The Brief

The Brief: Seeding the market for carbon removal with catalytic donations

ImpactAlpha · August 18, 2025

Greetings Agents of Impact!

In today’s Brief:

  • Terraset expands the buyers’ club for carbon removal
  • Bancosol’s gender bond in Bolivia
  • Financing sustainable soy in Brazil
  • Three scenarios for solar rooftops

Billionaire Buyers’ Club: Wealthy donors are buying tons of carbon just to lock it away. The latest prestige purchase from influencers like Paul Graham, Tim Ferriss and other boldface names in Silicon Valley and beyond? Tons of carbon removed from the atmosphere. Last month, the nonprofit Terraset made a $1 million purchase for carbon removal from nine startups pursuing enhanced rock weathering and ocean alkalinity, biochar and other novel methods of removing carbon. Such advance purchases are critical to derisking the capital-intensive investments needed to commercialize promising carbon storage technologies. Terraset is funded by wealthy individuals concerned about climate change, as well as Grantham Foundation, Conscience Bay Research and other foundations. Terraset aims to diversify the carbon offtake market away from big tech firms looking to offset their growing emissions, such as Microsoft, and the carbon buyers’ club Frontier Climate (for context  see, “Corporate buyers nudge voluntary carbon markets toward higher-quality projects”). Terraset has raised nearly $10 million in tax-deductible donations from individuals, foundations, family offices and donor-advised funds to purchase permanent, high-quality carbon removal, making it “a Frontier Climate driven by people’s philanthropic capital,” Terraset founder Adam Fraser tells ImpactAlpha.

  • Investor on-ramps. Less than 2% of the nearly $900 billion in annual philanthropic giving goes to climate causes, and only a small fraction of that goes to greenhouse gas removal. With a grant from the Schmidt Family Foundation, Terraset has established a revolving fund to pre-purchase carbon. Rather than retiring the credits when the carbon is delivered, Terraset sells the credits to corporations and recycles the cash back into the fund. In the time between Terraset’s purchase and the delivery of the credits, the price per ton of carbon may rise, producing profits. That may make it possible for Terraset to offer returns on recoverable grants or program-related investments, says Fraser. The new financial structure, he says, “gives more on ramps to people” to back innovative carbon removal, with the Schmidt grant absorbing some of the risk. “We don’t think philanthropic capital is ever going to provide all the funding that’s needed for the carbon removal space,” says Fraser, “but we think it can be very catalytic at unlocking other forms of capital.”
  • Dual use. Last month, Terraset pre-purchased carbon from Eion, which uses olivine to balance soil PH and remove carbon; NY Carbon, a biochar producer; and Tradewater, which removes potent non-CO2 greenhouse gasses such as methane and halocarbons, which are found in refrigerants. It also made repeat purchases from its own portfolio companies Andes, Charm Industrial, Climeworks, Graphyte and TerraFixing. CarbonRun, which also sold removal credits to Terraset, is one of a growing number of companies for which carbon removal is a side-benefit, albeit a lucrative one. The company started out by adding crushed limestone to rivers and other waterways to restore alkalinity and convert CO2 into beneficial bicarbonate. It is now able to quantify the amount of carbon its process removes, opening up a new revenue stream. Such dual-purpose uses represent the future of carbon removal, says Fraser. “That’s where the space has the real potential to scale.”
  • Keep reading, “Billionaire Buyers Club: Wealthy donors are buying tons of carbon just to lock it away,” by Amy Cortese.

Dealflow: Gender Smart

BancoSol issues second gender bond for women-led businesses in Bolivia. The La Paz-based microfinance lender raised 150 million bolivianos ($21.9 million) in its second gender bond issuance, securing backing from Bolivia’s national social security agency, the domestic development bank Banco de Desarrollo Productivo, and a number of regional investors. The bond is part of BancoSol’s Avanza Mujer program, which provides the country’s female entrepreneurs with flexible loans, training and digital business tools. The bond proceeds will provide long-term loans to 3,200 women-led businesses. The bond secured a AA1-rating from Bolivia’s AESA ratings agency, without concessional financing or de-risking mechanisms. 

  • Market success. BancoSol’s first gender bond issuance last year – also the first social bond in Bolivia – was backed by a 50% guarantee from IDB Invest and closed in eight months (see, “BancoSol floats $30 million gender bond in Bolivia“). The demand bolstered BancoSol’s return to the market for a second bond, “without a guarantee – just BancoSol on its own,” BancoSol’s Veronica Gavilanes Véjar told ImpactAlpha. “Despite the challenging economic context in Bolivia, a long-term, sustainability-focused approach to empowering women must continue.”
  • Women’s empowerment. BancoSol’s first bond supported 4,500 women-led enterprises. A survey found that about 85% of them were generating additional income. Nearly 90% of the borrowers reported feeling greater influence in their households and communities; three-quarters reported more autonomy in making financial decisions. “We are intentionally working to close gender gaps in our loan portfolio and promote growth for women-led businesses,” said Gavilanes. Looking ahead, she added, BancoSol’s is also looking to develop more climate finance instruments.
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Responsible Commodities Facility raises $60 million for sustainable soy farmers in Brazil. Brazil is the world’s top producer of soy. Industrial soy farming is one of the biggest causes of deforestation. To help Brazil’s soy farmers finance more sustainable production methods, UK-based Sustainable Investment Management is gearing up for a fourth round of loans through its Responsible Commodities Facility. The facility raises capital to lend to soy farmers by issuing Agribusiness Receivables Certificates, or CRAs, a type of securitized agriculture financing in Brazil. Farmers who commit to growing soy with zero deforestation of native vegetation and maintain a specified level of forest cover on their farms are eligible for seasonal, low-interest loans. The new round of funding will be the Responsible Commodities Facility’s fourth and is expected to support 280 farmers and produce nearly 265,000 tons of zero-deforestation soy. 

