(Bloomberg) -- Italy’s FIEE Sgr SpA raised about $100 million for a new long-short fund that bets on the equity and debt of companies involved in the transition to a lower carbon economy.  

The UCITS fund, called SpesX Energy Transition, was presented in June and started trading this month. Investors include family offices and institutional funds based in Italy, Switzerland and Luxembourg, according to Luca Moro, the fund’s chief investment officer. 

“We still have many years ahead of huge investments in energy transition and you can find, for example, great opportunities in component manufacturers that are trading very cheap, renewable power producers valued at or below current net asset value or debt priced at stressed or distressed levels,” he said.

The fund will also invest as much as 30% in fixed-income, and will seek to short the equity and debt of companies caught in the global push to decarbonize, including oil and gas firms that aren’t doing enough for energy transition. Firms that could be struggling against stronger competitors — such as producers of electrolyzers for the hydrogen energy industry — could be targeted, he said.

The SpesX team also includes Anton Kyriakides, formerly at Numen Capital and Eyck Capital in London with Moro. 

Formed in 2014 in Rome, FIEE focuses on themes such as energy efficiency and transition with a private equity strategy. It has about $500 million under management.

According to BloombergNEF’s New Energy Outlook, the world needs to spend a total of $8.3 trillion on renewable energy deployment between 2023 and 2030 to align with a global net-zero trajectory by 2050, keeping global warming well below 2C. 

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