To accelerate the transformation towards a planet positive fashion and textile industry, the H&M Foundation has partnered up with the Apparel Impact Institute (Aii), a non-profit organisation dedicated to operationalizing and accelerating climate action and sustainability solutions in fashion, to activate a blended capital fund – the Fashion Climate Fund. The fund will tackle scaling and implementation of new solutions, which are two fundamental systemic challenges in the industry today.
Aii identifies, funds, scales and measures proven solutions to accelerate positive impact in the apparel and footwear industry. It works as a technical clearing house for their partners, validating and aggregating proven environment initiatives.
How it works
Early-stage ideas are submitted to Aii, which are assessed by expert advisory groups. If the idea is approved, it will go through a structured pipeline supported by the Fashion Climate Fund. The fund is built to catalyse capital across philanthropy, industry, and debt and equity, and has the power to achieve a reduction of 150M tons of carbon over the next 28 years.
The four steps of the Aii program pipeline are:
- Pre-seed – ideate
- Pilot – proof of concept
- Model – test
- Scale – commercialise
The programs, which are proven to lower carbon emissions, will build the industry’s portfolio and registry for qualified programs.
Partnership focus
1. Fashion Climate Fund
H&M Foundation is one of the philanthropic partners, focusing on the early-stage funds for pre-seeding and piloting. The philanthropic funds will make solutions ready for scale and unlock investments from the industry, and debt and equity to maximize impact and adoption.
2. Climate Solutions Portfolio
The vetted ideas and solutions that have gone through the Aii program pipeline are part of the Climate Solutions Portfolio, which provides transparency and access to industry stakeholders, such as brands, retailers, suppliers, solution providers, philanthropists, and finance partners.
Goal of the partnership
Aii’s aim is to speed up scale and adoption through a USD 250M fund designed to unlock up to USD 2B of capital towards reducing carbon emissions by at least 45% over the next 8 years.
We believe the partnership will lead to an aligned funding approach, a structured program from idea to scale, as well as providing the industry with a transparent pool of solutions ready to be implemented.
