GHG Impact Potential

The change (generally assumed to be beneficial) in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or removal that an investment may cause, compared to baseline scenarios and assuming a standardized growth trajectory.

Before approving a catalytic investment via Prime’s venture program, we assess emissions or removal per unit for a solution that the investee proposes to develop. We then use an S-curve to project how emissions or removals could plausibly change if the solution were to scale up and take over the market, following a method we developed and published in 2017. 

Using Project Frame’s terminology, we assess potential impact. We don't forecast the likelihood of impact, nor do we align our projections with commercialization plans of the investee, as other investors do when they’re measuring planned impact.

In 2017, Prime published a method called Emission Reduction Potential (ERP) for projecting forward-looking changes in emissions. The ERP method estimates the emissions that are avoided, relative to a counterfactual baseline scenario. Our mission requires that we achieve genuine “emissions reduction,” i.e. a future in which emissions go down in an absolute sense relative to current levels, rather than relative to a speculative counterfactual. We now use the term GHG impact potential, instead of ERP, to account for this distinction and to be more inclusive of the carbon removal solutions in Prime’s portfolio.