CVCA New Member Profile: NGIF Capital
We’re continuing our new member series on CVCA Central; profiling our new members and providing insight into these invaluable organizations in our community.
The latest member we are excited to profile is NGIF Capital.
Tell us about NGIF Capital.
Founded in 2021, NGIF Capital invests to make an impact in the gas industry. We now have offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary offering a unique hybrid financing platform of industry grants and venture capital investing that allows us to partner with cleantech founders. Our Industry Grants program has $240MM in total eligible project value and our Cleantech Ventures Fund I portfolio companies have raised over $200MM since we invested.
The NGIF Capital platform is dedicated to bringing cleantech innovation faster and further to the market for natural gas, hydrogen, and renewable natural gas. This platform includes an Industry Grants program to de-risk clean technology development through pilot projects; an Emissions Testing Centre program to validate groups of methane management startups; and a venture capital fund, Cleantech Ventures Fund I, that invests in early-stage startups to accelerate product development and customer creation. In all cases, we are addressing the gas industry’s desire to continue to improve the economic and environmental performance of gaseous energy.
Our core competency is to de-risk clean tech startups, help them get to market, and achieve commercial scale. We do this though our amazing team of 15 professionals who speak 14 different languages! The team has subject matter expertise in cleantech, venture capital, gas operations, law, engineering, and portfolio management. We have developed a proprietary and global network of cleantech founders and startups, venture capital and private equity investors, as well as a government and policy ecosystem.
What is NGIF Capital’s thesis?
While specialized cleantech funds have been on the rise, only 3% of these funds focus primarily on solutions for the oil and gas sector. There is historic underinvestment in technology promoting fossil fuel extraction, even though it is an essential part of modern life and our future energy mix. This gap represents an immense opportunity for investors to differentiate their portfolios of cleantech solutions. NGIF Capital recognized this opportunity and is evolving its energy transformation strategy with its venture capital fund focused on clean technology investments that advance the environmental performance of the natural gas molecule.
For years, natural gas as a fossil fuel has had challenges in attracting government and private sector capital for innovation to advance energy evolution. However, we at NGIF Capital see things differently. We see an opportunity to change the narrative around natural gas and implement cutting-edge technology solutions that lower emissions and improved the performance of this vital resource theme. Cleantech Ventures Fund I’s investment thesis is focused on the critical role that natural gas technologies will play in increasing the performance of our sector. This scope extends to a variety of energy intensive industries with the potential for material GHG, air, water, and land use reductions.
Who are some key people at NGIF?
John Adams is the President and CEO of NGIF Capital and the Managing Partner of NGIF Cleantech Ventures. He is rooted in over 30 years of experience in financing, cleantech, energy, and venture capital. He led the development of NGIF Capital, a cleantech venture capital firm for natural gas, renewable natural gas and hydrogen. In addition, John holds several board positions including Board and Audit and Finance Committee Member CRIN, Board and Audit Committee Member Tidewater Renewables (TSX: LCFS) and holds board seats in his portfolio companies. John has been a part of numerous cleantech selection juries in the innovation ecosystem. John earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto in Environmental Science and is a graduate of the Berkley Venture Capital Executive Program. He has been honored with distinctions including a 2021 World Biz Magazine’s Global Top 100 Innovation CEO and Canada’s Clean50 2022.
What is NGIF Capital excited about?
In a big picture context, environmental performance is one of the primary concerns for every government, corporation, and citizen around the globe. The demand for clean technologies is at an all-time high, and this demand is only going to increase over time. According to data collected by the Government of Canada, the global clean technology market exceeded $2.5 trillion as of 2022. While renewable energy will play a vital role in this energy transformation, we believe that natural gas will be the cornerstone.
For the first time in history, we have seen meaningful government policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act and the Clean Technology Investment Tax Credit create substantial tailwinds to accelerate the commercialization of clean technology energy solutions. Our portfolio of companies was constructed to bring cleantech solutions to the gas industry, and we are really excited about the ability of federal cleantech incentives to catalyze market adoption in areas such as methane emissions management, carbon capture utilization and storage, energy efficiency, hydrogen and RNG production, and industrial water management.