In their recent op-ed for Impact Alpha, Prime Coalition’s Chief Programs Officer, Anna Goldstein, and Senior Associate, Impact, Alban Yau, make the case that catalytic capital only delivers on its promise when guided by careful diagnosis and disciplined design. In their recent op-ed for Impact Alpha, Prime Coalition’s Chief Programs Officer, Anna Goldstein, and Senior Associate, Impact, Alban Yau, make the case that catalytic capital only delivers on its promise when guided by careful diagnosis and disciplined design. They explore why capital gaps are more often rooted in structural misalignment than scarcity, and how catalytic interventions must be intentionally crafted and paired with complementary infrastructure to unlock private participation and enable systems-level change.

We are excited to celebrate with our friends at the Catalytic Capital Consortium (C3) as they publish their new guide: "Addressing Capital Gaps: A Guide to Strategic Deployment of Catalytic Capital" by Harvey Koh, a C3 Senior Advisor. This new resource provides actionable insights on harnessing catalytic capital's potential to address urgent needs, and we're honored that Prime's Anna Goldstein, Claudia Alejandra Leon, and Alban Yau were invited to contribute their expertise to its creation.

The partnership advances EQT Foundation’s Breakthrough Scale program, which backs innovative models that make high-impact climate technologies investable at scale.

Prime Coalition’s Chief Growth Officer Keri Browder shares Prime’s strategies and programs lean into growing interest in climate solutions beyond mitigation

Trellis Climate, in partnership with GreenieRE Coalition, is excited to launch Vensurety, a novel, impact-first, tech-expert insurance platform for climate companies. Vensurety is supported by anchor funding from The Schmidt Family Foundation and Builders Initiative. Vensurety, short for “Venture Surety,” underwrites a new category of surety bonds to guarantee climate startups have the liquidity to support their growth and commercialization. 

Today, GreenieRE Coalition, a mission-driven reinsurer focused on unlocking insurance innovation for the energy transition, and Trellis Climate, an impact-first catalytic capital program that invests in early climate infrastructure projects, announced the launch of Vensurety, an impact-first, tech-expert insurance platform for climate companies. Vensurety is supported by anchor funding from the Schmidt Family Foundation and Builders Vision. 

In a recent blog post, Morgan Sheil, Head of Impact at World Fund and Frame Steering Committee member, reminds us: However you choose to assess emissions impact, it’s important to do so with consistency and transparency for honest analyses. In the post, Sheil highlights how resources, like the CRANE Tool and Project Frame’s GHG Impact Resource Dashboard, can support you in these efforts.

Prime Coalition’s Project Frame is proud to share Avoided Emissions & Climate Investing: A Guide for Investors and Businesses, a groundbreaking guide produced in close collaboration with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the Impact Convergence Forum (ICF). 

This guide provides a clear and comprehensive framework for navigating existing methodological approaches for assessing forward-looking climate impacts and reporting avoided emissions, and represents a pivotal step forward in the fight against climate change. 

Lara Pierpoint, Managing Director of Trellis Climate, was featured in a recent Economist Impact report, Catalyzing Investment for Advanced Energy Technologies. The report highlights how investor appetite for clean energy is growing and enabling technologies like storage and nuclear are gaining traction across global markets. Lara emphasized the urgency of accelerating deployment, noting that “The planet needs a rapid buildout of existing technologies, at a much faster pace than we are currently building.” The report, supported by the EFI Foundation, draws on insights from 300 global investors and explores the catalytic mechanisms needed to unlock private capital for critical clean energy solutions.

Since its launch in spring 2024, Trellis Climate has been on a mission to support climate technologies building first-of-a-kind (FOAK) projects. Over the last few years, the funding gap faced by climate companies in the early commercialization stage has been well documented and often discussed, yet limited capital has moved to fill the void. The core of the issue is a mismatch between the risk-return profile of FOAK projects and what is required by venture capital and project finance to invest. Broader market trends have also made the funding gap more acute. Significant uncertainty has emerged for much of the government funding for companies at this stage, and venture funding for climate tech has slowed significantly since its 2021 peak. Amid these headwinds, Trellis Climate is stepping in with catalytic capital to help advance promising high-impact technologies that are working to bridge this funding gap. 

