JPF Venture Fund 1, LP, A Socially Responsible Green Venture Fund

We are a socially responsible venture fund focused on sustainable, socially-conscious and ethical investing. Our investment strategy seeks to maximize both financial return and social good.

In general, our investments favor young, early stage companies with services and products that focus on the importance of sustainability issues and carbon offsetting.

Our commitment is to provide these companies with funding to allow them to develop and produce cost-effective technical solutions to mounting global concerns.

In every major success story somewhere, at a crucial point in time the entrepreneur was provided with critical funding to finance the company’s growth, a place to operate from and access to experienced executive management to lend a helping hand. Welcome to JPF Venture Fund 1, LP. 

JPF Venture Fund 1, LP is a growth equity fund. The Fund intends to invest a significant portion of its assets in U.S. and U.K. domestic small capitalization companies that, in the Fund’s view, represent attractive growth investment opportunities. To provide the Fund with a potential exit strategy at the earliest possible time, the Fund’s General Partner will manage the ‘going public’ strategy for all of the companies invested in by the Fund (Companies we invest in are sometimes referred to as a ‘Portfolio Company’). 

The Fund will invest in privately held companies operating in the humanitarian, renewable energy, clean-tech, environmental or socially responsible manufacturing, distribution, service sector and technology industries with a focus on businesses that are primed for rapid expansion if they had the funding, including those whose main business includes:

• Clean/Renewable Energy
• Biofuels/Waste Management
• Water Management
• Resource Efficiency
• Sustainable Living
• Environmental Services
• Internet/Media
• Green Transportation

In most, if not all cases, portfolio companies receive the benefit of hands-on management assistance from the Fund’s General Partner and/or from the considerable experience and expertise of the Fund’s Limited Partners.

Material from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the European Union Commission and the not-for-profit agency Green Facts was used in preparing this article: 

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/basicinfo.html
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/climat/home_en.htm
http://www.greenfacts.org/en/index.htm

Climate change is already happening and represents one of the greatest environmental, social and economic threats facing the planet. Major world Governments including those from the United States and the European Union are committed to working constructively for a global agreement to control climate change.

The Earth's climate has changed many times during the planet's history, with events ranging from ice ages to long periods of warmth. Historically, natural factors such as volcanic eruptions, changes in the Earth's orbit, and the amount of energy released from the Sun have affected the Earth's climate. Beginning late in the 18th century, human activities associated with the Industrial Revolution have also changed the composition of the atmosphere and are influencing the Earth's climate.

The warming of our climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level. The Earth's average surface temperature has risen by 0.76° C since 1850. Most of the warming that has occurred over the last 50 years is very likely to have been caused by human and energy-related activities with the United States accounting for three-quarters of all human-generated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, mostly in the form of carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels.

The situation is reaching a crisis point and world leaders are waking up to the fact that something must be done. In January 2008 the European Commission proposed a major package of climate and energy-related legislative proposals to implement these commitments and targets. These are now being discussed by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, and EU leaders have expressed their wish for agreement to be reached on the package before the end of 2008.

Health and Environmental Effects

Climate change affects people, plants, and animals and it’s obvious that serious changes are already occurring.   Effects include sea level rise, shrinking glaciers, changes in the range and distribution of plants and animals, trees blooming earlier, lengthening of growing seasons, ice on rivers and lakes freezing later and breaking up earlier, and thawing of permafrost.
 
In the United States, scientists believe that most areas will to continue to warm, although some will likely warm more than others. It remains very difficult to predict which parts of the country will become wetter or drier, but scientists generally expect increased precipitation and evaporation, and drier soil in the middle parts of the country. Northern regions such as Alaska are already experiencing a serious warming trend. 

Human health can be affected directly and indirectly by climate change in part through extreme periods of heat and cold, storms, and climate-sensitive diseases such as malaria, and smog episodes. For more information on these and other environmental effects, please visit the Health and Environmental Effects section of the US EPA website