Virgin Climate Change Fund - The fund that aims to grow your money, but doesn't forget the planet

How it works

The Virgin Climate Change Fund invests in specially selected businesses (predominantly in the UK and Europe) who aim to drive outstanding profit growth and have a lighter than average environmental footprint.

How it works

Typical case studies

Lighter footprint companies - BG Group
Formerly British Gas, BG Group operate in the lucrative power sector, where gas is the lowest carbon fossil fuel, with 22% less carbon than oil and 40% less than coal. It converts to energy more efficiently than other fossil fuels and has made a significant contribution to UK climate change targets, delivering 48 million tonnes CO2 reduction from 1990-98 alone.

BG’s operations are best in class compared to its competitors in terms of quality and returns. With ambitious plans and projects in the pipeline we are looking for double digit growth from BG Group over the next few years.

Solution adopters - ABB
ABB Group are among the world's foremost engineering companies. By working with electricity companies worldwide, they are helping to reduce electricity loss and increase efficiency.

As prices for electricity increase and supplier efficiency becomes increasingly important, ABB Group are perfectly positioned to deliver real profit in this market.

Solution providers - Ceres Power
Ceres Power operates in the largest commercial market for fuel cell technology – Combined Heat and Power boilers for homes. The environmental benefits include low-to-zero emissions.

With over 30 million boilers sold worldwide each year, Ceres Power is in a market potentially worth £50 billion a year. They have partnerships with Calor Gas, EDF Energy Networks and British Gas.

The future looks bright as the demand for CHP boilers increases. British Gas estimate that by 2020, 30% of all boiler replacements could be CHP.

The following case studies are illustrative and there is no guarantee they will be held in the Virgin Climate Change Fund at any given time.

How it works

The green filter is used to review the environmental footprint of each of the high performing companies considered to be part of the fund. These lighter footprint stocks make up 75-100% of the Fund.

The fund management team work closely with Trucost, a leading world authority who assess over 700 factors to work out a company’s ‘footprint’.

This is then shown as a percentage of a company’s value, as in the example below:

If we compare all companies in an industry sector using this kind of analysis, it allows us to rank them in order from low footprint to high footprint. For a company to be admitted to the Climate Change Fund, it has to have a footprint in the top half of the list for it's industry.