Virtus: Capability Is Capital
Welcome to the May edition of the Virtus newsletter!
This month, we follow the money – from record-breaking carbon pricing revenues to sovereign green bonds in Africa, and from a landmark reforestation close to one of the most innovative blended finance structures we’ve seen all year.
In Our Take, Sean Penrith continues the IFNF Field Notes series with Part 4: The Team You Build Determines the Capital You Raise which examines why team composition is the single most predictive factor in conservation finance success, and what happens when capability gaps go unaddressed.
In Untangling Climate Finance, Sean Penrith and Kerry Morrison join host Jay Tipton to unpack the First International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta. They break down what makes a national transition roadmap investable, how Article 6 must evolve, and why managed fossil decline deserves to be understood as a peace and stability asset class.
In What We’re Absorbing, we dig into the science of Nature Positive investing, track the government coalition building demand-side architecture for voluntary carbon markets, and sit with the sobering data on Europe as the world’s fastest-warming continent.
And in Climate Finance Deals, BTG Pactual closes the largest reforestation fund on record, the World Bank prices an elegantly structured outcome bond backed by Amazon, Kenya plans $772 million in agricultural green bonds, and global carbon pricing revenues hit $107 billion for the first time.
Gordian Knot Strategies
We are Igniting Climate Solutions: Mobilizing $1 Billion Per Year in Impact Investment by 2030!
Written by: Sean Penrith
Innovative Finance for National Forests (IFNF) Field Notes: A Seven-Part Series
This is the third installment of our Innovative Finance for National Forests (IFNF) Program Field Notes Series – a seven-part series examining the IFNF Program across five cohorts (2020–2025) through the lens of the TRARO readiness framework. From Problem definition through Payors verification, we explore why some projects mobilized capital and advanced toward implementation, while others encountered persistent barriers despite strong ecological intent.
The patterns are clear, consistent, and learnable: conservation finance succeeds when projects combine ecological merit with market readiness, verified buyer demand, and institutional capacity. A new installment appears in Virtus each month.
If your organization wants to strengthen its investment readiness or explore a free TRARO analysis, reach out to traro@gordianknotstrategies.com. The field has the capital and the urgency. What it has long lacked is a disciplined framework for matching opportunity to deployment. We remain committed to closing that gap.
Part 4: The Team You Build Determines the Capital You Raise
Why matching partner expertise to project complexity is non-negotiable in conservation finance.
Conservation finance transactions require a rare combination of skills. Teams must navigate ecological science, financial structuring, marketing and sales, legal frameworks, stakeholder negotiation, and public agency coordination simultaneously. Few organizations possess all of these capabilities in-house. Success depends on assembling partners whose expertise genuinely matches the complexity and needs of the proposed project.
Across the Innovative Finance for National Forests (IFNF) program, a clear pattern emerged. Projects led by teams with demonstrated experience in both conservation and financial structuring consistently outperformed those with capability gaps, even when the underlying concept was strong. The TRARO readiness screening framework captured this through the Partners element, which assessed whether teams possessed the appropriate technical, legal, financial, and operational expertise required for their specific model.
This piece explores why the right team composition predicts success, and what happens when expertise mismatches go unaddressed.
The Partners Question: Do You Have the Right Team?
The Partners element asks a straightforward but demanding question: Does your team have proven experience executing work of this type, scale, and complexity?
Many IFNF proposals named impressive organizations as partners. What separated high performers from those that struggled was whether those partners brought the exact capabilities the project needed, and whether the lead organization had prior experience managing complex, multi-party transactions.
To read the rest of this paper, click here.
Client Served in the United States:
We supported a U.S. and European collaborative effort that centered on the design of a carbon removal methodology for a new nature-based sector wishing to leverage the power of carbon finance to position a negative emissions technology. We established a Working Group that brought together a global team of field and technical experts. Over the course of a year, we facilitated meetings for the Working Group that addressed key issues pertinent to establishing a high-integrity carbon methodology with one of world’s the leading carbon standards in the world. Our work culminated in the draft of the concept note that was submitted to carbon standard for approval.
“Gordian Knot Strategies have been highly professional in their approach and a valuable partner to TransEnergy Global. As a new entrant to the sector, their support has been instrumental in strengthening our credibility and shaping our market positioning. Their decades of experience are evident in every engagement — from the depth of their insights to the quality of their strategic guidance. Beyond the core scope of work, their openness and willingness to support across multiple areas have created significant additional value for our business.”
Duncan Ward – Executive Director, TransEnergy Global
🎙️ In this episode, Sean Penrith (CEO) and Kerry Morrison (Director of Strategic Engagement) of Gordian Knot Strategies, join host Jay Tipton to unpack the First International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, held in Santa Marta, Colombia. Sean and Kerry break down why the conference marks a genuine shift in transition governance, what separates an investable national roadmap from an aspirational one, and how Article 6 and the voluntary carbon market must evolve to accelerate real-economy transition rather than prolong fossil dependency. They also explore why managed fossil decline should be understood as a peace and stability asset class, and how climate and nature finance are finally beginning to converge around place-based transition architecture.
Click any of the links below to listen!
This month we’re reading the science underpinning the biodiversity-finance nexus, tracking the institutional infrastructure being built to scale carbon markets, and taking stock of Europe’s accelerating climate reality. Click the bolded titles to access.
