The Alterra Dialogues: a new platform for climate collaboration

To catalyze more climate capital, particularly in the Global South, it is essential to ramp up collaboration across the public and private sectors.

The opportunity for both impact and returns is significant: two sectors – power and mobility – account for about 70% of the Global South investment gap, requiring $1.4 trillion annually. While about 40% of this is already “investable”, multiple barriers and challenges need to be addressed to unlock the opportunity, requiring dialogue and cross-sector collaboration.

We hosted an inaugural Alterra Dialogues event in Abu Dhabi on 7^th Dec to share our first year’s progress and to provide a platform for global leaders to discuss actionable solutions to these constraints, to enable us to accelerate climate investment and impact at scale. Discussions focused on the need for greater and more strategic collaboration, thinking innovatively around de-risking and integrating new financial models.

Over 60 global leaders across finance, energy, technology and government engaged in dialogue, identifying four critical enablers of climate capital acceleration:

1.    Collaborative platforms: It is critical to move from a project-based to a platform-based approach to accelerate and scale climate capital, integrating public, private, and philanthropic providers.

2.    Localized solutions: Regional expertise and localized solutions, combined with global technologies must be developed for investments to be effective in the diverse markets in the Global South.

3.    Performance: To attract more global investment capital to the Global South, it is imperative to demonstrate performance and returns, along with impact.

4.    Unlocking investable potential: Sectors such as energy, food security and agriculture in the Global South have strong investable potential, which can be enhanced by addressing challenges such as regulatory barriers and gaps in data.

H.E. Majid Al Suwaidi CEO of ALTÉRRA shared our vision for the Alterra Dialogues:

“We launched the Alterra Dialogues to provide global leaders with a dedicated platform to come together and discuss innovative ways to accelerate climate capital, particularly in underserved markets. Our discussions were hugely positive on the future of climate investing, with many solutions to barriers and challenges. It is critical to make climate investing a real opportunity for investors, by demonstrating that both returns and impact are possible.

We plan to build on the collaboration, insights and solutions that were shared through future Alterra Dialogues.  

Alterra’s Approach

Alterra is already making progress along many of these areas: it has a two-pronged approach to capital deployment, through its $25 Billion Acceleration Fund and $5 billion Transformation Fund. Our innovative capped return model is designed to catalyze climate capital at scale by enabling other investors to capture additional upside in their risk-adjusted returns. The model makes these investments both impactful and financially attractive.

Commenting on the first year’s progress – where Alterra committed $6.5 billion to our partners BlackRock, Brookfield and TPG – H.E. Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, Chairman, Alterra said:

“The lack of available, accessible and affordable climate finance for the Global South requires solutions from all sources. We must challenge the status quo, embrace innovative thinking, and lead a transformative era of climate finance. Alterra was designed to be a different kind of climate fund, introducing a new blended, catalytic model to the market that bridges development, multi-lateral and private sources of finance. Beyond the USD 6.5 billion deployed over the course of this year, ALTERRA is pioneering climate investment in the Global South through the co-creation of new and dedicated funds, which in turn are raising many multiples of our commitment.”

In 2025, we plan to expand our investment strategies to include co-investments into innovative and impactful companies in the climate space, while we will continue to expand its universe of investment partners.

H.E. Majid Al Suwaidi CEO of ALTÉRRA highlighted the expansion of our investment approach, underpinned by a focus on collaboration and innovation.

At Alterra, we plan to build on our strong progress so far – in 2025 we will look at expanding our investment strategies to go beyond the fund-of-funds model and co-invest into innovative climate-focused companies with the potential to make impact.

I am optimistic about the momentum we are building and as we move forward, we remain committed to delivering meaningful, long-term impact for our planet and future generations."