A climate finance platform and green bank for all.

Did you know that it only takes mobilizing $0.10 of every $100 floating around in the global economy to beat the climate crisis? There is over $4.5 quadrillion changing hands globally each year, and beating beating the climate crisis requires investing $4.5 trillion a year according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

• What if we could beat the climate crisis?

(We can, obviously, it’s a drop in the bucket)

• What if we could create a financial institution that works for all of us, owned by all of humanity equally rather than corporations, and create a fairer economic system in the process?

(We can, see RaboBank, one of the world’s largest financial institutions and a cooperative)

• What if we could do both with one initiative?

(We can, that’s what this initiative is about)

• What if that initiative could enable you to earn a 8%-24% return supporting renewable energy projects and averting the worst of the climate crisis?

(Investment in renewable energy is typically limited to institutional investors, who invested $750 billion in 2023 due to the great return opportunities, we are going to make this possible for everyone)

• What would such a platform look like?

(Think RaiseGreen, but owned by YOU, available globally, and capable of much more)

Read on to find out. We can build something good for all of us, together.

Recent News:

Sponsor was recently featured on Climate Court. Read here to find out more:

https://www.climate-court.com/post/this-company-is-democratising-climate-action-and-finance-own-your-share-of-the-solution

Recent Progress:

• Funding: Friends & Family investor / project finance subject matter expert increased his commitment to $50,000, we are now within $200,000 of our $450,000 friends & family round target

• Funding: Active applications with more than 20 VCs & accelerators, we already have 2 commitments from VCs towards our $1.5 million VC target

• Customers: 2 national governments are interested in Sponsor for their entire decarbonization program

• Tech: MVP on track for Alpha in 1-2 months

• Team: 2 new joiners for the Sponsor team

Hi, I am Michael Grimm, CEO of CarbonNegative OÜ. You can learn more about me in the "About Mike" section below. Note, all underlined words are links to news articles, reports, and other good information on each topic. The links are safe.

If your house was burning down, would you listen to the firefighters trying to pour water on the fire, or the slippery guy, grinning wickedly at the scene, smoking a cigar, trying to sell you gasoline to pour on the fire yourself? The slippery guy promises they've invented a new type of gasoline that doesn't burn and will put the fire out. Really.

We all know the economic system is broken and designed to rob from the poor to give to the rich while keeping people unaware while they run on the hamster wheel. We also know that humanity’s response to climate change falls far short of what is needed to avert the worst of the climate crisis. Here I offer you a possible solution to both problems.

I am working with many people to build a global end-to-end climate mitigation project deal platform that will make it possible for humanity to mobilize the US$4.8 trillion per year in funding that is needed to beat the climate crisis, versus the US$1.78 trillion per year that is currently being invested. That sounds like a big number, until you realize that more than US$4.5 quadrillion moves around in the global economy every year. So it really only takes about US$0.10 of every US$100 floating around in the economy to solve the problem.

The first goal of this initiative is to mobilize capital at the pace and scale needed to avert the worst of the climate crisis.

The platform will initially mobilize capital for climate mitigation projects and technologies such as renewable energy, energy storage, AFOLU, and nature-based solutions, also known as the stuff that the mostly volunteer scientists comprising the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change tell us are the most cost effective solutions to combat the climate crisis.

The second goal of this initiative is to enable everyone to share in the benefits of decarbonizing the global economy and to create a financial institution that works for us.

Currently, outside of the United States, these projects can only be invested in by institutional investors with deep pockets. So only those organizations can reap the low-risk 8%-24% returns achievable by building these projects. We want to make it possible for anyone, anywhere in the world, to support the projects the world needs, and to share in the profits of what is being called the greatest economic opportunity since the industrial revolution.

The platform, Sponsor, will be built and owned by a cooperative global green bank and that cooperative will be owned by everyone, equally, who chooses to register to claim a share, for free. Including you. A major climate fund has indicated willingness to provide approximately $30 million in funding for the green bank to be able to deploy into climate mitigation projects. The green bank will also make essential services, such as bank accounts and loans for climate mitigation projects, available everywhere.

So what we’re proposing to build is not just an app and a website, but the world’s first global green bank and financial institution that will be owned by human, equally. 1 share per person. 1 vote per person. No corporate owners in the voting shares. Meaning the management of the cooperative will be answerable to you, and the profits of the entity will ultimately flow to you. The cooperative will also offer a deposit account and other valuable tools and services, for free, just for signing up. This is a new paradigm.

The cooperative green bank will be registered in each country it is available (eventually all countries) and act in accordance with the laws and regulations in each jurisdiction. The technology platform the co-op will use will also be open source, so people can audit the code and see how the system works. No black boxes, no corporate influence in the shareholder votes, rather an honest, trustworthy, organization, answerable to humanity.

