New Private Equity Group Looks to Cash in on $300B Green Sector
A team of finance and consulting heavyweights has come together to form the private equity firm NewWorld Capital Group, which will focus on mid-market companies and infrastrucutre projects in cleantech and green energy.
The firm will be chaired by Carter Bales, a longtime McKinsey consultant who founded the environmental practice at the firm, according to a news release.
Bales is joined by Bradley Abelow, former chief of staff to New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine and a Goldman Sachs veteran, Bill Hallisey, of GSC Group, Ali Iz, a partner with CMEA Capital and Everett Shah, of New Energy Capital.
The team is looking for investments that can capitalise on the coming green energy economy in the U.S. and, selectively, in Europe.
“We will apply the most rigorous tests,” said Bales. “No unproven technologies, no venture investments, no business plans built on a future carbon price.”
Bales tells NYTimes.com’s DealBook that there is only $3 billion in private equity capital right now pledged to companies in the sector. He believes the sector is worth $300 billion.
Bales has been positioning himself as an enviro-capitalist for a while now. In February, he published a piece on McKinsey’s What Matters Web site titled, “Promoting economic recovery through climate legislation.”
In it, he argued for a cap-and-trade system and called for the country to restore its edge on innovation:
“We need to at least double federal clean-energy R&D while also offering stable federal deployment subsidy support to help bring technologies to cost-effective scale for broad categories such as solar photovoltaic power and geothermal energy.”