Amidst the current landscape, Trellis Climate is thrilled to announce that it made its first two catalytic investments in climate companies building FOAK projects: Nitricity, a company producing low-emission fertilizer, and Tandem PV, a company making next generation, highly efficient solar panels. 

Prime Coalition was recently featured in Impact Investor's article, “The Three Pathways to Impact Investing Additionality”, written by our good friend Michael Brown, the head of research at the Impact Investing Research Lab, a division of the Wharton ESG Initiative. The piece highlights Prime’s catalytic investment approach as an example of the "Sacrifice" pathway, where impact investors accept elevated risk profiles to unlock climate impact that conventional capital often overlooks.

Trellis Climate’s Lara Pierpoint spoke with Jeva Lange about how Trellis’ donors are facing the increasingly complex landscape for those committed to advancing climate solutions.

Nitricity’s latest project—a FOAK organic fertilizer plant in California—is demonstrative of how Trellis Climate aggregates philanthropic capital for catalytic investments, making it easier and more effective for charitable asset owners to step up. Trellis Climate’s investment into Nitricity not only supports a pioneering climate solution but also exemplifies the key design elements that we’re building into Trellis itself.  We see these attributes as critical to addressing the FOAK capital gap in a systemic way, as these are missing in a field where more and more actors are noticing and working to alleviate the FOAK financing gap.

Project Frame’s approach to emissions impact attribution was featured alongside other industry leaders and standard-setters in an opinion piece published by Impact Investor. 

We’re thrilled to announce that Trellis Climate, our project finance program, has been named a Bezos Earth Fund Greenhouse Gas Removal Ideation Prize winner!

The winning proposal, "Increasing funding for first-of-a-kind carbon dioxide removal projects by deploying novel insurance products," tackles one of the toughest challenges in scaling climate infrastructure: bridging the commercialization valley of death.

Prime was featured in Sightline Climate’s 2024 Climate Capital Stack and New Funds report as a key player in catalytic capital. The report examines the evolving ecosystem of climate finance, highlighting how different types of capital—ranging from VC to later-stage and project financing—support climate tech startups as they scale. Catalytic capital plays a critical role in bridging early funding gaps by prioritizing impact over financial returns, accepting greater risk or concessionary returns to help climate solutions reach commercialization.

Net Zero Insight’s 2024 State of Climate Tech Report is here—and it’s their most comprehensive one yet, including an interview with our Director of Impact Accountability and Director of Project Frame, Keri Browder, who shares key industry trends, challenges and opportunities.

We’re thrilled to share that Lara Pierpoint, Managing Director of Trellis Climate, has been recognized in the 2024 Fin-Erth Women in Climate List!

Lara was nominated by Samia Qader, host ofthe Climate Tech 360 podcast, for her outstanding work in unlocking climate solutions. This recognition highlights her contributions alongside 100 other incredible women from around the globe who are driving meaningful progress in climate and sustainability.

New Private Markets highlighted Project Frame in its coverage of the Impact Convergence Forum for Private Equity (ICF), a newly formed group working to standardize impact measurement. The article notes that ICF, which includes a steering committee of 10 organizations, is collaborating with Project Frame to drive consistency in how GPs and LPs measure and report avoided emissions, bringing greater clarity to impact quantification across the industry.

A new paper from The Global Impact Investing Network, Climate Solutions Investing in Review: An Analysis of Key Issues and Recommendations for an Investment Framework, features Project Frame’s pre-investment methodology guidance and the CRANE tool.

This paper highlights existing frameworks that support investors who strive to invest in climate solutions with the real potential for reducing or avoiding future emissions and identifies key opportunities for moving forward.