As chief executive officer of ALTÉRRA, His Excellency Majid Al Suwaidi is looking to reshape how global capital is mobilised to bridge the gap between public ambition and private investment in the climate transition.
Launched at COP28 in 2023, the Abu Dhabi-based fund has committed to mobilising $250 billion in climate investment by 2030, with an initial $30 billion commitment from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), designed to catalyse scalable, commercially viable solutions across both developed and emerging markets.
Speaking of his route to leading ALTÉRRA, Al Suwaidi tells Environmental Finance, after winning the award for Personality of the year in the Middle East Transition Finance Awards: "My career has been a little bit convoluted in lots of ways, but it makes sense to me."
Beginning as a geologist in the oil and gas sector, "working from the rig floor all the way to the headquarters", he developed a technical grounding that he says continues to influence his approach today.
That foundation, combined with an early pivot into climate diplomacy, enabled him to bridge two perspectives. As he puts it, climate change is "too technical for diplomats and too political for technical people" – a gap he has spent his career closing.
His move into climate policy came at a pivotal moment for the UAE. Drawn by what he describes as "a really interesting moment in the UAE's journey" as it started diversifying its energy mix, he joined the Department for Energy and Climate Change in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
His first COP experience – COP11 in South Africa – was, in his words, "the craziest thing I had ever seen... chaos that I could not even understand," yet it provided exactly the challenge he says he was seeking at that time.
Al Suwaidi went on to become the UAE's ambassador to Spain, Andorra, and Vatican City, and the UAE Consul General in New York. Later, as the UAE's Lead Negotiator on Climate Change, Energy and Sustainability, Al Suwaidi and his team went on to play a central role in shaping global frameworks, contributing to both the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Here, he felt his team had a "unique position" in negotiations, as "we were able to see the challenges that developing countries that are dependent on natural resources face...but also understood that, as a country, we wanted to diversify and transition into the future".
This perspective underpinned his leadership of COP28, where he served as director general and special representative of the COP Presidency in Dubai.
He described the event as a shift toward delivery, with a strong emphasis on private sector engagement. "We were very focused on the things that would actually deliver," he explains. A key insight emerged repeatedly: "finance wasn't being deployed at the scale required," particularly in the Global South.
The creation of ALTÉRRA was a direct response. Crucially, the fund was designed not as a philanthropic vehicle, but as a catalytic, commercially driven platform to scale up climate solutions.
"We wanted to prove that investing in climate made economic sense," he says. Today, that thesis is being validated, with strong investor interest and significant capital mobilisation already underway.
A dual focus on impact and returns was key to the fund's blueprint, especially as the fund seeks to invest in regions and solutions where capital has historically been constrained.
Two years on, Al Suwaidi says ALTÉRRA has built a globally diversified portfolio of more than 30 investments, supporting a renewable energy pipeline of close to 100 GW. Its model and track record have also enabled it to successfully raise additional third-party capital from global institutions such as BBVA, he adds.
Reflecting on his achievements thus far, Al Suwaidi says his approach is rooted in challenging conventional thinking.
Coming from outside traditional finance, he applies what he describes as a more systematic or "engineering approach" to problems, often questioning assumptions around risk – particularly in emerging markets. Many of the barriers, he argues, are "perception issues," rather than fundamental constraints.
Ultimately, he asserts that transition finance is not a trade-off, but an opportunity – especially in the Global South. "These investments are good for the environment...but they're also good for your economies and your industries. This is investing in the future."
