Banking for the planet has just become much easier. A source of inspiration, a motivation for personal action or an alternative to carbon offset? Choose your engine!
www.team-planet.com
Coming out of COP30, we keep hearing the same message: we need more climate finance. The solutions exist, but they can’t scale without the money to grow. Meanwhile, we know our banks keep funding the very industries making things worse – fossil fuels, pesticides, overfishing, deforestation.
1. Move the Money
Yes, it is true. Up to 30% of your money is used to finance those projects, whether you know it, or want it.
This is why we @something are making it a priority for individual to #MoveTheMoney as one of the most impactful action you can take.
So what if you could solve both problems at once? A Different Kind of Investment
2. Invest
This is exactly what Team For The Planet figured out. The French cooperative investment fund is doing something quite brilliant, and I’m proud to say I’m one of their shareholders.
Here’s how it works: over 130,000 people have pooled their money together – starting from just €1 per share – to create a €37 million fund that invests in climate solutions that would otherwise struggle to find backing. Not the kind of solutions that sound good in presentations, but real innovations tackling greenhouse gas emissions at scale.
So far they’ve already backed 14 companies that are making a genuine difference, among which:
- Beyond the Sea – using sea kites to cut ship fuel use by 20-40%
- Monomeris Chemicals – breaking down any plastic waste into its original materials so it can be recycled endlessly
- Seatrun – Turn wave energy into 10% of the world’s electricity
So far, these companies have avoided 78,000 tonnes of certified CO2.
Most of these companies wouldn’t exist without Team For The Planet’s investment and support. Traditional investors saw them as too risky. Team For The Planet saw their potential.
3. The Banking Revolution
But they was a problem – they were getting so many good ideas that they needed to scale up their investment capacity. So they did something smart: they partnered with Crédit Coopératif, a bank that’s been refusing to finance dirty industries for over a decade.
The partnership, called Bank for the Planet, means you can now make an impact just by moving your everyday banking. Every time you use your card, the bank contributes €0.12 to Team For The Planet. You can also round up your transactions to contribute a bit more if you want. And of course, you can become a shareholder directly – from 2026, it’ll work more like a traditional investment, but still aligned with their core values.
For anyone who’s tried to find a bank that doesn’t fund fossil fuels or pesticides, this is pretty much perfect. Your money stops supporting harmful industries, and starts funding real solutions instead.
4. What This Means for Companies
For businesses, this offers a proper alternative to carbon offsetting. Don’t get me wrong, offsetting has its place, but this is different. This is active investment in innovation. If your company values being at the cutting edge, if innovation is part of your DNA, then backing breakthrough climate solutions might fit better than buying credits.
You’re not just compensating for your emissions – you’re helping create the technologies and companies that will reduce emissions at scale. You’re backing entrepreneurs who are taking real risks to solve real problems.
Entrepreneurship in the service of the climate emergency | Team for the Planet
5. The Bigger Picture
What I love about Team For The Planet is that they prove alternatives are possible. They’ve shown that:
- Collective action works – 130,000 shareholders, each starting with as little as €1, have created meaningful change
- Banking can be better – your everyday transactions can fund solutions instead of problems
- Open source matters – all their innovations are made available openly so others can replicate and scale them
- Investment doesn’t have to follow the old rules – you don’t need venture capital returns to make a difference
They’re not waiting for governments or big institutions to sort things out. They’re just getting on with it, and they’re proving it works.
Whether you’re running a company or just thinking about where your money goes, Team For The Planet shows us something important: we have more options than we think.
You can move your banking somewhere that aligns with your values. You can invest in solutions rather than just offsetting problems. You can be part of something that’s actively creating the innovations we need, not just talking about them.
The climate crisis won’t be solved by any single approach. But approaches like this – practical, collaborative, focused on real results – give me hope that we might actually pull this off.