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The $120 Trillion Repricing: 4 Investors on the Carbon Bubble, Stranded Assets & Real Returns
Episode Description
Four investors. Four asset classes. One question: where does real money actually go to work on climate?
In this compilation episode, I revisit conversations with four investors who put real money to work in the physical economy, across greenhouses, Indian agrifood, forests, and the fossil fuel reserves sitting on public markets. They approach climate from very different asset classes, and the contrast is the point.
Dave Chen of Equilibrium Capital treats farming as infrastructure — building and operating some of the largest high-tech greenhouses in North America, and buying technology only once it hits the cost curve. Mark Kahn of Omnivore, India’s pioneering agrifood VC, argues that mitigation is sexy and adaptation is gritty, and that a country about to become too hot to farm has no choice but to fund the gritty one. Radha Kuppalli Former MD, Impact & Advocacy at New Forests explains how a forest became two assets at once — timber and carbon — and how you underwrite a biological asset you cannot harvest for thirty years. And Mark Campanale, who coined the term “unburnable carbon,” lays out the thesis that halved the reserve life of the global oil and gas sector: the market is carrying far more fossil fuel than it can ever burn.
Together they map how capital is repricing land, forests, food, and fossil reserves — and where the returns are hiding in each.
In this episode we discuss:
- Why one investor treats greenhouses like data centers — build, operate, and manage technology obsolescence
- “Distributed abundance”: unhooking where food is grown from climate and geography
- Why climate adaptation, not mitigation, is the urgent thesis for India’s smallholder economy
- How a forest generates two revenue streams — timber and California carbon credits — at once
- Underwriting a 30-year biological asset you can leave “on the shelf” to grow
- The “unburnable carbon” thesis, and why $120 trillion of reserves back $7–8 trillion of market cap
- Stranded assets: why building new fossil supply guarantees write-downs
Featured guests:
- Dave Chen, CEO Equilibrium Capital
- Mark Kahn, Managing Partner & Co-Founder, Omnivore
- Radha Kuppalli, Former Managing Director, Impact and Advocacy, at New Forests
- Mark Campanale, Founder & CEO, Carbon Tracker Initiative
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Additional Resources
Dave Chen — Equilibrium Capital
Equilibrium Capital: https://eq-cap.com/
Dave Chen bio: https://eq-cap.com/about-us/dave-chen/
Dave Chen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dypchen1/
Listen to the full episode here: https://sri360.com/podcast/dave-chen/
Mark Kahn — Omnivore
Omnivore: https://www.omnivore.vc/
Mark Kahn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-kahn-20490a/
Listen to the full episode here: https://sri360.com/podcast/mark-kahn/
Radha Kuppalli — New Forests
New Forests: https://newforests.com.au/
Radha Kuppalli on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/radha-kuppalli/
Listen to the full episode here:https://sri360.com/podcast/radha-kuppalli/
Mark Campanale — Carbon Tracker Initiative
Carbon Tracker Initiative: https://carbontracker.org/
Mark Campanale on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-campanale-1886203/
Listen to the full episode here: https://sri360.com/podcast/mark-campanale/