From Zero-Sum to Net-Zero Antitrust

Addressing climate change requires an unprecedented amount of collaboration. Investors, civil society actors, and NGOs recognize this, and are creating alliances to support collaborative climate governance. The scale of these investor alliances is massive–just consider Climate Action 100+, which represents 700 global investors with over $68 trillion of assets under management. Investor alliances provide a necessary forum for collaborative governance of climate change, a systemic risk to the economy. Given their unique promise, and the urgency of addressing climate change, we should foster investor alliances. Yet, their fate hangs in the balance. A growing number of attorneys general have launched antitrust investigations of investor alliances, referring to them as “climate cartels”. Likewise, federal lawmakers have argued that investor alliances are “collusive” and violate antitrust laws. This Article argues that investor alliances are different from traditional industry collaborations and require a tailored antitrust approach. It introduces policy roadmap for aligning investor alliances with antitrust, and hopes to spark scholarly focus on antitrust and collaborative climate governance