There are business opportunities in finding solutions to climate change and one Irish company making its mark in this area is the Cool Planet Group.
The company, which is headquartered in Co Wicklow and operates in 26 countries, secured funding of €31 million from French asset management and investment group Tikehau Capital in exchange for a significant minority stake of the company.
It has a couple of major divisions, and the main one, Carbon Crowley, is an energy efficiency company.
Crowley Carbon's chief executive Norman Crowley said the funding will allow the company to build on its success in expanding into the enormous global energy efficiency market.
It will also help the group continue to have a positive impact on the global climate change crises.
"Amazingly companies waste about 20% of the energy that they consumer, and our job is to stop that waste," Mr Crowley said.
The company has been doubling in size for the last four years with its own profits, and now the scale of operations is getting very big.
"We needed to the strengthen the balance sheet of the company because some of the deals that we are doing this year are €150 million, so companies need to feel like you have a decent balance sheet," he said. "We were lucky that there were a queue of investors wanting to invest."
He said Cool Planet Group chose Tikehau Capital because a lot of investors just want a return, they don't really care about the climate agenda, "whereas Tikehau really care about climate change and that's really important to us, because this is about money but it's also about climate change."
Mr Crowley said it is unprecedented the demand from companies for energy efficient solutions. "The more pressure corporations come under around the world, both from a climate point of view and a financial point of view, then they want this kind of solution.
"To give you an idea of scale, we are saving our largest client $100 million a year. The scale of waste is massive and the financial opportunity is huge," he stated.
Four of the top eight food companies in the world are clients, while seven of the top eight pharmaceutical companies are clients. Google is believed to be a client but Mr Crowley would not be drawn on it.
One of the businesses within Cool Planet is Electrifi. It converts classic luxury cars into electric vehicles.
The company made Ellie Goulding's wedding car, and cars for the Fast and Furious movie. Customers also include the actor Dev Patel and other "famous American actors that we are not allowed talk about".
The price range goes from €25,000 for a converted Fiat 500s from the 1960s, all the way up to €4 million.
"They are all very old cars, and very beautiful cars and then we make them go very, very fast," Mr Crowley added.
