Understanding Investment Strategies under Uncertainty: The Evidence from CVC Green Investment

This study explores CVC investment strategies under uncertainties by investigating the relationship between multiple factors in portfolio selection and investor’s decision. CVC has become an important tool for energy incumbents to become greener in the energy transition, while also a critical investor in helping startups scale their green innovation. Environmental uncertainty requires CVC to diversify their investment in green technologies to ensure energy reliability, while increase their investment capabilities. However, CVC is more likely to reduce investment activities under uncertainty to increase efficiency. As current uncertainties increase tension between reliability and efficiency in financing green technology, CVC investment decision is still underexplored. Hence, using a panel data of 2228 cases from energy firms’ CVC investment transaction in the last 25 years, this study employs a regression analysis to examine how portfolio characteristics, e.g., geography, industry, technology and stage, affect investor’s decision on funding size and syndication activities.