At Prime Coalition, we seek to align every financial decision with our mission to unlock catalytic capital for climate solutions. That’s why we partnered with CNote to ensure that even our cash deposits make an impact before being deployed into climate investments.

Nitricity’s latest project—a FOAK organic fertilizer plant in California—is demonstrative of how Trellis Climate aggregates philanthropic capital forcatalytic 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.

At this year’s Yale Philanthropy Conference, themed “Catalyzing Change,” Prime Coalition’s Executive Director, Sarah Kearney, participated in a panel alongside Sheena Strawter-Anthony, Director of Impact Investment Strategy at the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund. Liqian Ma, Global Head of Sustainable and Impact Investing Research at Cambridge Associates and Prime Fund Advisory Committee member, moderated the discussion. The conversation centered on “the evolution and challenges of impact investing in philanthropy.” Together, they explored the promise of catalytic capital—how philanthropists can deploy charitable dollars while offering the possibility of financial recovery—and how it is distinct and also complementary to mission investing among returns-prioritizing investors.

Lara Pierpoint joins Addison Stark, CEO and Co-Founder of AtmosZero, and Sasha Bukhari, Data & Ecosystem Associate at the Cleantech Group, for a fireside chat entitled Catalytic Capital: The Future of Climate Infrastructure.

Gigi Alsaadi, CRANE fellow at Prime Coalition, highlights the essential role of nonprofits in scaling sustainable technologies at the Sustainable Engineers Association's (SEA) “2025 Sustainability Conference: Adaptation – Planning for Future Challenges."

Prime Coalition is thrilled to partner with Impact Frontiers and the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at the Duke University - The Fuqua School of Business to deliver a new course for impact investors, Strengthening Impact Management (SIM).  

As the founder of The Leargas Group and former Global CEO ofUnited Way, our newest board member, Brian Gallagher, brings decades of experience in impact-driven strategy and philanthropy. In this short Q&A, he shares insights into his work, what draws him to Prime’s mission, and his perspective on the intersection of capital and impact.

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.

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.

As we look back on 2024, we’re filled with gratitude for the incredible partnerships that have joined us in our mission to unlock catalytic capital and change the future of climate finance. Together, we’ve advanced innovative solutions to tackle the climate crisis. We want to thank every partner and program participant who joined us on this journey. Your contributions and collaboration inspire us to keep scaling solutions to achieve a world in which humanity thrives without the threat of climate change.

This year, Trellis Climate organized a two-part panel “Achieving Speed and Scale: Financial Tools for Catalyzing FOAK Climate Projects” at Verge 2024 in San Jose, CA. The session was focused on highlighting the role of corporate partnerships for supply, plant construction, and offtake in bridging the commercialization gap.

We are thrilled to announce The Green Blueprint, a new podcast hosted by Lara Pierpoint, Managing Director of Trellis Climate, in partnership with Latitude Media, about the architects of the clean energy economy.

We’ve already invented many of the technologies we need to decarbonize the global economy. But much of that tech is still sitting on the sidelines, waiting to get financed and built at scale.

So what can we learn from the people who are bringing new technologies from the lab to the market, constructing first-of-a-kind projects, building companies, challenging and transforming incumbents, and finding the right kind of investment to support their scaling?

The show profiles the people who are doing the dirty work of scaling clean technologies: founders, investors, engineers, policymakers, and organizational leaders who are solving a complex set of challenges in the quest to scale quickly.

Keri Browder, our Director of Impact Accountability and Director of Project Frame, joined Steering Committee member Dan Miller of The Roda Group on his podcast, Climate Chat, to talk all things climate investing and impact!

Prime Coalition was honored to join the Boston Green Ribbon Commission in providing advisory support for The Boston Foundation's latest climate report, Powering Up Together, which focuses on the urgent need to retrofit Boston’s small buildings to meet the city’s net-zero emissions goals.

Our Executive Director, Sarah Kearney, participated in a panel discussion titled 'How do we get there? Investment Mobilization + Private Sector Engagement' at the Climate Tech Summit, hosted by Google X and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) during New York Climate Week.

Lara Pierpoint, Managing Director of Trellis Climate, took part in the 2024 Carbon Removal Capital Summit in San Francisco. This summit, organized by Santander CIB in collaboration with the XPRIZE Foundation, brought together global leaders and experts in carbon management to discuss pivotal strategies for rebalancing Earth's carbon cycle.

Lara Pierpoint moderated a panel titled Innovative Financing Models for Carbon Removal Projects, alongside four incredible women who are unlocking new approaches to finance CDR, including Annalise Downey, Head of Climate Consulting at Sylvera, April Allderdice, CEO of MicroEnergy Credits, Nicole Pasricha, Head of Climate and Impact at ALMA, and Shirin Jamshidi, Director of Investments, Asia, Middle East, North Africa at the DFC.

Members of the Trellis Climate team, including Managing Director Lara Pierpoint, Principal Emily Lewis O'Brian, and Principal Lee Scott, spoke at several New York Climate Week events while also attending a dozen sessions focused on the critical capital gap faced by climate technologies as they scale for impact. The Trellis team’s active participation in these conversations around First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) climate projects brought forward invaluable insights on the challenges and opportunities for accelerating the transition to a net-zero economy by supporting FOAK projects.

The report "Regulatory Barriers and Levers for Deploying Foreign Catalytic Capital in Impact-Focused Enterprises, Funds, & Facilities in India" is a collaborative effort led by Desai & Associates in partnership with Prime Coalition, with support from The Lemelson Foundation. It explores pathways, both direct and indirect, for channeling US and European catalytic capital into Indian social enterprises.

For over a decade, Prime has led the way in catalyzing climate solutions that can mitigate or remove gigaton-scale emissions. Our latest white paper, “Additionality in Theory and Practice,” explores this core value that has shaped our work since 2014. 

As Prime's Impact Fellow for Spring 2023, Chidalu Onyenso led a research paper on the funding challenges and opportunities for climate adaptation efforts in Africa. The research builds upon Prime's ongoing capacity-building efforts to address critical climate adaptation goals.