Two veteran investors with experience in the climate technology and clean energy sectors have launched a new firm and their investment strategy sheds light on some important trends during a volatile period for corporate climate action.
David Lowish and Akhil Monappa are the driving forces behind Resolution Investors, which aims to “capture the opportunities created by the climate transition.” Both were formerly with Generation Investment Management, the pioneering sustainable investment management firm founded by former Vice President Al Gore a little more than 20 years ago.
With Resolution, Lowish explained, he and his partners will concentrate on a portfolio of 30 companies across a range of sectors, all benchmarked against rigorous climate action measures.
“What we’re looking to do is to select those businesses that are quality companies in their own right but also have their eyes firmly on a net zero future,” Lowish told Newsweek.
That includes companies that are directly involved in reducing emissions and developing adaptations to the impacts of climate change. But the main focus is on what Lowish called transition leaders.
“That transition leader group of companies is one which has really been ignored by mainstream investors,” he said.
Resolution is interested in legacy companies that are strongly aligned with meeting international climate targets, addressing emissions across their operations and supply chains, and limiting exposures to climate risks.
“Our lens on climate is broad,” Monappa said, adding that they are focused on companies with “concrete plans of delivering on that commitment” and those offering products and services that help move the world toward cleaner energy and climate adaptation.
That often means looking beyond companies just within the clean energy sector.
“In renewables, it’s just been harder for us to find high-quality companies that meet our criteria for business quality and people and leadership quality,” Monappa said.
Instead of just looking at solar and wind power manufacturers, Resolution is tracking companies that help to electrify more of the economy, thus allowing for wider reach of clean power and the displacement of fossil fuels.
As one example, Lowish said Resolution is tracking the French electronics equipment company Legrand.
“They make a lot of cables, wirings, breakers and the infrastructure, which goes into all kinds of buildings and helps to facilitate more efficient energy use in those buildings, connecting to batteries and connecting to renewable energy sources,” he said. “We tend to focus on those types of enablers.”
Resolution’s strategy reflects a broader recent trend in corporate sustainability as many company leaders move from making high profile public commitments on emissions reductions and toward the more operational requirements to integrate sustainability goals into core business practices.
Companies in the clean tech sector have been through a volatile period with inflationary pressure on supply chains (and, more recently, the impact of tariffs), changes in interest rates and an unprecedented shift in U.S. federal policy on climate and energy.
“It’s been a really rough ride,” Lowish said. “But the technologies are still here, especially the more mature ones, there’s still a role for them.”
Resolution is betting that the role for the clean tech sector will grow as demand for power grows with the boom in AI data centers and more industrial activity in the U.S.
Lowish said the uncertainty hanging over the industry during the early months of the Trump administration is beginning to wane as people adjust to the political reality and the impacts of legislation that stripped away federal support for clean energy.
“The political moves have been made, the regimes have been fixed,” he said. “When all is said and done, people are still turning to renewables as a way to plug the energy gap.”
Despite the Trump administration’s crackdown on clean energy, the bulk of new electricity generation capacity added to the grid this year has been in the form of solar, wind and batteries, which are often the fastest and cheapest sources of new power.
Lowish said the continued strength of renewable energy will allow also improve the position of the transition leader companies Resolution tracks. And they’re not the only ones making that bet.
Bloomberg recently reported that the S&P Global Clean Energy Transition Index has outperformed the S&P 500 even in the face of policy changes hostile to clean energy.
The same week that Resolution announced its arrival, Brookfield Asset Management announced that it had raised $20 billion for what it called the world’s biggest private fund dedicated to the clean energy transition.
Despite political headwinds and some negative headlines about sustainable investing, Lowish said, many companies continue to adapt to the reality of climate change.
“There’s a drumbeat of modifying your business footprint to make it more future-proof for the climate transition,” he said. “We think that’s what’s happening below the surface.”
