This month marks the third anniversary of our Green Portfolio Project with KKR. Launched in May of 2008 with just three pilot companies, the program has grown tremendously since then. In 2010, we announced results for eight portfolio companies, totaling $160M of operating savings and 345,000 metric tons of GHG emissions avoided. And this summer KKR will announce results for even more companies, spanning four continents and seven sectors.
While these numbers are impressive on their own, a handful of other Green Portfolio Program developments deserve equal notice. Since 2008, KKR has increased the capacity and sophistication of the program by bringing EDF veteran Elizabeth Seeger on board; joining BSR, CSR Europe and signing onto the UNPRI, and developing a dedicated Green Portfolio Program website to share results. In honor of the third anniversary of the Program, KKR recently redesigned their website and continues to set the tone for transparency and reporting around environmental initiatives for the industry.
KKR’s leadership and accomplishments have certainly provided us with powerful material to share with others in the private equity industry. As does our partnership with The Carlyle Group to pioneer the EcoValueScreen, a due diligence tool designed to identify environmental opportunities earlier in the investment lifecycle. But even more broadly, we believe that private equity firms are increasingly recognizing and acting on the idea that environmental management and innovation can add value to their companies and increase returns to their investors. A growing number of well known private equity firms have hired in house environmental expertise, signed onto the Principles for Responsible Investment, and consulted service providers to help them identify and capture opportunities across their portfolios. Here at EDF, we are busy as well – writing more articles and speaking at more conferences on private equity than we could have imagined three years ago. In just a couple weeks, we will be at the Private Equity International Conference in NYC which is focused on environmental, social and governance issues for the first time this year.
The momentum we see in the private equity marketplace is heartening and we remain hard at work to seed this change. KKR continues to be an invaluable partner in the effort to raise the bar for this industry. Three years ago, we took a leap of faith that our partnership with KKR, an unlikely partner to say the least, would pay off. We are certain that is has – not only because of the changes we see at KKR, but also because of the changes we see in our own work with business at EDF. Our partnership with KKR has allowed us a platform to spread environmental innovation to many companies at once and it has inspired us to think big and seek leverage and scale in all that we do.
Stay tuned for results from KKR’s newest Green Portfolio Companies this summer!
