The partnership, announced this week, represents a landmark commitment to invest in sustainable infrastructure by providing bespoke capital solutions to finance the buildout of critical infrastructure that supports the clean energy economy and promotes energy security for the US and abroad.

As part of the partnership, CalSTRS will serve as an anchor investor for the sustainable infrastructure portfolio in the energy and power infrastructure strategy. The partnership will also enable CalSTRS to anchor future complementary investment strategies to support critical infrastructure for the clean energy economy.

The partnership’s investment policy spans the full breadth of sustainable infrastructure opportunities, including renewable power generation, energy storage, industrial decarbonization, energy efficiency solutions and circular economy investments. It will also invest in onshoring infrastructure supply chains to support domestic manufacturing jobs and support the build-out of artificial intelligence and the digital economy – a critical area that is projected to underpin economic growth in the US and OECD countries.

“The demand for new energy, power, and digital infrastructure has never been greater,” said Don Dimitrievich, global head of Nuveen Energy Infrastructure Credit. “The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence, the onshoring of manufacturing and industrial supply chains, and the broad electrification of the economy are collectively creating a generational need for new infrastructure investment. We believe private credit is uniquely positioned to play a leading role in financing that buildout while also achieving positive sustainable outcomes.”

For CalSTRS, the partnership aligns the long-term nature of sustainable infrastructure credit with its plan's core mandate of generating attractive risk-adjusted returns for California's more than one million public-school educators and their beneficiaries while also catalyzing positive sustainability results and reducing or avoiding emissions.