Investments for the future
- Victor Hjelm
- Apr 2
- 2 min read
Viable Cities organized an event in March on the theme "Investment and Financing of Climate-Neutral Cities" in Lund. 48 municipalities, authorities, and companies participated and generously shared their views, experiences, and challenges under the slogan "Look and Steal", in Swedish “Glo och Sno”.
Banking for Good is one of the themes that SEBx is working on. The world faces great challenges to meet climate change and its risks, as well as geopolitical challenges to secure our resilience and increase our preparedness, all through a sustainable and long-term transition. A transition that requires significant resources to implement. To enable these investments, we as a bank need to think in new ways, how we can take a role and support/finance the transition. Traditionally, it has been municipalities, the state, and regions that have built, operated, and managed our infrastructure. Much of our infrastructure has significant maintenance needs and a maintenance debt due to postponed or de-prioritized maintenance. In Sweden, there is no tradition of co-investing and co-owning between the public and private sectors, with some exceptions such as Arlanda Express and the Öresund Bridge. With large needs for capital in the public sector, capital will also be needed from private sources. As a bank, we want to contribute and drive resilience and preparedness in society.
Nicolas Moch shared during the morning's live broadcast that there is "impatient capital" available. He shared the idea of distinguishing between utility, control, and return. For example, a data center has significant energy needs and sees the benefit of a secure supply of electricity and would be willing to pay for this benefit without owning the power lines. The public sector is keen to own and control, i.e., the right to control the power lines. A financier wants compensation for their loaned capital. By looking at an investment from these three perspectives; utility, control, and return, there is an opportunity to find new financing forms.
My take aways…
There is a huge potential in collaboration, by finding common denominators and common goals. Today too much work is done in silos, with a small narrative. Municipalities, regions and the state could by joining forces, e.g. common budgets achieve more together with the limited resources. If we would put efforts into understanding the different perspectives/roles and lingos, a lot more could be achieved, also with a better collaboration between public and private sectors.
The IT-entrepreneur Jonas Birgersson shared his view of the future of resilient green energy nets, with an analogy to the internet protocol (IP), to build a technical energy protocol (EP). A new open protocol on which a new energy ecosystem is built, all parts in the ecosystem can be replaced, for example sun panels and control switches. Everyone who is part of the ecosystem can take part of the energy sharing system as providers or users. “It should be as easy to share energy as sharing WiFi”, says Jonas. Sounds fantastic, I decided to learn more about EP.
Коментарі