Billionaire and liberal activist Tom Steyer’s green investing firm, Galvanize Climate Solutions, announced Sunday that President Joe Biden’s former Climate Czar John Kerry had joined the firm even as the administration continues to dole out billions in green subsidies.
Kerry, who left his position as the White House’s U.S. special envoy on climate in January, will come on as a co-executive chair of Galvanize, which manages a fund with over $1 billion and specializes in “generating long-term value from the energy transition,” the press release states. Under Kerry’s tenure as the White House’s top climate diplomat, Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) allocated $370 billion to combat climate change, enriching many clean energy executives and affluent Americans and potentially bolstering some of Galvanize’s investments through government subsidies.
“Secretary Kerry is a bridge-builder, calling people in rather than calling them out,” Tom Steyer wrote in the announcement. “[Kerry] has earned his reputation as the world’s leading climate statesman. This unparalleled knowledge, credibility, and convening power will help Galvanize to expand the firm’s global scope, scale solutions across asset classes, and generate compelling returns.”
Kerry is not the first former Democratic presidential nominee to enter climate investing after leaving the political sphere, with Al Gore co-founding Generation Investment Management in 2004, an environmental, social and governance (ESG) focused investment manager. Due largely to his books on climate change and his clean energy investments, Al Gore’s net worth went from $1.7 million in 1999 — about a year before he lost in the presidential election to George W. Bush — up to roughly $200 million in 2013, according to the Financial Post.
Steyer ran for president in 2020, putting around $200 million of his own money into the campaign in 2019. The billionaire businessman ultimately dropped his bid after coming in third in the South Carolina primary despite spending nearly $24 million on television advertising in the state.
Steyer also spent over $160 million trying to influence the 2014 and 2016 elections, making him the single largest donor in the cycles, and spent another estimated $20 million on advertising calling for former President Donald Trump to be impeached.
Federal Aviation Administration records showed in 2021 that Kerry’s family owned a private jet at a time when he was serving as the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate.
“The energy transition is well underway and is only set to accelerate, driven in part by policy but more so by inexorable technological trends. I am convinced that Galvanize is positioned to play a key role in bringing competitive, commercially viable solutions to market and generating long-term value,” Secretary Kerry said in the press release. “Tom [Steyer] is someone I’ve known and trusted for years. I have sought his counsel as a creative and accomplished investor… We share the thesis that the climate transition is one of the most important secular trends in markets over the coming years and will have a meaningful impact across all sectors of the economy.”
Galvanize Climate Solutions did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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