✍️ “Nature Positive: Halting And Reversing Biodiversity Loss Toward Restoring Earth System Stability” — Locke, Rockström et al., Frontiers in Science
A call for an urgent paradigm shift toward a “Nature Positive” future that halts and reverses biodiversity loss by 2030. The authors frame this explicitly as a financial issue – current incentives reward nature degradation, and redirecting that capital is central to the fix. For anyone working in natural capital or biodiversity finance, this is the intellectual framework the sector is converging around.
✍️ “The Coalition To Grow Carbon Markets — Programme Of Work” — Coalition to Grow Carbon Markets
Co-chaired by Kenya, Singapore, and the UK, the Coalition published its Programme of Work in May, laying out how member governments plan to build demand for high-integrity carbon credits. The core thesis: well-functioning carbon markets could unlock over $50 billion in debt-free climate finance annually by 2030, flowing to emerging markets. With 11 governments signed up and a policy playbook in development, this is the demand-side infrastructure the voluntary carbon market has been waiting for.
✍️ “2025 European State Of The Climate” — Copernicus Climate Change Service
ECMWF & WMO Europe warmed twice as fast as the global average over the past 30 years – the fastest of any continent. In 2025, wildfires hit record levels, European sea surface temperatures reached an all-time high for the fourth consecutive year, and river flow was below average in 70% of waterways. For climate finance practitioners, these are the physical conditions against which European assets are being priced right now.
May’s climate finance deals cover the full spectrum – record private capital for nature, sovereign green bonds from Africa, innovative World Bank structures, and a landmark signal from global carbon markets. Click the article header for the link.
BTG Pactual Reaches Final Close On $1.2Bn Reforestation Fund
The largest reforestation fund ever closed, drawing institutional capital from IFC, FMO, the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, Tokio Marine, and Vale. The strategy restores degraded land across 660,000 acres in Latin America and is structured to generate high-integrity carbon removal credits, the first of which were issued under Verra’s new ARR methodology in April.
World Bank Prices 14-Year Spekboom Restoration Outcome Bond In South Africa
A $120 million outcome bond to finance 50,000 hectares of spekboom restoration in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. Principal is protected by the World Bank’s AAA rating; investors accept a below-market coupon with the difference going directly to the project operator; variable upside is linked to carbon removal units purchased by Amazon under a long-term offtake. One of the more elegant blended finance structures to come to market this year.
Spanish startup Hydnum Steel received €60 million in EU Next Generation grants to build southern Europe’s first green steel plant. It has already secured 75% of initial production via offtake agreements and is recognised by the WEF as one of the top five global industrial decarbonisation projects. Green steel financing remains one of the harder nuts to crack, and this is a meaningful step.
Swedish Utility Raises $80 Million In Latest Green Bond Issuance
Stockholm Exergi, the Swedish BECCS developer with offtake agreements already in place with Microsoft and others, raised another $80 million in green bonds to finance its carbon capture infrastructure. A quiet but important data point in the permanent CDR financing story.
Global Carbon Emissions Pricing Raised Record $107 Billion In 2025
The World Bank’s 2026 carbon pricing report confirmed $107 billion raised globally last year – up 2% on 2024 – with nearly 30% of global emissions now covered across 87 policies. Revenues have held above $100 billion every year since 2021. Carbon pricing is no longer a niche policy experiment; it’s a durable fiscal instrument.
Kenya Plans $772 Million Green Bonds To Boost Agriculture Output
Kenya’s National Treasury plans to issue $772 million in green bonds by end of 2027, targeting solar-powered cold chains, regenerative farming, and parametric insurance. Bonds will carry below-market rates of 4–6%, backed by carbon credit revenues. One of the most ambitious climate-linked sovereign issuances seen on the African continent.
At Gordian Knot Strategies, our goal is to help mobilize $1 billion per year in climate finance. That is why we’re committed to making climate finance smarter and faster by addressing a broken impact investing screening process.
That’s why we built TRARO®, a predictive analytics platform designed to help investors rapidly triage opportunities with clarity, consistency, and confidence.
Have a climate project? Submit it to TRARO® for a free screening and based on assessment outcomes, we can match you with interested impact investors. You can also explore real-world case studies to see how TRARO® supports smarter investment decisions, and you can find more information and how to create an account on TRARO® here.
Are you an impact investor or funder? Get in touch with the TRARO® team at traro@gordianknotstrategies.com to access scorecards from high scoring projects, or run targeted RFPs through TRARO® to streamline your process, save time, and reduce review costs.
We are building a global database of impact investors to help mobilize $1 billion annually in climate finance by 2030. If your organization is interested in providing funding for climate or environmental projects, we invite you to fill out our Impact Investor Information Form. Your contact details will remain confidential, and we’ll only connect you with aligned opportunities. There is no fee to participate.
To access the form click here.
Interested in connecting with us on climate finance, impact investment, climate solutions strategy, or carbon credit development and commercialization?
To discuss how we can support your goals, book a 30-minute conversation with Gordian Knot Strategies here.
Disclaimer: Hi there, you are receiving this update from Gordian Knot Strategies based on your previous engagement with us in some capacity. If you wish to unsubscribe, please use the link below, and we promise you that your contact details will be permanently removed from our distribution list. Thanks!
Want to unsubscribe?
Click here.
Want to receive this newsletter?
Click here.
If you want to see more of our content, check out our weekly dispatch, Sliced.
Click here.
