While the rate of green- and cleantech-focused hedge fund launches has slowed over the past year, that isn’t stopping one investment manager from getting into the green game.

Richard BookbinderNew York-based TerraVerde Capital Management has recently launched a fund of hedge funds that invests in underlying managers focused on the global reduction of carbon emissions, including alternative energy.

The new investment vehicle is the brainchild of Richard Bookbinder, managing member of Bookbinder Capital Management, which has a 10-year-track record managing funds of hedge funds.

“Our definition [of green] is one of anything that serves to reduce a carbon footprint,” says Bookbinder, who estimates that there are approximately 100 hedge funds that fit this definition—both in the U.S. and around the world—though he says that less than two dozen of these could “make the cut” for his new fund of funds.

“Managers that we invest with have underlying strategies that in someway are investing in company that are doing something to reduce carbon, such as clean energy, clean technology, water, weather, agriculture, carbon/carbon trading, the whole gamut,” says Bookbinder.

Prior to founding the eponymous named firm in 1999, Bookbinder was a founding principal of investment bank Sandler O’Neill & Partners and a limited partner and associate director in fixed-income sales at Bear, Stearns & Co.

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