Chunhua Capital, Sequoia China and IDG, these top funds have set up special funds for carbon neutrality.
Recently, Gaochun also announced that its first RMB carbon-neutral industrial investment fund has ended its fundraising for the first time, with an estimated total scale of over 4 billion yuan.
As a top investment institution in China, Gaoling's insight and action on investment trends should not be underestimated.
As early as 2020, Zhang Lei, the founder of Gaochun, keenly smelled the prospect of green industry, set up a special climate change investment team and launched a special green fund, becoming the first pure market-oriented investment fund in the field of equity investment with the theme of carbon neutrality in green industry.
At present, Gaoling has invested nearly 50 billion yuan in carbon neutrality.
On June 28th, Zhang Lei attended and participated in the 2nd Sina Finance ESG Global Leaders Summit, and gave a keynote speech entitled "Innovative Practice of China Enterprises to Enhance ESG Competitiveness".
In the speech, Zhang Lei made it clear: "In the context of ESG becoming an entrepreneur, VC/PE institutions have great potential."
How do Gao Yan and Zhang Lei view ESG investment?
This year is Zhang Lei's second participation in ESG Global Leaders Summit.
At the first ESG Global Leaders Summit last year, Zhang Lei said:
"The threat of the COVID-19 epidemic has not yet dispersed, and there is still great uncertainty in the outside world. However, whether as entrepreneurs or investors, we are ultimately optimists.
At last year's conference, Zhang Lei clearly pointed out:
1.ESG has been incorporated into the life cycle management of Gao Yan investment.
2. For enterprises, the implementation of ESG is a historic opportunity to take the initiative and rebuild their core competitiveness, and the implementation of ESG will lay a key advantage for the long-term sustainable development of enterprises.
3. Some large-scale manufacturing enterprises can not only adjust production plans and inventory quantities in time, improve supply chain efficiency, but also reduce material waste, improve energy efficiency and vigorously promote carbon emission reduction.
We also believe that continuous scientific and technological innovation is the ultimate solution to the problems of environment, development and governance. Therefore, Gaoling has always attached great importance to the latest development of artificial intelligence and new energy technologies, and supported enterprises to use cutting-edge technologies to promote green and low-carbon innovation practices.
What are the new understandings, understandings and feelings of Gao Yan and Zhang Lei on ESG investment at this year's ESG Global Leaders Summit?
The following is the original speech:
Dear guests and friends,
I am very glad to meet you again at ESG Global Leaders Summit to discuss innovation and the development of enterprise ESG.
In the past year, the world has not shaken off the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, and people's production and life have been greatly impacted and affected, which also makes us rethink the future-oriented development mode.
Pessimists are often right, and optimists can win the future.
In the face of uncertainty, we believe that ESG is not only a new path for human sustainable development, but also a unique perspective to understand the opportunities and risks faced by enterprises, and technological innovation is the ultimate solution to ESG problems.
Through the combination of technological innovation and ESG, enterprises can find new growth points and create new development opportunities.
Take the protection of biodiversity as an example.
The demand for pasture and cultivated land in traditional animal husbandry is an important incentive for deforestation, which will lead to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and a decrease in biodiversity.
Synthetic biotechnology can reduce the pressure of environmental resources brought by animal husbandry, improve the efficiency of animal husbandry and reduce the potential damage to biodiversity on the basis of ensuring and improving people's diet health.
It can be said that the scientific and technological innovation under the guidance of ESG concept has catalyzed the rapid landing of synthetic biology technology, ushered in a historic development opportunity, and made contributions to solving environmental and social problems under ESG.
In May this year, Gao Xian joined the Industrial and Commercial Biodiversity Conservation Alliance established under the guidance of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and became the first strategic member unit. It is precisely because he hopes to participate more in promoting business participation in biodiversity protection and contribute to the global governance of biodiversity.
In fact, under the background that ESG has gradually become entrepreneurial knowledge, VC/PE institutions have great potential.
Since its establishment, Gaoling has always regarded green sustainable development as one of the important considerations for our long-term investment.
Last year, Gao Xian joined the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI).
We also set up an ESG Special Committee to promote ESG culture to employees, investment companies and other stakeholders.
