WATCH: Executive Q&A with Mary King, Vice President of Aligned Climate Capital

She saw the financial promise of climate investing before it was mainstream. Today we’re featuring Mary King, Vice President at Aligned Climate Capital, helping scale the next wave of clean energy and decarbonization solutions.

About Mary King: Mary is a Vice President within the Aligned Climate Fund (ACF), Aligned Climate Capital’s venture strategy. ACF invests in early-stage companies utilizing proven technologies across four key climate sectors: Clean Energy, Efficient Buildings, Electric Transport, and Sustainable Land Use. Mary leads deal sourcing, due diligence, and execution for new investments, managing the full investment pipeline and financial analysis. She also oversees portfolio management, supporting existing companies with performance tracking, follow-on strategy, and ongoing engagement.

Previously, Mary was an Investor at Backcast Partners, a private credit and non-control private equity firm focused on middle-market investments. Mary holds a B.S. in Finance, Accounting, and Management Information Systems from Northeastern University. She is based in the New York office.

We spoke with Mary over Zoom recently:

Tell us how you got into climate and clean tech investing and how you came to Aligned Climate Capital.

I’ve always been interested in clean tech investing, going back to college. I got early exposure during a co-op with a supportive boss who gave me a bit of hands-on experience. After that, I knew I needed to find my way back to this field.

Coming out of school, it was not a market for clean energy and decarbonization. We were just coming out of Clean Tech 1.0. So, I went to a private credit, non-control private equity fund where I was really excited about the track records and the thoughtfulness of the people I was working for. I just wanted to learn investment fundamentals from them.

I did that for a couple of years, but I found myself getting much more excited about anything that touched the energy world, especially where there was a decarbonization component. For example, the last deal I did there was on a natural gas pipeline components company, and I kept wanting to go down these rabbit holes—“What does the future of pipelines look like? Can we mix hydrogen into them, and at what percentages?”

As I was going through that process, I called a couple of friends in the clean energy and climate tech investing world. They both said, “Now’s the time.” One of them was a mentor at Shell Ventures, and the other, now at Generate, sent me a posting at Aligned and recommended I apply. So I joined Aligned a little over four years ago.

The benefit of joining when a firm is still small and lean is that you get a lot of exposure and opportunities. I’ve been fortunate that they’ve let me stick around and grow in my role. Over the years, I’ve gone from purely working on diligence and underwriting to taking more of a leadership position on the venture team.

How has the landscape changed since you started at Aligned, especially with the IRA rollback?

When I joined Aligned, it was pre-IRA. We were in that phase where we weren’t sure if it was going to happen, or what would be in it if it did happen. There was a lot of back-and-forth—excitement, then dropping it, then excitement again. Ultimately, it did get done fairly early in my time here.

But it’s interesting—post-IRA, we haven’t seen a simple return to pre-IRA times. There’s much more negative sentiment now because there’s so much more uncertainty. In many ways, though, the dynamics are similar. A lot of technologies have come down the cost curve over the last four years. We now have much more visibility into which technologies can stand on their own without subsidies.

At some point, we’ll probably see more of a reckoning than we’re seeing now, because companies raise in cycles, and until we’re a couple of years out, we won’t see the full impact, especially in the venture ecosystem. That said, now is, in my opinion, a better time than ever to be a clean energy or decarbonization investor in the venture space. Valuations have come down. Companies still have really interesting technologies and business models, and they still need capital. We’re deploying capital. So, even though we’re facing bad energy policy, it’s a good time to deploy money.

What do you think the future looks like for climate tech?

It’s a three-year, five-year, ten-year kind of question. I hope that at some point in my career—ideally as soon as possible—I’m made irrelevant by the lack of need for climate tech–specific companies. Instead, every company, every real estate developer, every business will find that it makes more sense to decarbonize because of regulations, policies, subsidies, or simply because it’s cheaper to use renewables or energy-efficient solutions as energy costs rise.

In the next few years, I think we’ll see more companies rebrand themselves. Instead of saying “we’re climate tech,” they’ll call themselves resilience tech, or energy tech. They’ll focus less on sustainability and more on the core business bottom-line benefits they provide to their customers.

What is something that would surprise people about you?

I’m one of six kids and grew up in Kentucky. I love Kentucky, but I don’t think I give off “Kentucky.” I never really picked up the hobbies—horseback riding, hunting. Bourbon, I really tried. I did my best, but I couldn’t get into it. Still trying. And I think I dropped the accent—at least I don’t think I have one.

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