Climate Investment Partnership

This article is part of the Climate project of Spinwatch.

Climate Investment Partnership (CIP) is a Geneva-based not for profit collaboration of public and private financial organizations aiming to match renewable energy and carbon offsetting/reducing projects with financing. They describe themselves as 'neither an equity investor nor a broker' but an “investment clearinghouse” which identifies and approves suitable projects through a 'project finance facility'.

Well connected from the start

The CIP was set up in 2002 and launched at the COP 9 summit in Dec 2003, where it was introduced and endorsed by a variety of officials including Beat Nobs (Swiss Agency for the Environment, Forests and Landscape), Nigel Baker (Swiss Re), Urs Brodman (Factor Consulting and Management), Yoni Jacobs (Riskclick) and of course Frank Joshua.

Hard to trace

The CIP has attracted some very high profile clients and partners in its early days. There is some, though very little, press coverage on the organisation during 2004 and 2005, but in recent years their activities are virtually untraceable. CIP previously hosted a website at www.climateinvestors.com' which is a now a somewhat corporate-critical 'learning centre' on climate change and the workings of various forms of renewable energy. The internet archive service shows that this domain name was active for the company between 2004 and 2008 but access to it has been blocked with this message 'www.climateinvestors.com has been blocked by the site owner via robots.txt.'

This secrecy appears to extend to some of the group's early activities as a 2005 article claims that CEO Frank Joshua 'would not say who the local partners are' for a carbon credit center being set up in Panama. The best information on the group is a 2005 description at 'The New Public Finance' website which may well be out of date. Nonetheless several articles (which interestingly appear to now be inaccessible) naming the company as active are linked to 'Zoom Info'

Capacity Development Initiative

CIP launched their first marketing tool 'Project Finance for Clean Development Initiative' at the UN Climate Change Conference COP 10 in Buenos Aires in 2004. The 'tool' was designed by Momentum² consultancy. It aims to help match up project finance with 'clean energy' or 'clean development' projects which generate carbon credits under the CDM. It enables finance by 'mixing private equity resources with soft debt, and utilizing the value of carbon as collateral in project finance'

It was launched in cooperation with the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP), Ernst & Young, SECO, Foreign Affairs Canada, and AWS

People

• Frank Joshua CEO, is a creator and die-hard advocate of the Kyoto's carbon trading systems.
• John Buttle co-founder, is also a founding member of the International Emissions Trading Association and has similarly spent years advising the UN on carbon trading.
• Karen McClellan Director

Partners

According to The New Public Finance website as of 2005 partners were:

Businesses:

Swiss Re | RWE Innogy | Fenwick Elliot | Ernst and Young | Riskclick | Deloitte | CC&D Consultores | EcoSecurities | YC Consultants | Factor Consulting and Management | Sirius Law | Natsource | Finnfund | Austria Wirtschaftsservice | Société Générale de Surveillance S.A. | Point Carbon | Carbon Market Solutions | Standard Bank | PriceWaterhouseCoopers

Major Institutions:

European Commission | Swiss Ministry for the Environment | Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs | Development Bank of Japan | European Bank for Reconstruction and Development | European Investment Bank

World Economic Forum Global GHG Register | Environmental Investment Partnership | Global Environmental Facility | UNCTAD-Earth Council Carbon Market Program

Funding

According to the New Public Finance Website, funding is from members fees for services, however, the firm also received an initial 'developmental grant' of $373,000 from the World Trade Organisation and OECD in 2004.

Contact

International Environment House (MIE 2) 7-9 Chemin de Balexert 1219 Châtelaine Geneva Switzerland

www.climateinvestors.com