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Amy McCrae Kessler doesn't think government or philanthropy will solve climate. It gets solved, she argues, when local climate action becomes something investors can actually fund. With $150 trillion in institutional capital sitting on the sidelines right now, the money isn't the problem: the bridge is.

Amy is an environmental attorney and the co-founder and CEO of FacetPower, which bridges climate finance and local climate action across sub-Saharan Africa. You'll hear what a local project needs to get right before investors will fund it, and the community risks most big projects ignore.

"There's $150 trillion of institutional dry powder sitting on the sidelines right now. 80% of that money, capital, wants to get into climate investing, but can't." - Amy McCrae Kessler

🚀 Key Takeaways:

Community risk is project risk: Treat hyper-local context, livelihood mapping, and social assessments as core due diligence, because the community side of any project is its riskiest part.

Line up the money before you build: Secure investor relationships and a finance pool before developing, because projects built without knowing market fit or investor appetite end up with no one willing to fund them.

Bundle small projects to meet big capital: Institutional investors rarely look below $100 million, so packaging several $10 to $50 million local projects into one portfolio makes community-scale work fundable.

Stack revenue streams for resilience: Projects with one or two revenue streams live at the mercy of energy markets; five to seven streams let a business weather swings in prices and regulation.

Treat climate as a business, not philanthropy: Lasting behavior change comes when communities and investors earn from doing the right thing every day.

⏳ Chapters:

- Introduction to Amy McCrae Kessler and FacetPower

- The plane ride that changed her career

- The #1 risk big projects keep ignoring

- Why $150 trillion is sitting on the sidelines

- How FacetPower connects investors to local entrepreneurs

- The invasive bush blinding Namibia's cheetahs

- Why $50 million is too small for big investors

- Why nature is the bank every business borrows from

- Pitching the president of Burundi

- Lining up investors before building anything

- What she had to unlearn as a founder

- Where to find Amy and FacetPower

🔗 Connect with Amy

FacetPower Website: https://facetpower.com

Amy McCrae Kessler on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-mccrae-kessler/

🔗 Two ways to join the community

The GrowGood Playbook newsletter, field-tested insights from the impact founders and leaders we interview: https://sowgoodtogrowgood.substack.com/

Find impact work happening in your community, or list your own: https://sowonegoodseed.com/

🎙️ About SowGood to GrowGood: Hosted by John Kane Gonzales, entrepreneur and innovator. We explore how change-makers and innovators are building sustainable systems for a better future, turning ideas into solutions that serve communities.