![]() Villagers also ship in polluting, single-use plastic bottles of water. This forces villagers, most often women, to walk long distances to remaining sources. With lengthening dry seasons, due in part to climate change, Atauro’s reservoirs and storage tanks have been drying up earlier. Worse, the water runs out during Timor-Leste’s long dry season. The water, however, is high in kidney stone-causing minerals and prone to contamination. These rely on rainwater stored in tanks and flowing down from the island’s interior to be caught in reservoirs. One project, in the Timor-Leste island of Atauro, illustrates what a big difference they can make.Ītauro’s small population live in fishing villages scattered along the coast. To date, the company has worked with governments, nongovernment organizations and private corporations to install thousands of panels in some 50 countries around the world. Using only sunlight and air, SOURCE Global’s products can serve as a reliable, resilient and affordable supply of clean drinking water to businesses and communities. Solar panels, part of the water-from-air harvesting technology, a project in Timor-Leste funded by Lightsmith, a financing partner of AIIB The panels can function well in a dry climate, including the Sonoran Desert, where SOURCE Global is headquartered. Each panel measures one by two meters and they don’t need to connect to any existing infrastructure, electrical, water or otherwise. The company makes solar-powered “hydropanels” that pull moisture from the air to produce renewable drinking water for households, businesses and entire communities. Lightsmith’s first investment was a USD16-million stake in the Malaysia subsidiary of a water harvesting technology company, SOURCE Global. The blended finance structure Lightsmith has adopted, which includes a risk-absorbing “junior” layer of capital, should also help bring in other investors. With AIIB as an anchor investor, the fund has reached USD125 million in signed commitments. With the Bank as its strategic partner, the Lightsmith fund is able to scale up and deepen its focus on applications of these technologies for infrastructure. We think the halo and branding of our institution will attract other investors into the fund alongside us.” “These include not only investing in green, technology-enabled infrastructure, but also mobilizing private capital. “Our partnership with Lightsmith fits very neatly with the thematic priorities of our corporate strategy,” says AIIB Senior Investment Officer Thomas Walenta. New investment strategies generally have a tough time attracting money, and this is where the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has shown its worth. And of that small portion, only about one percent came from the private sector. But with nearly all of that spent on mitigation (renewable energy, energy efficiency, among others), only five percent was invested in adaptation. In 2018, for example, climate finance amounted to more than USD600 billion globally. Investment figures confirm that Lightsmith has few predecessors in trying to take advantage of the sea change it said is underway. The analytics it provides should help not only utilities such as PG&E reduce their risks but farmers and insurers, too. The fund’s next investment, Koh says, should be in a yet-to-be-disclosed Indian provider of digital mapping software. The other major California utility, Southern California Edison, is now budgeting USD1.2 billion annually on wildfire risk mitigation a huge sum that Lightsmith has its eye on. In 2019, after Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E) equipment sparked a series of wildfires, victims sued the company to bankruptcy. Koh points to utilities in California, the United States. “It’s one of the biggest macro trends in the global economy today.” “Companies may not label it as such, but climate change adaptation is what they’re paying for,” Koh said. Why is Lightsmith going against this consensus? According to Koh, market demand for such innovation is not only clear and present but also substantial and fast-growing. Traditionally, developing technologies for adaptation to possibly irreversible changes in the climate has been seen as the preserve of governments and philanthropic foundations. Lightsmith was launched in December 2019 by Jay Koh and Sanjay Wagle, two Harvard graduates with decades of experience in private equity and sustainable development. ![]() ![]() The consultancy Climate Policy International has identified it as the first fund to do so. Lightsmith Climate Resilience Partners, as its name implies, sees opportunity in scaling up new technologies for businesses and communities to better withstand adverse weather and bounce back from climate-related disasters. With extreme weather spotlighting the arrival of climate change, a unique new growth capital partnership is overtaking its peers to expedite adaptation to solve the problem.
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