Trellis Climate’s Investment in Nitricity Showcases Thoughtful Catalytic Investing Toward the FOAK Climate Gap
First-of-a-kind (FOAK) infrastructure projects play a critical role in scaling climate solutions, yet they often face a funding gap that our commercial investment sector hesitates to fill. Trellis Climate, a catalytic investment program in its design phase at Prime Coalition, aims to bridge this gap by bringing together multiple sources of catalytic capital to accelerate FOAK projects toward commercial scale.
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.
What Systemic Needs Does Trellis Fill?
Trellis Climate is structured to maximize charitable impact while maintaining a rigorous, institutional approach to catalytic capital deployment. Here are three key program differentiators:
1️⃣ Capital Recovery for Philanthropic Partners: Trellis Climate provides donors with an option to recover charitable capital, acknowledging the courageous and disproportionate risks they take to unlock outsized climate impact. This innovative model allows philanthropic dollars to be recycled into future charitable work, amplifying our philanthropic partners’ long-term impact.
2️⃣ Rigorous Investor Additionality Assessment: Prime Coalition’s Impact Team conducts an additionality evaluation for every Trellis investment to ensure that catalytic capital is truly needed for the project to move forward. This unbiased, nonprofit-led assessment helps verify that each investment unlocks impact that would not otherwise be possible.
3️⃣ Broad and Inclusive Project Pipeline: Trellis Climate sources and evaluates projects from across the U.S., ensuring that its support extends beyond Prime Coalition’s own venture portfolio or any single investor’s previous investments. This open approach strengthens the climate finance ecosystem by identifying high-impact projects regardless of prior affiliations.
Prime’s Role in Structuring Nitricity’s FOAK Investment
Through Trellis Climate, Prime Coalition facilitated the alignment of multiple philanthropic capital sources to fund this initiative, which included:
6 philanthropic partners (and counting!);
A wide range of organizations, including private foundations, donor-advised funds, and family offices;
Grants and recoverable grants alike.
Bringing together grantors, recoverable grantors, and program-related investments into a single FOAK project is no small feat—it requires intentional structuring, strong partnerships, and a shared vision for impact.
Looking Ahead and Setting the Stage
As Trellis Climate advances through its own design phase with a learning-by-doing approach, Nitricity’s project will serve as a compelling example of how philanthropy can strategically de-risk FOAK projects to attract commercial capital. By integrating smart financial structuring, expert climate impact and additionality diligence, as well as reliable project tracking and reporting, Trellis Climate is setting the stage for a scalable, charitable approach to funding first-of-a-kind infrastructure solutions.
To discuss partnership with Trellis Climate or learn more about how we’re deploying catalytic capital into climate infrastructure, reach out to Lara Pierpoint, Managing Director, Trellis Climate.
