Author: Taronga Ventures

Sydney: Recognising that climate change is the biggest global challenge we all face, Taronga Ventures is delighted to announce that it has been independently certified as being 100% carbon neutral.

Taronga Ventures was established with the mission of shaping the future of the built environment through innovation and technology. Core to this mission was reducing the negative impact the built environment has on the planet, as buildings and construction are responsible for 39% of all global carbon emissions (ref 1).

The first phase of the journey was to make the Taronga Ventures organization certified carbon neutral and implement strategies to reduce emissions, from travel to office energy consumption. This year they have become a custodian in the International Towers, Barangaroo, where a 6 star Green Star office design has created Australia’s first large scale carbon neutral community.

Attention has now turned to supporting the wider real estate technology ecosystem and Taronga Ventures has committed to helping its emerging companies along their journey of achieving carbon neutrality. In the 2021 RealTechX Growth Program, participants will be provided with the basic frameworks and tools to kick-start their journey. The 2021 cohort also contains a number of businesses already achieving positive climate impacts, including Allume Energy, SPACECUBE, Qualis Flow and Valen Energy.

“Sustainability is a core value of our business at Allume Energy, with our main product SolShare enabling multi-tenanted buildings to share rooftop solar energy. It is critical to our team that we share this value of sustainability with all our stakeholders so, as a participant in their innovation program, we were delighted to see Taronga Ventures receive carbon neutral certification,” said Cameron Knox, CEO and co-founder of Allume Energy.

Taronga Ventures also strongly believes that responsible investment, of which sustainability is a subset, delivers superior long term financial returns. This is particularly evident in the built environment, where market evidence has shown that smart, connected and green buildings can command an 8.2% premium in effective rents and a 23.7% premium in transaction prices (ref 2).

As such, the RealTech Ventures Fund is actively investing in emerging technology and organisations striving for positive climate impact. Investments have already been made into leading solutions, including CarbonCure, enVerid and Liftango, and the Fund will continue to make additional investments into solar, wind, water and waste.

Jonathan Hannam, Managing Partner of Taronga Ventures, said “We are delighted to have our organization certified carbon neutral. This is an important step in fulfilling our purpose of creating positive and enduring change through our wider Taronga ecosystem. We welcome the entire real estate and built environment community to join us on our journey.”

Ref 1 – Global Status Report 2017 – UN Environment and the International Energy Agency (here)

Ref 2 – The incremental value of smart buildings upon effective rents and transaction prices – MIT (here)