On Tuesday, Denmark’s Nordic Real Estate Partners (NREP), the private equity real estate investor whose largest owner is biotech giant Novo Nordisk‘s Novo Holdings, announced that 2150, the sustainability-focused venture capital fund it launched in February 2021, has successfully closed its flagship Urban Sustainability Technology Fund at a cool EUR 268 million ($312 million).
According to NREP, commitments came from new investors including Credit Suisse and a client advised by AIMS Imprint of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, the Norwegian sovereign climate investment company, Nysnø as well as the BMW Foundation and Woven Capital, the investment arm of Toyota’s Woven Planet Group.
Since the initial close in February 2021, the total footprint of real estate developed, built or managed by 2150’s investor base has more than tripled to 430 million square feet, which corresponds to an area over 25 times the size of London’s Canary Wharf. Per NREP, the fund’s entire capital raise was completed in just under 12 months.
2150 has made several key investments in the interim, most notably its investment in “concrete disruptor” CarbonCure Technologies, as well as a recent stake in carbon accounting specialist Normative, which has developed tools for companies to account more precisely for their total (including supply chain) carbon footprint.
Other new investments made since the first close include Aeroseal (whose technology seals HVAC air ducts and building envelopes and significantly increases their energy efficiency), and Nodes & Links (which uses algorithms to allow sustainable infrastructure projects to be delivered on budget and on time).
“Many parallel technologies need to be deployed concurrently at scale within the next decade to fight our climate emergency,” said 2150 Partner and Co-Founder Christian Jølck. “At 2150 we want to become a significant contributor to reaching The Paris Agreement and focus on the urban environment, which represents 70% of GHG emissions. We seek not only to be an investor, but also a facilitator of urban transformation through our platform with strategic investors like Credit Suisse, the BMW Foundation and Woven Capital L.P. ”
“Our Investments into companies such as Carbon Cure, Nodes & Links, Normative, Ampd, and Aeroseal indicate that we are well on our way to backing the technologies that will help make our future cities sustainable and resilient,” added fellow 2150 Partner and Co-Founder Jacob Bro. “Other technologies that we are currently focused on include heating and cooling of buildings, urban air pollution, and novel sustainable materials, and we foresee that these will be major areas for investment in the years to come. We’re very grateful for the backing of all our LPs to help us achieve our mission of positively impacting the built environment to help safeguard the planet’s future.”
According to NREP, at scale, 2150’s initial portfolio has the potential to mitigate over 1.6 Gigatons of CO2, or more than the annual emissions from Germany, UK, and France combined. This additional funding will give 2150 enough capital to build an inaugural portfolio of approximately 20 companies, each with the potential to become a Gigacorn, a commercially viable company able to mitigate or capture 1 gigatons of CO2 per year.
Alongside NREP, the fund was anchored earlier this year by Chr. Augustinus Fabrikker, Novo Holdings and Denmark’s Green Future Fund.
