RIYADH: Environmentally-focused start-ups will make up the next thousand ‘unicorn’ businesses, billionaire businessman Larry Fink has told the Middle East Green Initiative Summit.
The chairman of US asset management giant BlackRock told delegates at the forum in Riyadh it will be firms producing environmentally-friendly goods and systems that will become the next billion dollar companies — the threshold for being dubbed a ‘unicorn’.
Fink said: "It’s my belief that the next 1,000 unicorns - companies that have a market valuation over a billion dollars - won’t be a search engine or media company. They will be businesses developing green hydrogen, and green agriculture, and green steel and green cement."
He added that governments, financial service companies and multinational institutions need to work together to achieve a net-zero world, as he talked up the role of private sector investment in hitting this target.
Speaking at the event, which is attended by leading figures including the US Climate Change envoy John Kerry, Fink said clean technologies and fuel are more expensive than conventional energy sources due to a “Green Premium".
“To bring down this Green Premium we need to be serious about attracting private capital for technology and technology revolution,” he added.
"That is not to say that we are going to divest from hydrocarbons. In fact, it is essential that we work with them and are playing a role in this solution.
"We’re supportive of hydrocarbon companies, and believe they will be part of the solution of the green revolution of new green technology.
"Many of them are at the forefront of developing methods of carbon capture and storage, which will play a major role in removing the carbon emissions we will continue to produce."
