Driving a More Sustainable Future

April 1 marked the beginning of Apollo’s annual Earth Month celebration. For more than a decade, Apollo has built a reputation as a leader in best-in-class ESG practices, metrics and reporting, and in the weeks leading up to Earth Day (April 22) we are continuing the conversation around what it means for the Firm to help drive a more sustainable future.

The evolution of Apollo’s Sustainability strategy leverages and optimizes the Firm’s full platform and tools – Citizenship, Compliance, ESG, Expanding Opportunity, Impact, Governance, Sustainable Investment Platform – to create value and drive better outcomes in society and for our investors, LPs and shareholders.

To bring this strategy to life, we’ve taken a number of steps in recent months:

• We invested in talent and strengthened our ESG bench and expertise. In addition to Laurie Medley and Rob Esposito, Carletta Ooton joined as Head of ESG for Private Equity and Michael Kashani joined as Head of ESG, Credit.
• We launched a comprehensive, multi-asset Sustainable Investing Platform led by Olivia Wassenaar and a talented team, which is focused on financing and investing in the energy transition with the goal of deploying $50 billion in clean energy and climate capital over the next five years and the opportunity to  deploy more than $100 billion by 2030. This builds on the $19 billion Apollo has deployed over the last five years into energy transition and sustainability-related investments.
• We further strengthened our corporate governance by establishing a Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility Committee of the Board of Directors, that will provide oversight in corporate responsibility and sustainability matters, including environmental sustainability and climate change, human rights, social impact, employee health and safety, and diversity, equity and inclusion.
• We established an enterprise-wide climate strategy, which includes enhancing due diligence, setting a new target to reduce median carbon intensity by 15% over the projected hold period for new investments in our flagship private equity portfolio, and aligning our public reporting with the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations
• We made significant progress against our Expanding Opportunity initiative. We launched a Supplier Diversity program focused on growing direct and indirect spending with diverse businesses across Apollo’s private equity portfolio, with the goal of achieving more than $1 billion in spend by 2024. We also established the Apollo Opportunity Foundation with more than $100 million committed by Apollo for the Foundation to invest in non-profits focused on educational access, workforce development and economic empowerment.

Since I joined Apollo as its first Chief Sustainability Officer, I have been impressed by the energy of the employees and the commitment of leadership. We have a range of Earth Month engagements planned - from a Leadership Sustainability Panel to unique volunteering opportunities to engage every Apollo employee in accelerating the Firm’s role in driving a more sustainable future. 

Dave Stangis, Chief Sustainability Officer at Apollo