Ted Janulis, Founder and Principal, Investable Oceans
The Blue Economy has become a hot topic over the past few years thanks to the UN’s
Sustainable Development Goals, the work of NGOs and philanthropies, and an increasing
awareness that climate and ocean issues are intricately intertwined and must be addressed
together in finding solutions.
The idea of ocean investing is not new - examples include shipping, aquaculture and tourism.
What is new, however, is the proliferation of instruments and opportunities that can help finance
a sustainable Blue Economy over the coming decades. In the public equity markets, this not
only includes the first Oceans ETF and a specialized oceans fund, but also a wide variety of
instruments to attack the greenhouse gases problem, which is at the core of so many of the
ocean’s challenges, including warming and sea level rise, deoxygenation and acidification. In
the fixed income markets, Blue Bonds of several types have emerged alongside Green Bonds
and have the potential to unlock additional sources of capital going forward.
In the private markets, there has been explosive growth in global innovation, fueled by
incubators, accelerators, clusters, universities and governments. There are now more than a
hundred innovation-related organizations around the globe focused on creating and/or serving
the needs of a bold new breed of ocean-oriented startups. In addition, there are private market
funds dedicated to virtually all sectors of the Blue Economy with many of them focused on
aquaculture, technology and plastics.
The goal of this session is to give participants an overview of Blue Economy investment
opportunities and also point to specific resources to enable them to further explore their
interests. No matter what part of the capital markets you’re involved in, the oceans are
becoming investable in an entirely new way.