in the project’s business plan and consequently for all stakeholders. In this article, Mirova offers a look at merchant risk, how it can be analysed, the strategies to guard against it and the opportunities that can be seized.

One of the most important challenges for institutional investors is to deploy large amounts of capital and manage increasingly high liability commitments in an environment of low-yielding opportunities. At the same time, one of the biggest challenges for the world as a whole is dealing with climate change, its impacts on the economy and more broadly with what it already implies in terms of adaptation for all humanity. While seemingly disparate, these two challenges have converged to a point where they become synergetic: today, the renewable energy production infrastructure sector has reached maturity and offers investment opportunities with a good risk/return ratio, while participating in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. For investors, renewable energy infrastructure has thus established itself as an asset class in its own right.

Whether it is “grey”, “blue”, “yellow”, or “green”, hydrogen is the topic on everyone’s lips today. While it is already widely consumed in many sectors, its use as a source of energy is only in its early stages. Its applications are as numerous as they are promising, most notably in the mobility sector. For it to become the best facilitator for the transition towards a low carbon economy, many challenges still need to be met, starting with the mass production of a zero-carbon hydrogen which will require substantial investment in the coming years.

The energy, industry, buildings and transport sectors together currently account for three quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions, with mobility alone representing no less than 24% of CO2 emissions caused by energy combustion1. To limit global warming in accordance with the goals of the Paris Agreement, financing the transition of transport towards low-carbon mobility constitutes both an ecological imperative and an opportunity for positive impact investment.

This is a methodological document aimed at clarifying how Mirova takes into account sustainable development issues in the framework of the environmental, social and governance analysis of each sub-sector of activity.