UK Carbon Tracker ET Index Partners with SyndicateRoom, Quickly Secures 74% Campaign Goal

ET Index, a business helping investors maximise returns in a carbon constrained world, has linked with equity crowdfunding platform SyndicateRoom to complete a £1.1m investment round.  To date over £813,000 or 74% has been raised on the round, with £390,000 secured from the lead investor, a German Family Office.

“At SyndicateRoom we work with disruptive businesses that make the world a better place. ET Index is a fascinating company, which does just that –  helping investors understand, manage and reduce carbon emissions,” commented SyndicateRoom CEO Gonçalo de Vasconcelos. “Our own research has shown a clear appetite from investors for greater transparency around carbon footprints related to their investments, with investors on average 49% more likely to be interested in environmental issues than the UK population as a whole.”

Global governments are increasingly prioritizing green energy, with more and more legislation and taxation being levied against companies with the aim of reducing emissions. ET Index helps investors understand investment risks related to this and companies’ carbon footprints before investment. The ET Index series claims to be the only low-carbon and fossil-free index option on the market to be linked to a “public, fully transparent carbon ranking” of all of the companies within each index, which gives investors the assurance that they’re putting more money into the low-carbon companies and less money into the high-carbon ones. Underpinned by ET Carbon Rankings, each ET Index also acts as an engagement tool to encourage constituent companies to lower emissions.

“While some data is currently available on the carbon footprint of companies, this is nowhere near exhaustive,” explained the campaign. “ET Index fills this information gap by giving institutional investors high-level insights into how companies are performing in this area, thus helping safeguard their portfolios against upcoming green legislation and the associated (and often invisible) costs.”

According to the company, ET Index gives investors:

·        Detailed corporate carbon emissions data

·        Portfolio carbon footprinting and reporting services

·        Bespoke portfolio analysis of exposure to carbon risk

·        Low-carbon indexes to enable better investment management

“Climate change is the challenge of my generation. I want to empower others to tackle the problem. Since indexes are a pooled investment vehicle where money is moving in unison, and around one-third of the world’s money is invested through indexes, if this money could be redirected according to a company’s environmental impact, then this could be a very powerful tool to shift company behavior,” explained ET Index CEO and Google alum Sam Gill.  “I also want to honour my late father’s legacy. My father, Michael Gill, wrote a visionary book called Environmental Tracking back in 1997 – which I updated in 2011 as Environmental Tracking 3.0 – outlining the broad concept upon which ET Index is based today. Following a career in the city as an analyst and, briefly, a fund manager, he could see the potential for index funds as a force for good. Success for ET Index will be increasing the incentive for companies to lower emissions. The only way to maximise that incentive is to maximise the size of assets following the indexes, which in turn will increase profitability for ET Index as a business and return value to our shareholders.”

Operating on a licensing and subscription-based model, ET Index is already generating revenue, having recently performed a pilot portfolio carbon footprint analysis for CalSTRs, one of the largest pension funds in the US. ET Index’s SyndicateRoom funding round closes 3 June 2016.
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