David Crane, CEO of Generate Capital, speaking on stage Tuesday at CERAWeek in Houston. Photo: Aaron M. Sprecher/Bloomberg via Getty Images
HOUSTON — Generate Capital, an early and prominent climate investor, is leaning into natural gas development, CEO David Crane told Axios Pro at CERAWeek.
Why it matters: The firm, seeking to reinvigorate performance by riding the data center boom, needed to loosen its core climate thesis, the CEO says.
What they're saying: "Hyperscalers in particular — they do actually want to be green, but right now it's backburnered," Crane said on the sidelines of the conference.
Context: Crane joined Generate in September following the departure of co-founder Scott Jacobs and reportedly dozens of layoffs.
- The SF-based firm, Crane wrote in a blog post at the time, "made mistakes rooted in the euphoria of the early 2020s."
Flashback: When Generate launched in 2014, it was one of the few climate-oriented investors in the U.S.
- It edged into gas-adjacent sectors, backing fuel-cell maker Bloom Energy and some renewable natural gas firms that were harnessing waste emissions, but otherwise abstained from the fossil fuel.
Friction point: It struggled as renewables and other low-carbon sectors grew into what became Climate Tech 2.0.
- "The total number of megawatts we have is, like, 600 MW spread across 2,000 projects," Crane says. "We were the big kahuna of smaller projects."
- One of its larger investments, Pine Gate Renewables, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November.
What's next: "The first projects that we announce will not look different from ones that other people are announcing," Crane says of the firm's upcoming data center-related deals.
- "Prove that you can serve your customer, and then the opportunity set opens up — to move the customers' thinking from brown to green."
