Levers, fulcrums, and moving the world

Editor’s note: Our CEO sends a quarterly friends and supporters note. This one apparently struck a chord, maybe because people love an ancient Greek analogy (and the concept of leverage). For whatever the reason, we thought we'd share it in full with a broader crowd.

Friends of Terraset,

Archimedes said: “Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

Leverage is the number one topic at Terraset right now. Our capital is directly unlocking follow-on funding at every scale, and it’s exactly what we want to do more of.

Our ~$200k pre-purchase from Restord unlocked $2M in financing, including the UK’s first-ever commercial loan to a biochar company. The >$1M we deployed through our revolving fund’s first round unlocked $6 for every $1 spent. With donor funds ringfenced as first-loss capital, we can unlock 5-10x debt capital for climate projects.

Our mission, methodology, and tools are a stable fulcrum. Capital is the only limiting factor now. We need a longer lever if we’re going to move the world (every dollar you donate and each introduction you make lengthens it). In the meantime, here’s what pulling on it has looked like over the last couple of months.

Have a great summer,

Adam

• Our ~$200k pre-purchase from Restord unlocked a financing package worth around 10x that amount, including the UK’s first-ever commercial loan to a biochar company. Thanks to backing from the Green Finance Institute, we’re expanding further into the UK.

  • If you know someone perfectly placed to lead our work in London, point them here.

• In Round 1 of our revolving fund for greenhouse gas removal and abatement we deployed more than $1M across 11 projects and are seeing up to $6 unlocked for every $1 we put in. The model is simple: recycle proceeds from the resale of early purchases back into new commitments, so every dollar works more than once. And the model is working. We’re excited for Round 2, and looking to grow the pot.

  • If you know potential donors who want to see their money drive repeated cycles of climate impact, please introduce us.

• We made our first purchase of rice methane abatement credits, funding emission reductions from smallholder farmers in markets commercial buyers haven’t reached. In addition to reducing methane emissions by up to 70 percent, our purchase saved millions of gallons of water. It’s another good example of how greenhouse gas removal and abatement has impacts that go way beyond the tons themselves.

  • If you know donors focused on water sustainability solutions who might want to explore this interconnection with methane, please connect us.
    

• We launched a partnership with Forum for Impact (FFI), deepening how we connect funders to high-quality climate solutions. FFI is a global platform where leaders and institutions (investors, philanthropists, sovereign wealth funds, and other innovators) converge to shape the future of impact. We’re working with them to help donors understand how their philanthropic capital can catalyze climate solutions around the world, with a particular focus on the hundreds of billions of dollars sitting in Donor Advised Funds in North America. That capital could take any of the examples above to significant scale.

  • If you’d like to attend an upcoming FFI convening, let us know.

• A new report from 150+ climate finance leaders, backed by Builders Vision, concluded that philanthropic and concessionary capital is irreplaceable for CDR and superpollutants, and that companies built solely around carbon revenue are at existential risk. The market needs an intermediary willing to take on risk that pure market capital won’t touch right now, while the window is narrow and the need is acute. We read this as a case for what we are doing with Terraset. Thanks for your support in building it.