  • Global innovation lab. The Responsible Commodities Facility was incubated at the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance in 2018. It was launched in 2022 with backing from ​​three UK supermarket chains, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose. All three reupped in the latest round of CRAs. Other investors include Rabobank, AGRI3 Fund, IDB Invest, and the UK and Dutch-government backed Mobilising Finance for Forests program. WWF Brasil, The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, IPAM, Proforest and UN Environment all contributed to the design of the facility’s eligibility requirements for farmers.
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Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

  • Fifty Years raised $126 million for its fourth fund for “founders building things civilization needs,” such as new disease therapeutics, clean energy and new materials. (Fifty Years)
  • Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group is in talks with several African governments to replicate a sustainability-focused sovereign debt swap it closed with Cote d’Ivoire late last year. (Bloomberg)
  • Australia-based Ecotone Partners raised A$25 million ($16.3 million) for the first close of its Planet Fund to provide equity and debt for capital-intensive, asset-heavy climate tech businesses that struggle to raise early-stage capital. (Overnight Success)

Impact Voices: Policy Corner

No tax credits, no problem. Three scenarios for solar’s path to sustainability. On the face of it, the news for solar energy’s growth has been gloomy, at least in the US. The latest setback: The Trump administration is trying to claw back $7 billion in grants for Solar for All, a part of the Inflation Reduction Act that had already been awarded to finance clean, low-cost solar, mostly in low-income and energy insecure communities. The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill prematurely ended key tax credits that many solar developers had baked into their plans. And solar and wind projects are being singled out for permitting scrutiny and stricter standards to qualify for remaining tax credits. In their latest column, Carbon Collective’s Zach Stein and James Regulinski take a contrarian view. The tax and spending legislation could be “what the residential solar industry actually needed to not just survive, but thrive,” they suggest. “Perhaps it is the jolt the industry needed to produce an offering that was universally economically attractive, regardless of what happens in Washington.” The pair lay out three scenarios for solar’s growth.

  • Residential solar reborn. Stein and Regulinski see ways to cut soft costs, such as marketing, permitting and lending costs, that add to solar project bills. The integration of “virtual power plants” can make it more profitable to sell power back to the grid at peak hours. Innovative models from companies such as San Francisco-based BrightSaver could let solar panels plug directly into a wall socket. Left unscathed in OBBB were tax credits for utility-scale batteries. The battery tax credit will remain in place until 2033, after which it will start to phase down. “That’s a long time with a big tax incentive for a mature technology to be deployed,” the authors say. As new demand for power strains the grid and pushes up electricity prices, even red states may soon champion solar energy. “Could the OBBB Make American Solar Great Again?” ask Stein and Regulinski. “It’s less crazy than it sounds.”
  •  Keep reading, “No tax credits, no problem,” by Carbon Collective’s Zach Stein and James Regulinski.

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

Don’t miss these upcoming ImpactAlpha partner events:

  • Sept. 1-2: Latimpacto’s Impact Minds (Medellín). Follow this link, select non-partner, and enter code PARTNERSHIP_IMPACTALPHA for $330 off.
  • Sept. 18: VentureESG’s FRAME 2025 (London)
  • Oct. 3: Swiss Impact Investment Association’s Impact Summit (Lausanne)

Julie Pulda, former senior impact investment manager at Ballentine Partners, joins The Artemis Fund as a principal… ESG Global Advisors adds Zachary de Jong, previously the climate strategy manager at Sun Life, as a director… Mary Chen, a 2025 Mosaic Fellow at Lime Rock New Energy, will join the firm full-time when she graduates from Harvard Business School… Michelle Arevalo-Carpenter of IMPAQTO Capital is selected as a 2025 Yale World Fellow. 

Align Impact welcomes Rodrigo Zozaya, previously with Princeville Capital, as an investment associate… Anthropic seeks a capital markets and corporate development lead in San Francisco… The New York Community Trust is recruiting a project director of digital innovation and strategic initiatives, and a program director for health and human services.

Social Finance is looking for an investor relations director for impact-first investments… Reinvestment Fund has an opening for a Philadelphia-based manager of research operations and policy solutions… The Coalition for Sustainable Development Through Sport is looking to build an investment pipeline for the Global Sport Impact Fund.

👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.

Thank you for your impact!

– Aug. 18, 2025