By Scott Wright
THE giant Strathclyde Pension Fund has committed millions of pounds of investment to a venture capital vehicle that backs promising, early-stage UK clean-energy technology companies.
The £26 billion pension fund, which has more than 260,000 members, is investing £20 million in the Clean Growth Fund.
Its investment means the Clean Growth Fund, established in 2020 with cornerstone funding from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and investment manager CCLA, has now raised more than two-thirds of its £100m target.
The Clean Growth Fund aims to accelerate the commercialisation of clean growth technologies, create new employment opportunities, and contribute to the UK’s efforts to deliver net zero by 2050.
It has backed two companies to date: Piclo, a smart energy company, and Indra, which provides electric charging and energy storage solutions for home and commercial use.
The Strathclyde Pension Fund is one of the biggest local government pension schemes in Europe.
Ian Jamison, its investment manager, said: “There is a clear and certain need to invest to secure the arrest and reversal of carbon emission and climate change, and to support strong long term sustainable growth. We are delighted that Strathclyde Pension Fund recognises that the Clean Growth Fund can contribute to these objectives.”
Beverley Gower-Jones, managing partner of the Clean Growth Fund, said: “Strathclyde Pension Fund’s investment is further institutional validation of our deep sector knowledge to evaluate our strong pipeline of early-stage companies, our ability to ultimately accelerate the development of carbon emission reductions in the areas of power and energy, buildings, transport and waste and to deliver returns to our investors in line with the Fund’s objectives.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel