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Sustainability

Sustainability and ESG

At AlbionVC it is our firm belief that sustainability is paramount to long-term success.

Companies that integrate sustainable business practices offer better products and services to their customers, support healthy company culture and allow employees of all backgrounds to thrive. They consider unintended consequences of their actions and incorporate interests of all stakeholders. Such practices build enduring success and create long-term category leaders. Thus, delivering better returns to investors and shareholders.

In making our commitment to responsible investment and sustainability we have aligned ourselves with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

We believe that by focusing on a few specific goals – G13 Climate Action, G3 Good Health and Wellbeing, G5 Gender equality, G10 Reduced Inequalities, G16 Peace, Justice and Strong institutions – and actively monitoring them we are creating tangible positive action towards meeting of the global challenge by 2030.

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Sustainability and ESG

At AlbionVC we stand by the principles of responsible investment. We incorporate Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) considerations both for our internal operations and for our investment process and when working with founders and companies we’ve backed. Overview of our sustainability initiatives:

Sustainability Report and Data Appendix 2022/23

Environmental

We are committed to action on climate change and strive to play an active part in tackling the climate crisis.

  • Net Zero carbon emissions target by 2030 set
  • AlbionVC’s carbon footprint (Scope 1, Scope 2, Scope 3 excluding investments) measured with the help of our friends at PlanA
  • Annually we introduce practices to reduce carbon emissions
  • We offset our annual carbon footprint with carbon removal offsets. Why? Carbon removal offsets remove our share of carbon emissions from the atmosphere. In 2021 we purchased Biochar carbon removal offsets from Supercritical, to take out all the carbon we put into the atmosphere in the previous 12 months
  • We encourage all AlbionVC backed companies to measure their carbon footprint and introduce practices to reduce emissions; in turn we provide access to resources and blue print for best practice
  • Our team takes local environmental action- Farringdon clean up pictured below

Social

When we founded AlbionVC in 1996, we fostered a culture that welcomes everyone, where everyone can succeed regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, disability, or socio-economic background. We achieve success by working as one team, where all employees feel valued, respected, and engaged. We believe that teams perform best when individual team members feel safe to bring their whole selves to work. 

  • We actively address gender inequality in our team
  • Working with Fair HQ, an expert consultancy to establish diversity and inclusion practices: Annual employee “belonging survey”; Updated recruitment process that includes blinding CVs, tracking diversity in hiring funnel, setting diversity targets for recruitment consultants
  • Diversity statement published, read here
  • To foster culture of collaboration and inclusivity we regularly organise informal team activities such as AlbionVC sports day, bi-annual away trip, cooking classes, mental health support

Governance

As responsible investors we are guided by strong governance principles both for our internal operations and when working with the companies we’ve backed. Some of our governance considerations:

  • ESG principles are incorporated throughout the investment process, view more here
  • Annual ESG reporting and analysis across the companies we’ve backed, including metrics on Envrionemntal, Social, Governance (including board composition, link ESG and pay, equality & ownership)
  • Regular ESG updates for our investors and our board of directors
  • Annual UN PRI reporting
  • SFDR disclosures published, view here
  • Actively involved in promotion of ESG and sustainability within venture capital

Signatories

AlbionVC is a signatory of UN Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI) and commits to the six key principles to incorporate ESG issues into investment practice.

We are a member of VentureESG steering committee, a community-based non-profit initiative from VCs for VCs to push the industry on ESG best practice. Today the group includes 300 venture funds and 90 limited partners from across the globe, who work to make ESG a standard part of the due diligence, portfolio stewardship and internal fund management.

AlbionVC is a proud signatory of the Investing in Women Code, and commits to adopt internal practices that aim to improve female entrepreneurs’ access to the tools, resources and finance required to scale their companies.

Investment process

It is our firm belief that ESG considerations help align VC and founder interests in the long-term. We incorporate ESG considerations throughout the investment decision making process – from the pre-investment, investment stage and when working with companies. This forms part of our process to ensure an appropriate risk-return profile for our investments and helps AlbionVC backed companies develop sustainable long-term strategies.

This is what founders can expect from us:

1. Screening

  • Company activity checked against AlbionVC exclusion list
  • We track diversity of founding team and source of introduction

2. Due diligence

  • ESG Due dilligence questionnaire for all new companies (to keep things fair you get a copy of our answers)
  • ESG terms added to the Shareholders Agreement

3. Stewardship

  • ESG and Sustainability objectives set during onboarding
  • ESG resources provided by our Platform and ESG team
  • ESG raised at board level at least once in 12 months
  • ESG report and progress over the last 12 months

4. Follow on investments

  • Since we tend to back founders multiple times, ESG status is reassessed at each follow on investment stage

5. Exit

  • We support your ESG transition