LOS ANGELES, March 28, 2022 - The Data Economics Company (DECO) and Gordian Knot Strategies (GKS), a consultancy focused on climate finance, impact funds, and carbon markets, announce their partnership in a new collaboration to use DECO’s Lydion Engine software to build a climate and sustainability finance and investment management platform for businesses.
Sean Penrith, CEO of Gordian Knot Strategies, said: “While we are successful at helping our clients mobilize their capital to achieve meaningful climate investment objectives, it’s too slow. We need $3 to $5 trillion annually by 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C. That demands active management and decision support tools. Decentralized digital platforms such as ours will vastly incentivize and accelerate new capital into the climate solutions space.”
The climate finance platform will enable the creation and management of climate and sustainability investment portfolios for businesses, including several Fortune 100 companies that have been long-term clients of Gordian Knot Strategies. The new platform will enable Gordian Knot to scale its market-leading climate and sustainability investment solutions to offer innovative new products based on dynamic analysis of distributed data sources and the development of a Lydion-powered knowledge model that can enable climate investment portfolio managers to have visibility into thousands of complex market, policy, and environmental signals, and to leverage predictive analytics to support real-time decision making.
Arka Ray, Managing Director of DECO, said: “After the success of the Miraculum Distributed Contracting Platform—built using the Lydion Engine—in the health care sector, our team at DECO was interested in exploring how Lydion-basded products could have a meaningful impact in the Climate, Sustainability, and ESG sector. With the Lydion DENET-powered climate finance platform that we are developing in partnership with Gordian Knot Strategies, under Sean’s expert guidance, we have found not only an ideal use case for the Lydion Engine, but also an application of the decentralized philosophies underlying Web3 and an example of how this technology can address one of the most critical problems facing current and future generations—reaching net zero as soon as possible.”
In light of the IPCC report issued in Feb 2022—which warned of the dire consequences of inaction to climate change by global leadership—this partnership will support efforts to address the impact of climate change by improving the offerings of climate solutions focused companies and organizations, as well as by growing the impact investment pipeline. According to Fortune; “Research estimates a cumulative spending of $275 trillion globally over the next 30 years on physical assets in energy and land-use will be required to reach net zero.” This spending level represents an annual average of $9.2 trillion, about $3.5 trillion more dollars than present day levels. Leveraging decentralized technologies to improve data metrics and transparency of information, and to create data economies that facilitate the transaction of impactful data assets, will contribute to the increase in spending required to achieve net zero. Along with trending attention towards climate and sustainability at the global level, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced last week that publicly-traded companies will need to report business risk related to climate change in their financial statements, further elevating the issue in the eyes of business leaders.
The partnership with GKS is DECO’s latest to support climate action. Other sustainability and climate related collaborations using the Lydion Engine include Smallholder Data Services, which supports agricultural traceability for small farms globally, and a platform enabling traceability and financial incentives for metal recycling.
About DECO and the Lydion Engine
The Data Economics Company’s mission is to pioneer and propagate the field of Data Economics by leading theoretical science and research; developing the mathematical, economic, and software frameworks and toolsets to power implementation; and continuing to advance commercialization of the Lydion DEOS (Data Economic Operating System) Engine. The Lydion DEOS Engine, as the operating system for Web3 applications, enables companies and individuals to convert their data into valuable digital assets that can be utilized, shared, and transacted in secure, private data vaults and data economic networks. DECO fosters a global ecosystem of partners, customers, and scientific collaborators to accelerate the field of Data Economics and the impact of this science on the “big problems” and important challenges our communities, societies, and industries face. More information about DECO and the Lydion DEOS can be found at https://deco.lydion.com/.
About Gordian Knot Strategies
Based in Portland, OR, the scope of GKS’s work is global, and thematically focuses on climate solutions that include forest conservation and restoration, grassland conservation, regenerative agriculture, mineralization, carbon capture and sequestration, marine permaculture, and dairy digesters. GKS is led by Sean Penrith, a global business development executive with 20 years’ experience building companies and organizations in the climate and sustainability sector. Previously CEO at Climate Trust Capital and Executive Director of The Climate Trust, Sean has positioned GKS as an advisor to government agencies, NGOs, multi-national corporations, TIMOs, startups, endowments, foundations, and family offices. The team has provided advisory and analysis support on climate finance mechanisms, portfolio design, and impact program strategies focused on climate solutions. Clients include Engie Impact, American Forest Foundation, Delta Air Lines, American Forests, South Pole, and US Endowment for Forestry and Communities.