So why am I and the people I am working with to make this happen doing this instead of trying to make billions creating the next Amazon?

For me, it’s about preventing the nearly 9 million premature deaths per year caused by air pollution. For others, it’s about stopping the climate crisis, which also leads to what I care about. If you didn't notice last year was the hottest year ever recorded then you may need to get out a little more. More than 99% of peer-reviewed published research agrees this is a problem created by humanity burning lots of fossil fuels.

We need to solve the climate crisis, quickly, or money may one day soon become worthless.

We, meaning the people and organizations involved in this initiative, are working to develop an end-to-end global platform to stop the climate crisis from getting worse by providing useful tools and opportunities to all stakeholders interested in accelerating investment in climate mitigation projects and technologies. Think Amazon for climate mitigation projects, but capable of much more and useful to everyone, globally.

It is still possible for us to win this battle, and doing so benefits everyone according to the experts at Stanford University and the mostly volunteer scientists at the IPCC.

But time is running out, and we need to change the way we do things and think big if we're going to make the world a better place for all of us here now, and future generations.

When the platform launches everyone who is reading this, or finds out about the platform, will be able to register to claim a share of ownership, for free, and you'll own as many common shares as I, and everyone else will. 1 per person. For every natural person, no corporate shenanigans. Nontransferable. It's up to you if you register to claim your share when this launches, or not. Meaning management of the cooperative will be answerable to everyone who registers. Meaning you.

For those who contribute to this crowdfuding campaign, you will be given the opportunity to register early, help us beta test the platform, provide feedback on the ownership structure, and we’ll look for ways to involve you and reward you so we build this thing properly.

So that’s the idea.

This platform represents perhaps the best and only remaining viable plan we have left to seize the remaining 14% chance to keep temperature increases below 1.5°C by mobilizing enough capital to halve carbon emissions by 2030.

The Problem

• The climate funding gap is estimated at US$3-4.5 trillion annually and will increase each year we fail to meet it.

• The current process of financing climate mitigation projects is bespoke, time consuming (more than 2 years per project in many cases), not scalable, and limited to institutional investors, despite well-structured projects being low risk with IRRs of 8-24%.

The Solution:

• According to CarbonNegative research, global transactions are well over US$4.5 quadrillion annually.

• Therefore, directing less than US$0.10 of every US$100 transacted toward climate mitigation would enable society to close the climate funding gap and beat climate change.

• CarbonNegative and our partners are working to combine the functionality of multiple already operational component platforms into one, large, global, digital, transaction platform to create a scalable one-stop shop for climate mitigation projects.

• The platform will use AI, streamlined processes, best practice, and a marketplace to solve these problems.

• The platform will make it easy, efficient, and inexpensive to make climate mitigation transactions happen.

• The goal of the platform will be to minimize transaction costs and make it as easy as possible for anyone with capital, including individuals, to support climate mitigation.

• Once fully implemented, the platform should become self-funding for future development and operations.

We estimate that it may cost as much as $5,000,000 to:

• Pay lawyers to create and register the cooperative

• Hire programmers and other key staff and pay them a reasonable salary to build the platform

• Register the platform according to regulatory requirements in the initial launch markets

• Cover the initial operating costs, including hosting, for the first year

We are in discussion with a number of organizations who love the concept and may ultimately support it. But since we're doing this for all of us, we thought we would show them that all of you do care, would love to be able to invest in good renewable energy projects directly and make money saving the planet.

So we're running this campaign with the goal of raising $500,000, which will be used to pay the lawyers to create and register the cooperative, pay the team and contractors to work on this and to create a demo model, and to run a more formal capital raise on a registered platform.

About Mike

I started my banking career with Bank of Hawaii (America's Best Bank, Aloha!) in 2001. For most of my life climate change was just something people talked about and I ignored. But then I lost my father to lung cancer in 2009. Most likely due to him living within walking distance of this coal-fired plant most of his life:

After spending a lot of time learning about why coal fired plants kill people, researching what the truth is of climate change, and trying to figure out if there was any way to power civilization without coal, I decided to dedicate my career to helping the world decarbonize as quickly as possible.

Since then I have worked on nearly $30bn of power & infrastructure projects in over 20 countries and, as a banker, made loans to such projects as the $2.8bn Vineyard Wind Project and as an advisor tried to help other projects raise capital. I have authored numerous articles and the peer-reviewed Enabling Institutional Investment in Climate Smart Infrastructure report for the World Bank.

I spend most of my free time focused on this, and continually put my own time and money into trying to make the world a better place and solve the problem of climate change. Now I'm asking for you to join me.

You can connect with me on LinkedIn here and I would be happy to answer your questions.