BDC launches their latest $150M sustainability venture fund to help net-zero transition
by CM Staff
The Fund is a key component of BDC's commitment to sustainability and part of its contribution to help advance Canada's 2050 net-zero ambition.
MONTREAL — On Apr. 18, BDC announced the creation of its new $150-million Sustainability Venture Fund dedicated to investing in businesses developing technologies that will support Canada and the world to meet sustainability and climate targets.
The Fund is a key component of BDC’s commitment to sustainability and part of its contribution to help advance Canada’s 2050 net-zero ambition. It will invest in technologies in line with four key United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) leveraging Canada’s strengths and areas of opportunity: sustainable communities and cities, responsible production and consumption, climate action as well as clean and affordable energy.
Led by Joseph Regan, current Managing Partner of BDC Capital’s Industrial Innovation Venture Fund, this new Fund will be dedicated to making equity investments in sustainability-oriented businesses with SaaS, hardware-enabled software, and software-led business models. It will invest in seed to Series A and B, highly scalable and economically durable Canadian companies that are creating sustainability-enhancing technology systems, with light capital requirements over time.
This new Fund complements BDC Capital’s existing $400-million Climate Tech Fund II, which offers equity investment and flexible financing for clean and climate tech firms with higher, more intensive capital needs and those that are building technologies demonstrating material GHG emission reduction potential. With these two funds, the Bank now offers solutions broadly encompassing the entire spectrum of capital needs for technology firms oriented toward the net-zero transition.
“For us at BDC, it is important to translate our commitment to sustainability into tangible and impactful initiatives,” said Isabelle Hudon, President and CEO of BDC. “Innovation is imperative to speed the transition to net-zero, as much as it can spur the growth of our economy. With the new fund, we have an immense opportunity to ensure that Canadian start-ups have access to the capital they need to compete and drive meaningful impact to Canada’s journey to reach net-zero and meet its sustainability targets.”
