Capital, Data, and Technology Drive the Conversation at Trellis Impact 2025
At this year’s Trellis Impact 2025 gathering in San Jose, leaders explored how to deploy capital, data, and technology to advance the clean energy economy. Corporate leaders and investors are sharpening their focus on practical, cost-effective sustainability solutions.
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Held October 28 – 30 in San Jose, California, Trellis Impact 2025 brought together three of Trellis’ core convenings, GreenFin, VERGE, and Bloom. Across the board, RMIers identified three connective threads among speakers and participants: finance, data, and transportation.
Finance
Leaders from RMI’s finance team joined peers from across different industries to discuss how the investment landscape is evolving. They found that m, corporate leaders and investors are increasingly focused on proven technologies, transparent data, and credible risk-sharing frameworks. Rather than emphasizing public campaigns and commitments, many are shifting toward delivery-focused projects and practical tools that make clean energy solutions affordable, resilient, and scalable.
RMI’s Nabil Bennouna spoke on a panel focused on exploring finance as a catalyst for corporate climate action, emphasizing that “it’s time to shift the focus from subsidies to risk management.”
“By finding creative ways to pool balance sheets and share risks, we can unlock bold investments that make entering new markets far less daunting,” Bennouna said.
RMI is putting this principle into practice in our climate finance work by building tools, guiding strategies, and connecting capital to real projects around the world.
Datacenters & AI
Discussions around AI and data centers also took center stage at Trellis Impact 2025, appearing in nearly every break-out discussion. The explosion of AI-driven tools is reshaping how companies plan, report, and execute sustainability strategies, and the opportunity is immense.
According to RMI’s John McGrath, “It was heartening to see AI conversations move beyond hype and become more pragmatic. Common themes were the need for quality data; the promises and pitfalls of technology that’s both powerful and opaque; and to what degree AI and data centers will drive load growth as improvements in AI efficiency compete with exploding usage.”
RMI is exploring AI’s role in the clean energy transition through research on data center power and energy solutions (read our most recent article ) and by building data-driven tools to advance sustainable solutions.
Transportation
Transportation solutions and innovations featured prominently in the Trellis Impact 2025 program as well.
Andrew Chen, a Principal on RMI’s Climate-Aligned Industries team, outlined how leading corporations are investing in Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) certificates, and discussed how next-generation aircraft technologies and contrail management can help cut aviation’s full climate impact.
Chen also highlighted how the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance — spearheaded by RMI, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and Neoteric Energy and Climate — is building momentum for aviation climate solutions by launching a ready-to-go offering to help all attendees of COP30 address their aviation emissions.
“Purchasing SAF certificates is a tangible way to back low-carbon innovation in aviation and showcase meaningful climate leadership,” said Chen. “Forums like Trellis Impact are powerful platforms to raise visibility for these market-based tools, and we are really excited to have a growing portfolio of procurement options for corporations to play their part in aviation’s net-zero future.”
Across private conversations, keynotes, and breakout sessions, corporate leaders showed strong interest and momentum around overcoming barriers to drive progress. By the week’s end, one theme stood out from the rest: companies are deploying capital, technology, and data-driven tools morecreatively — and more cautiously —, to advance sustainable solutions while still seeking positive investment returns in parallel. Many are now focused on turning sustainability ambitions into execution, building market-based, data-backed, and technology-driven strategies that align climate goals with business performance.
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