Aligned Intermediary (AI)

The Aligned Intermediary (AI) is an investment advisory group created to help long-term investors (LTIs) — sovereign funds, pension funds, endowments, financial institutions, insurance companies, family offices, and foundations — accelerate and increase the flow of private capital into climate infrastructure projects and organizations in the areas of clean energy, water infrastructure, and waste-to-value. To date, twelve LTIs have committed to deploy over 1.6 billion dollars into transactions identified by AI. THEIR APPROACH Aligned Intermediary guides LTIs around all levels of capital investment in the climate infrastructure space; early-stage, growth and project finance. They source, screen, conduct due diligence, and structure transactions that satisfy specific goals related to risk-adjusted financial rates of return for their LTIs. They also assist in deal monitoring and facilitating post-close value-creation for the life of an investment. Specifically, they: - Source deals - Perform due diligence of projects and companies - Structure deals - Monitor deals (portfolio/asset management) - Supply research and analytics - Provide fiduciary management services ORIGINATION STRATEGY Aligned Intermediary sources unique transactions from around the world that its Members would not otherwise see through its network of companies, developers, banks, government programs, and other co-investors. To mitigate risk for Members, Aligned Intermediary will often pursue opportunities that have either co-investment from established non-Member institutional investors or participation from strategic non-institutional investors. Aligned Intermediary is focused on sourcing direct investment opportunities (debt and equity) in traditional clean energy deployment, high growth-equity opportunities in emerging markets, and new technology companies. They focus on transactions with a minimum investment size of USD 25 million and seek competitive financial returns on a commercial basis (i.e. currently we do not facilitate concessionary capital). COMPLEMENTING, RATHER THAN COMPETING WITH, EXISTING STAKEHOLDERS Aligned Intermediary collaborates with a broad range of other actors involved in climate infrastructure, including: - Privately-owned companies looking for minority investor capital - Project developers - Commercial and investment banks - Multilateral banks and development institutions such as the World Bank and GEF - Government officials and policymakers - Investor-owned and municipal utilities in both water and electric power - Independent power producers and publicly-traded “Yieldcos” - Private equity and infrastructure funds - Non-governmental organizations Importantly, they are not seeking to compete with existing banks or asset managers. To the contrary, they believe there are attractive investment opportunities that are not being ‘banked’ due to difficulties around scale, time horizon, and the mispricing of risks in the marketplace. As such, they tap their vast global network to facilitate investments in, and be a matchmaker for, the very best opportunities meeting their LTI partner requirements.