Ranking: 21
Industry: Sustainable Investing
Mission: A renewable power and energy efficiency investor dedicated to climate change solutions. They aim to make climate-positive investments that reduce carbon emissions or increase resilience to climate change. Their investments have created over 140,000 jobs, annually avoiding 3.2 million metric tons of carbon and saving 3.4 billion gallons of water.
What 3 words best describe your company culture?
Collaborative, Service Oriented/Client Focused, Curious
What quote best exemplifies your company?
“In some respects, the parallels between the pandemic and climate change help clarify where and why we invest in climate solutions. Nature is profoundly powerful and completely indifferent to human desires. We can respect that or fight that. We choose to align our investments with nature.” — Jeff Eckel, Chairman & CEO
“In a world increasingly defined by climate change, better risk-adjusted returns will be achieved by investing on the right side of the climate change line.”— Jeff Eckel
How is your product or service having a positive social and/or environmental impact?
Hannon Armstrong is the first U.S. public company solely dedicated to investments in climate change solutions. Through the implementation of our investment strategy and conduct of our business operations, we embody a deep commitment to a sustainable and resilient future. Everything we do at Hannon Armstrong is focused on producing a positive impact on people and the planet. That’s what it means to be 100% focused on investing in climate change solutions. And thanks to our employees, clients, investors, and partners, we’re proud to be at the forefront of the transition to a resilient and climate-positive economy.
Our vision is that every investment should improve our climate future, which is why we require that all prospective investments are neutral to negative on incremental carbon emissions or have some other tangible environmental benefit, such as reducing water consumption. Based on decades of investment experience across multiple interest rate and business cycles, intermittent governmental support for reducing carbon emissions, and several “boom and bust” cycles of business expansions in clean energy markets, we have created a climate-positive investment thesis based on the following theories:
- More efficient technologies are more productive and thus should lead to higher economic returns.
- Lower portfolio risk is inherent in a portfolio of smaller investments, generated by trends of increasing decentralization and digitalization of energy assets, compared to larger, centralized utility-scale investments.
- Investing in assets aligned with scientific consensus and society’s general beliefs will reduce potential regulatory and social costs through better internalization of externalities.
- Assets that reduce carbon emissions represent an embedded option that may increase in value if carbon regulations were to set a price on carbon emissions.
Our impact by numbers:
- 3.2 Million Cumulative metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) avoided annually through our investments, the equivalent to eliminating emissions from over 370,000 average U.S. homes every year
- 3.4 Billion Cumulative gallons of water saved annually from our investments, the equivalent to eliminating the annual water consumption in 310,000 U.S. homes every year
- more than 140,000 Quality jobs created by our investments in 48 states
- more than 160,000 School children supported by our energy efficiency upgrades to educational facilities funded by our investments
- over 1.6 Million Veterans served by hospitals and other facilities that received energy efficiency upgrades funded by our investments
What is your company’s vision for the future?
Our vision is that every investment should improve our climate future.
