BlackRock Promotes Self as “Clean Energy Partner” for Germany

The Central European subsidiary of private investment firm BlackRock says it can play a key role in achieving Germany’s massively accelerated climate-protection goals.

“In Germany, too, we are putting ourselves forward as a partner for dealing with the need to transition to clean energy,” BlackRock Head of Germany, Austria and Eastern Europe Dirk Schmitz told business newspaper Handelsblatt. “In our view, this task cannot be achieved with public funds alone. There needs to be cooperation with private capital.”

Unprecedented amounts of venture capital in circulation worldwide have turbocharged investments in young companies in many countries, including Germany. Schmitz’s statement – together with BlackRock boss Larry Fink’s 2022 open letter to CEOs – underscore a new public emphasis on sustainability at the world’s largest asset manager.

At the end of last year, BlackRock pumped EUR 700 million into Munich company Ionity, which develops so-called high power charging networks for electric vehicles.

“At the moment, we’re looking more concretely at three to five further projects that together represent a volume in the billions,” Schmitz said. “They come from the renewable energy areas, for example wind farms, but other future-oriented projects may be part of this too.”