Carbon Infrastructure Partners

Roughly five years ago an energy-themed private equity fund named JOG Capital changed its name to Carbon Infrastructure Partners, because the change reflected its new emphasis.

I wrote about this at the time, and happening across my old piece in some recent web-surfing, I wondered how the subsequent years have treated them.

Their website is here: https://carboninfrastructurepartners.com/about/ -- you will find there a brief account of their own transition from JOG. You won't find out what JOG originally stood for -- perhaps founders' initials played a role. It is not important.

What is important is that CIP describes itself as investing in companies with find creative ways to remove, reduce or avoid CO2 emissions. If THIS is profitable there is hope for a sustainable capitalism. So: is it?

Unfortunately, we don't have good public data on this yet. CIP closed on its first fund of the new post-JOG era, CIP Energy Fund I, in 2022. [By "closure" I mean the moment when a fund's managers say "our tanks are full, no more investment thanks.] Specific performance metrics remain private. But CIP has said that it is "on track" to deliver the targeted net internal rate of return [IRR] of between 10 and 14 percent.

What is IRR? It is a calculation that factors in the exact timing of returns while allowing for some lock-up o principal. [This sort of thing is for institutional investors with long horizons.] So what they are saying is that the net effect of their current and expected cash flows will have an end result for such investors equivalent to having earned at least 10 percent a year compounded, although ACTUAL cash returns may be lumpy or delayed.

The bottom line as I see it? CIP is probably doing well enough to keep hope alive.

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