Research
Discover our catalytic capital and climate finance research, case studies, white papers, and reports.
Charting the FOAK Gap in a Shifting Landscape
Climate tech companies face a well-documented, persistent financing gap as they scale from technical demonstration to commercial scale. While the exact size of this gap is difficult to quantify, several analyses point toward global FOAK financing needs north of $125B. This funding gap consists of distinct FOAK and demonstration projects that will cost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars each. The report revisits the FOAK gap, including key literature to date — both our own and that of other thought leaders — and assesses proprietary data on project-level capital requirements. Despite headwinds, the climate ecosystem has the tools to fill the climate commercialization gap: catalytic philanthropic and government capital, in particular, can ensure critical climate solutions advance.
Resources for FOAK Project Preparation & Development
A guide on non-financial resources for first-of-a-kind (FOAK) project preparation & development, featuring readiness checklists, accelerators, workshops, project databases, and more.
Catalyzing Development of First-of-a-Kind Climate Projects
Prime Coalition's 2022 report highlighted the scaling issues climate startups face, especially in obtaining infrastructure finance. It pointed out the lack of capital to commercialize climate technologies, including development capital for pre-construction activities. In 2023, Trellis Climate examined this capital gap further, deploying philanthropic catalytic capital as a solution. This note summarizes the insights from Trellis' work.
Barriers to the Timely Deployment of Climate Infrastructure
To understand what exactly is needed for climate technologies to move beyond their hatchling stages into large-scale deployment, Prime Coalition, Schmidt Futures, and Blue Haven Initiative came together to launch a research project at Prime: Barriers to the Timely Deployment of Climate Infrastructure.
Join Us!
Donate ➜
Click here to support Prime as a US-based 501c3 nonprofit.
Sign up to receive Prime’s quarterly newsletter
Learn more about how Prime can strengthen your catalytic investing work.