By reasonably incorporating ESG and climate change considerations into the investment strategies and investment processes of related projects, we hope to actively transfer the value appeal of carbon neutrality to the invested enterprises and advocate the promotion of low-carbon transformation.
A few days ago, the first RMB carbon-neutral industrial investment fund in Gaoling was closed for the first time, with a total scale of over 4 billion yuan. Focus on mining high-quality enterprises in the direction of new energy, new materials, advanced manufacturing, green travel, green life and agricultural science and technology.
We hope to find good technologies, solutions and business models through sustainable value investment, and then provide enterprises with all-round deep empowerment in the form of capital, talents, operations, resources and technology, and constantly release their positive value to economy, society and environment.
We always believe that science and technology play an important role in solving key problems, creating commercial value and promoting social progress.
In this process, what we need to do is to find outstanding enterprises that solve key problems through scientific and technological innovation and business model innovation, and insist on accompanying them to grow up.
Take agricultural science and technology as an example.
Digital agriculture is an interdisciplinary subject covering agriculture, environment, climate, big data and other fields, with high barriers, which requires years of accumulation and deep cultivation by professional teams with comprehensive research capabilities. Moreover, the development of smart agriculture in China is still in its infancy, and entrepreneurs with relevant backgrounds are scarce.
Gao Xian invested in an agricultural science and technology company in the early stage. Based on machine learning, the company has built an integrated platform of intelligent planting service and agricultural management, which has effectively improved crop yield and adaptability to climate change.
In the critical window of agricultural science and technology in the ascendant, agricultural digitalization and intelligence need a lot of infrastructure investment to make agricultural production perceptible, computable and controllable.
Therefore, the digital and intelligent agricultural infrastructure provided by the company will be a beneficial attempt for agricultural modernization and low carbon in the future.
We are entrepreneurs, but we just happen to be investors.
Gao Xian has been supporting and accompanying entrepreneurs since the first day, seeking solutions for sustainable social and economic development through scientific and technological innovation.
We hope to make full use of our own innovation genes and DVC (Deep Value Creation) system to accompany enterprises through the "death valley" of innovation, become innovation partners on the road of * * *, and be connectors, catalysts and accelerators to promote the green and high-quality development and all-round prosperity of industrial ecology.
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How does Gaoling lay out "carbon neutrality"?
On June 16, Gao Jie announced that the first RMB carbon-neutral industrial investment fund had completed the first fundraising.
In fact, as early as 2020, Gaoling launched a special green fund.
At the beginning of 20021,Gao Jie issued the first proposal of carbon neutrality to the partners of invested enterprises, inviting enterprises to meet the green development and low-carbon transformation of enterprises;
After that, Gao Xian once again released the industry's first carbon neutrality report "Towards 2060 Carbon Neutralization-Focus on Opportunities and Challenges on the Road to Decarburization", sorting out eight key areas and related investment opportunities to achieve "carbon neutrality".
There are many important investment opportunities in the field of carbon neutrality:
New green technologies and models are constantly emerging in the fields of agriculture, industry, commerce, electricity, architecture, materials, transportation and internet electronic information.
So how do you invest in carbon neutrality?
Judging from the investment layout of Gaolin in carbon neutrality in recent years, promoting the comprehensive upgrading of manufacturing industry to advanced manufacturing industry is the number one task and the necessary condition to achieve carbon neutrality.
Li Liang, the founding partner of Gao Yan, once shared Gao Yan's exploration and experience in investing in carbon neutrality:
"It is not enough to control carbon emissions trading and resource allocation. Only by upgrading technology on a large scale, driven by innovative green technologies and setting standards for all links in the industrial chain can we gain competitiveness in the zero-carbon era. "
It can be seen that to achieve carbon neutrality, we must first promote the upgrading and transformation of manufacturing industry.
Along this line of thinking, under the theme of advanced manufacturing, Gao Xian laid out key directions such as intelligent manufacturing, intelligent travel, new energy and energy storage, and low-carbon frontier technologies, and invested in a number of high-growth new enterprises with leading technologies such as Star Charging, Mimo Zhixing and Feng Tang Energy.
At the same time, agricultural science and technology, biotechnology, enterprise services, low-carbon life and other fields are also the main investment directions of Gaoling.
