Future of Climate Finance: The Capital Stack for the Energy Transition

Join us for Climate Week at Penn and learn about what it takes to fund a more affordable, cleaner, and healthier future.
About this Event

Climate finance is usually discussed in trillions and pledges. On the ground, the transition in emerging markets gets built by entrepreneurs: solar distributors, cold-chain operators, agri-processors, waste companies, all running real businesses with real customers. Leslie Labruto maps the capital available to them, from catalytic philanthropy and concessional debt to DFI money, venture equity, and commercial lending, and shows where each type works, where it stalls, and who gets left out. Drawing on her work building Resolve and more than a decade financing climate and social ventures across Africa and Asia at Acumen Fund, Environmental Defense Fund, and the London School of Economics, she argues that these enterprises are the mechanism by which climate capital becomes climate markets, and that the binding constraint on them is rarely capital volume. It's structure, speed, and risk appetite.

This event is part of 2026 Climate Week at Penn.