On the Ground with Trellis Climate: Catalytic Investments, FOAK Ecosystem, and Events

The Trellis Climate team has been busy, recently announcing catalytic investments in Nitricity and Tandem PV while deepening our connections within the first-of-a-kind (FOAK) climate infrastructure ecosystem.

Image credit: Nitricity

Lara Pierpoint, Managing Director of Trellis Climate, joined the Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative (BERC) 2025 Energy Summit, where she spoke on the panel “Bridging the Gap: Financing First-of-a-Kind Energy Transition Projects” alongside Andrew Yi (Builders Vision), David Yeh (Precursor), and Greg Dalton (Climate One). The panel focused on some of the core challenges in financing and building FOAK climate projects, particularly the role of catalytic capital in unlocking early-stage projects.  

Next up, Lara and Lee Scott, Principal at Trellis, attended the ARPA-E Summit in Washington, D.C. The event was attended by hundreds of climate startups, dozens of which are reaching the demo/FOAK project phase. It was inspiring to see the role that government catalytic capital can have in accelerating early-stage climate technologies and the complementary role philanthropic catalytic capital can play in supporting FOAK projects graduating from government programs.  

The Trellis Climate team stopped to take a photo at a dinner during their recent team retreat in Denver, Colorado.

Rounding out the March conference roster, Emily Lewis O’Brien, Principal at Trellis, attended NREL’s Industrial Growth Forum, as well as Energy Impact Partner’s Industrial Decarbonization Summit, in Denver. The events included an exciting mix of pitches from commercialization-stage companies—including Trellis’ portfolio companies Ebb Carbon, Nitricity, and Tandem PV—as well as over a dozen 1:1 meetings with climate startups. She also joined the ‘Bring-a-FOAK-Deal Dinner’ hosted by Node Climate, Foley Hoag, and Khasma Capital where she got to learn more about other FOAK ecosystem partners and their recent deals.  

Happy Spring, from team Trellis to you all!