Hundreds of billions of dollars will be needed by heavy industries — such as steel, cement, and chemicals — if they are to swap fossil fuels for clean energy and help the world avoid catastrophic climate change.

And providing this funding is the goal of a first-of-its-kind fund from Canadian asset manager Brookfield. It plans to allocate half of the $15bn it has raised to heavily polluting companies with the aim of accelerating their transition to greener, more environmentally sustainable, business models. If successful, it could encourage others to adopt similar strategies.

“We want to go where the emissions are,” says Natalie Adomait, a managing partner in the team running the new Brookfield Global Transition fund, which is co-led by former Bank of England governor Mark Carney.  In his role as UN climate envoy, Carney has argued forcefully that it would be counter-productive to deny high-emitting companies the investment needed to decarbonise.