Jonathan Maxwell (businessman)

Jonathan Maxwell (born April 26, 1974) is a British environmental investor and author.

He is founder of Sustainable Development Capital LLC, an investment banking firm for energy efficiency project financing; and author of ‘The Edge: how competition for resources is pushing the world and its climate to the brink.’

Career
Maxwell initially worked at HSBC Infrastructure, managing the IPO of the HSBC Infrastructure Company (now HICL Infrastructure Company), the first main market LSE-listed infrastructure fund.

Maxwell had witnessed the nexus of infrastructure and environmental consequences around the world and decided to establish a new cohort of investment funds, focused on energy efficiency, as the largest and most cost-effective source of immediate greenhouse gas emissions reductions, named Sustainable Development Capital LLC.

Efficacy of energy efficiency
Maxwell’s activist fund-management playbook argues that society will benefit faster by considering how much energy is wasted before use, rather than only creating more renewable energy capacity.

Lessening the competition for key world energy resources helps mitigate climate change, and the growing conflict for those resources. Due to inefficient power generation and electric power transmission infrastructure, centralized supply planning, and old-fashioned facilities, particularly in the public sector, he claims that up 70% of traditional power systems’ energy inputs are wasted.

Clean and renewable energy represented less than 20% of the energy system in 2023 and new supplies at utility scale will take years if not decades to develop, from whatever source.

Maxwell’s solution to these inefficiencies is to finance ways to cut energy consumption (and wastage) rapidly, and reduce emissions faster than by solely building more renewable energy production.

Maxwell has urged government policymakers and infrastructure investors to reduce energy demand at the point of use, as well as making supply and distribution more efficient. His view's cogency was evidenced with the COP28 pledge to double the rate of energy efficiency by 2030 and with the success of several funds within SDCL raising funds from institutions and private sector to become the UK’s first and largest sustainability-focused investment fund.