OGCI Climate Investments is a $1 billion-plus independent decarbonization investor that focuses on investing in companies and technologies that can deliver near-term greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions impact in three areas: reducing methane, reducing CO2 emissions, and recycling or storing CO2.
Source: Offshore-Magazine
OGCI Climate Investments boasts that it cost-effectively delivered more than 30 million tons of GHG emissions reduction through 2021 via its 29 different technologies, and more than 3,000 carbon reduction deals have originated since its impact investing began in 2017. Its impact to date has been more than 50 million tons CO2e through 2022.
"Over 95% of the cumulative realized impact to date is economic at current commodity prices without a price on carbon, illustrating the cost-effectiveness of CI’s portfolio solutions," the group states on its website.
OGCI Climate Investments pursues technologies and projects aimed at decarbonizing sectors within the energy, steel, chemicals and transportation industries, which account for the majority of GHG emissions but have historically attracted low capital investment for decarbonization.
OGCI Climate Investments invests in different areas of emission reduction and recycling. That strategy essentially boils down to one thing: impact.
Our strategy is actually quite simple. We focus on the areas that can have the largest impact from a GHG impact perspective. And then we look at those three verticals [reducing methane emissions, reducing CO2 emissions and recycling CO2 emissions]; those are three verticals that we really stick to. That's our strategic investment plan, if you like.
David Horsup, Managing director, OGCI Climate Investments
From there, he said his team takes a "deep dive" to identify the following:
1. What are some of the most promising companies and technologies in those particular fields?
2. What impacts are these companies and technologies going to have in the short term?
OGCI Climate Investments implements a four-step stage gating process when deciding which projects it will invest in:
- Gate 1: What's the impact? What's the commercial viability?
- Gate 2: Perform deep technical diligence, commercial diligence and diligence around what the impact is.
- Gate 3: Horsup simply identified this as "the hardest gate to get through."
- Gate 4: Check on the management team, perform background checks, and clear any legal red flags.
Horsup added that his team works through those first two steps "very quickly," usually sorting through Gates 1 and 2 and completing a deep thesis around the opportunity, within two weeks.
OGCI Climate Investments focuses on the next five to 10 years for material impact.
Over the last few years, OGCI Climate Investments has invested in a number of "very promising companies" in this particular space, such as Kairos, SeekOps and GHGSat, which all have technologies capable of measuring emissions at various scales.
GHGSat today has eight satellites. They just launched three new ones two weeks ago, and they're launching three more later this year.
GHGSat continuously scans the surface of the Earth for major emission sources with the resolution being about 100 kilograms per hour.
OGCI Climate Investments has more recently added leak detection and repair to its portfolio, and it has companies that actually go out and repair specific leaks.
A company called CL Invest is a good example as it helps operators to monetize their carbon credits from actually making repairs. It offers a full-service suite of methane detection and abatement reporting and carbon credits [that the OGCI Climate Investment portfolio includes].