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Gao Xian's confidence in marching towards "carbon neutrality"
Although Levin has made brilliant achievements in investment, from the perspective of its investment income, the proportion of scientific and technological projects is not too large, and the investment in Contemporary Amp Technology Co., Ltd. is more through the fixed increase and secondary market.
In the face of many powerful competitors such as Sequoia, Chunhua and IDG, what are the opportunities and advantages of Gaoling's investment in "carbon neutrality"?
By analyzing the partners closely related to Gaoling, Weixi Finance noticed Tencent's industrial transformation and layout in the field of carbon neutrality in recent years.
Gao Ling, known as the hidden boss behind Ma and Liu.
In 200 1 year, Ma encountered an unprecedented crisis, with only 10,000 yuan left in his book, but at this time he sold 20% of Tencent's shares. In this case, almost no one dares to vote for Tencent.
At this time, the horse was introduced and found, and the two became attached.
Besides cooperating with Tencent's investment in JD.COM and jointly investing in several projects, Tencent is still a high-profile LP.
It is not difficult to understand that Hema began to lay out in the field of carbon neutrality almost at the same time.
During the two sessions last year, as a representative of the National People's Congress, Ma, Chairman and CEO of Tencent, submitted a number of written opinions, which not only covered rural revitalization, new employment, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, ecological protection, digital governance and other fields, but also highlighted the "carbon neutrality" that was hotly debated at that time.
Ma believes that the significance of promoting China's technology enterprises to achieve carbon neutrality lies not only in their own energy conservation and emission reduction, but more importantly, it encourages technology enterprises to strengthen technological research and innovation, and takes carbon neutrality as an opportunity to force China to transform its low-carbon technology.
Tencent is one of the fastest-responding digital cloud vendors after the introduction of the dual-carbon policy.
As early as June last year, 65438+1October 12, Tencent announced the launch of a carbon-neutral plan to help achieve zero carbon emissions with technology.
In April last year, Tencent established the Sustainable Social Value Innovation Division and announced the first phase investment of 50 billion yuan. At the same time, a "carbon neutral laboratory" was set up specifically for the direction of carbon neutrality, and the strategy of "sustainable design value innovation" was put forward.
In the strategic report, Ma particularly emphasized: "Achieving carbon neutrality not only involves the transformation of Tencent's business segments, but also requires us to go deep into unfamiliar industrial fields such as energy and electricity and low-carbon technologies."
In other words, helping the low-carbon transformation of the energy industry through digitalization is an important part of Tencent's future carbon-neutral action and an important support for Tencent's strategic determination to help carbon neutrality.
At the beginning of 20021,Tencent started carbon-neutral planning, becoming one of the earliest internet companies to start carbon-neutral planning. In February, 2022, it launched the "Net Zero Action" and released the "Tencent's Carbon Neutralization Target and Action Route Report", promising to achieve complete carbon neutrality in its own operation and supply chain by 2030, and realize 100% green electricity consumption.
On June 22nd, the selection of the first Tencent Carbon Neutralization Accelerator Finals with the theme of "Carbon Cable Future" was officially opened.
As early as June 5438+ 10 this year, the recruitment was officially started. Focusing on the three major directions of "AI energy saving and emission reduction", "carbon neutral industry solutions" and "carbon trading", Tencent Commerce will be linked as a shortlisted enterprise, and the rights and interests of regional resources, sales channels, cutting-edge technologies, industrial resources, financing assistance and brand promotion will be opened up, providing technology, products, funds and business opportunities.
In addition to reducing energy conservation and emission reduction from its own perspective, Tencent CSIG is also actively deploying from the perspective of industrial internet, providing digital solutions for many traditional industries such as energy, industry and travel, helping traditional industries to save energy and reduce emissions.
Regarding why Tencent entered carbon neutrality, Ma said:
The significance of Tencent's carbon-neutral strategy lies not only in its own energy conservation and emission reduction, but more importantly, it takes carbon neutrality as an opportunity to promote scientific research and application innovation, integrate innovation with consumer Internet and industrial Internet, continuously popularize low-carbon lifestyles, and promote the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries.
Tencent and other industries provide technical application scenarios, and head speculators such as Gao Ling also prepare "ammunition". After new energy vehicles and semiconductor industries, "carbon neutrality" is opening a new investment trend and the road to industrial upgrading.