White Box Financial is committed to being a force for good.
We help other business to develop projects, improve their operations and make decisions. The initiatives we support have a footprint that is orders of magnitude greater than our own. Our guiding principle here is that we do not support initiatives that have a broadly negative impact on humanity or the environment and where, in our opinion, viable positive or less harmful alternatives exist.
As a matter of policy:
We do not support individual projects or assets in the following areas:
Electricity generation from burning fossil fuels, including coal, oil and gas.
Exploration, extraction or processing of fossil fuels.
Infrastructure that primarily exists to support any of the above, for example railways or ports that were clearly developed to enable coal mines.
Long-distance fuel pipelines.
For organisations that own or operate multiple assets, including any assets in the areas above:
We will support them on individual projects in other areas. For example, if an energy company owns a coal fired power station, we will assist them with the development of solar and wind projects.
We will only support them with group or portfolio-level assistance if they have committed to the UNFCCC Climate Neutral Now pledge, or another pledge that is equal or stronger in all respects, and are living up to it.
This policy is intentionally simple and prescriptive. It targets the harmful projects that we are commonly invited to work on. We recognise that fully evaluating the merit of an individual project would require more nuance and there may be rare situations where this policy prevents us from working on projects that do align with our values – we accept this and do not make exceptions.
(This policy is also on the front page of our website to make sure we are fully transparent.)