How Climate Asset Management leverages Maya’s Geospatial Copilot to accelerate the investment screening of nature-based carbon projects

Climate Asset Management, a joint venture of HSBC Asset Management and Pollination, is a leading natural capital asset manager. It invests in nature-based carbon projects, sustainable forestry, regenerative agriculture, and new forms of natural capital. Among other mandates, Climate Asset Management manages the Nature Based Carbon Fund, which is being supported by a number of investors from different regions and sectors as part of their net-zero strategies.

Its investment teams review hundreds of project investment opportunities every year.  They have built a data-driven screening process to gain rapid insights into project sites and to qualify opportunities, resulting in a more efficient and focused diligence process. 

“Being a large investor into nature-based solutions, we are testing different tools and approaches to improve our project due diligence. Maya has enabled our investment teams to perform the desk-based analysis of nature-based carbon projects rapidly. This means we can focus quicker on those opportunities in our pipeline with the greatest potential. Reports that previously would have taken days of manual research and analysis now come within minutes through Maya. And we have had a great experience with the client support provided.”

– Viviana Lujan Gallegos, Head of Nature Based Carbon Strategy at Climate Asset Management

‍The Challenge

As one of the leading natural capital asset managers, with over $1bn of assets under management, Climate Asset Management evaluates hundreds of project investment opportunities every year.

Before conducting site visits as part of their diligence process, their teams perform a desk-based analysis of the project site, which typically includes an assessment of land suitability and eligibility, baseline and carbon potential and climate risks.

Climate Asset Management swiftly prioritised the acceleration of initial project screening in order to process project proposals efficiently and restrict site visits to those opportunities with the greatest potential. 

The ideal solution would permit the investment managers to review sites independently without requiring engineering capacity, have access in one place to all the relevant data layers for their diligence checklist, and easily share and communicate the results of their analyses within the broader team. 

The Solution

Climate Asset Management has chosen to work with Maya because it is simple to use, can rapidly generate assessment reports, while the combination of geospatial outputs and AI-powered text generation contextualises the geospatial outputs.

Maya’s simplicity allows the investment team to perform their desk-based project qualification independently on an ad-hoc basis, using a variety of data layers from Maya’s Catalog.

All assessment reports are stored on Maya and are accessible to the entire globally distributed team, allowing for proper documentation and collaboration. 

The Impact

The ease of use and level of automation allows the team to perform more geospatial screenings for projects than before. What’s more, they can run the necessary geospatial checks in the early stages of the diligence process, ensuring data-driven filtering and prioritisation of their project pipeline.

Maya has reduced turnaround times significantly and enables Climate Asset Management to support developer discussions with good documentation that can clarify any questions raised about the analysis. 

Importantly, the efficiency gains and risk identification at initial screening means more time can be allocated to later stages of the diligence process of prioritised projects. This helps Climate Asset Management maintain its commitment to focus on financing carbon projects with the highest integrity.