Aaaaaand it’s gone (not)

Investing in the climate is a hot business (and no, that’s not a global warming joke). Over $59B was invested into climate technology companies in 2022 according to Bloomberg, and all that money has to go somewhere.

A not-so-small part of it went to a bank that’s been in the news recently - that’s right; Silicon Valley Bank. In fact, SVB worked with so many climate and sustainability customers that among those in the know it was known as a “climate bank”.

There’s been a tonne of writing outlining what’s happened with SVB over the past few days - without going into too much detail, the tl;dr is that there was a small moment when those banking with SVB felt like Stan from this Southpark episode.

Why does SVB matter?

Well, there’s both good news and bad news now that we’ve come out of the other side of the crisis.

The good news: Uncle Sam came in like a knight in shining armour to backstop all depositor funds. Thanks Uncle Sam.

The bad news: All this kerfuffle does make one thing quite clear: finance and sustainability are more linked than we like to admit.

SVB was one of the few banks in the US that actively financed “smaller” green projects that the bigger banks didn’t think were worth their time. Losing SVB means maybe some of these projects don’t happen in the future. Me personally? I just like rooting for the little guy - especially when the little guy is a bank that managed their treasury with all the skills of an 8 year old.