A conversation with Peter Fusaro, founder of the Wall Street Green Summit.

-What are the key insights from the recent Wall Street Green Summit? 

The 24th Annual Wall Street Green Summit held in March each year in New York City showcased many new Climate Tech solutions marrying technology and finance.  This annual event is totally focused on practical and proven climate change solutions through the financing of new, cleaner technologies. Forty speakers, who are practitioners in the climate space, shared their knowledge and insights. The goal of the event is for both speakers and participants to make connections for future business. Attendees this year came from Canada, the UK, France, Israel, Brazil, Slovenia and Australia besides all over the US.

One of the most interesting elements of the Summit are the insights of fund managers from both venture capital and private equity. They describe their investment process and what they are looking for in financial outcomes as they evaluate potential Climate Tech investments. They also note some of their failures. It is a true learning experience and a very popular part of the annual Summit. Funds involved at this year’s event included Second Muse, Chrysalix Venture Capital, Kaplak Ventures and Khasm Capital. We also had speakers address macro trends in climate investment from Net Zero Insights.

The Summit has a variety of topics including carbon credits, biochar market developments, metals trading for batteries, biodiversity credits, battery arbitrage, dealing with the plastics problem, electrification, opportunities in geothermal energy, and waste to value to names some of the ground covered.  A popular topic every year is how to price climate risk into financial markets.  The overriding theme of the event is how investments align with decarbonization goals.

Some of the more fun topics this year were electric airplanes (eVOLS) which can be used in rural areas for short distance commuting. Another was greening up the fashion supply chain with insights from Marci Zaroff who coined the word EcoFashion three decades ago.

Next year’s event is planned for March 17 and 18 in New York and will have many new topics on the cutting edge of Climate Tech solutions. 

-Who are you?

I am a New York Times best-selling author, former professor at Columbia University, and a recognized thought leader on the energy transition. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of mentoring hundreds of young professionals in sustainable finance. I am also the founder of the Wall Street Green Summit and Wall Street Green Cap Intro. For more than 50 years, I’ve been at the forefront of energy and environmental issues, focusing on cleaner technology. My journey began in the 1970s when I helped remove lead from gasoline, and continued in the 1980s when I established New York City’s energy efficiency programs with the two NYC utilities. In the 1990s, I worked with the Toyota Prius development team. Today, my work is fully dedicated to accelerating Climate Tech solutions in energy, food, and water.

-What keeps you up at night? 

Since Earth Day 1970, I’ve been dedicated to making the environment cleaner and greener. For the past 35 years, my focus has been squarely on the negative impacts of climate change, which are now accelerating and manifesting globally. My biggest fear is that humanity is approaching this crisis as "too little, too late." I believe we must accelerate the transition to a cleaner energy and agriculture future by deploying more capital to get the job done. The bottom line is that financial markets must deploy over $200 trillion by 2050 to start mitigating the impacts of climate change as quickly as possible. If we don’t, we will continue to suffer from the impacts of rising temperatures.