Sustainable Finance.Live 2025: The anatomy of a value chain

Moderated by Richard Peers, founder at ResponsibleRisk, the showcase featured short keynotes from Cain Blythe, founder & CEO at CreditNature; Emma Maltby, technical director at Arcadis; Eoin Murray, chief investment officer at Rebalance Earth; Frank D'Agnese, president, CTO and co-founder at Earth Knowledge; Henry Albrecht, CEO at TransparenC; and Sam Longman, head of sustainability and corporate environment at Transport for London (TfL).

Peers began by outlining the five key stages of a large infrastructure project value chain:

1. Preparation and consultation
2. Application
3. Design
4. Financing
5. Collaboration
6. Examination

Preparation
Kicking off the showcase, TfL’s Longman examined the first stage of the value chain. Longman emphasised that primary case-making happens pre-application, and emphasised the importance of understanding the existing costs as well as the benefits of a proposed project. He gave an example to highlight this in practice: A year-long research project for TfL produced quantified data on the underlying relationship between ambient air temperature and the performance of the London Underground network. “And that was really powerful, because asset managers care about their bottom line,” he commented.

Longman then explained TfL’s four pillar approach to large infrastructure projects:

1. Leverage existing systems to track how weather affects performance metrics.
2. Use climate risk assessments to project future impacts.
3. Identify and track adaptation-related spend.
4. Evaluate the effectiveness of adaptation measures.

Consultation
Next up, D'Agnese examined the consultation phase of the value chain by talking about a study that Earth Knowledge conducted as part of a public-private partnership, looking specifically at the Western United States and focusing predominantly on issues of water resilience.

“The variability and volatility of water supply will affect the reliability and operational flexibility of these hard infrastructure projects that are nearing 100 to 150 years old. We’re now talking about retrofitting measures to make these facilities much more resilient in the future,” D'Agnese explained.

In order to do this, he continued, they compare historical conditions in the three largest western rivers (the Columbia river, the Sacramento river and the Colorado river), and projected how these conditions would behave by the end of the century. Earth Knowledge achieves this by running a global digital twin of the Earth’s surface — a seamless grid of model cells, where each cell simulates all earth systems within it. Each cell evolves based on internal conditions and the physical feedbacks it receives from neighbouring cells — runoff, recharge, evapotranspiration, land use change and more. They found that, while the Colorado river output is projected to shrink, the outputs of the Sacramento and Columbia rivers are expected to increase over the next 75 years.

This information helps showcase the impact on various resource management activities, supports the development of nature-based climate change mitigation solutions for identified risk areas, and helps to identify management strategies to retain water in the river basin.

Design
Next up, Maltby and Blythe spoke about two projects in the design phase.
Maltby emphasised the importance of integrating sustainability across the value chain by introducing the Junction 10 project of the M5. “It’s an improvement scheme that will upgrade the current junction to allow improved access to the west and northwest of Cheltenham. We’re doing this to accommodate planned housing as well as economic growth,” she began.

She explained how sustainability was embedded from the outset in the design process: from workshops across the whole supply chain to understand the needs of the community, as well as the issues of similar projects.

So what does integration across the value chain mean? Maltby outlined four key areas of impact:

1. 25% carbon reduction: Achieved through engineering optimisation across earthworks, drainage, civils, retaining walls, and paving.
2. £10 million cost saving: Value engineering aligned carbon reduction with programme efficiency and buildability.
3. Enhanced flood resilience & biodiversity: 37 culverts replaced with an open flood box, meandering river realignment, and a narrowed drainage ditch (7m to 3m) to create a green corridor.
4. 30% of design budget delivering social value: Tracked through the National TOMS framework - supporting local employment, skills, and community initiatives.

Next, Blythe outlined CreditNature’s platform. “We've got a huge goal,” he explained. “We want to rewild half the planet by 2050. What this means is that we want to be able to attract investment into projects that have the ambition to recover ecosystems at scale in a measurable way. Moving away from this scene we so often see in the UK and overseas, where we have degraded landscapes uniformly lime green or brown in colour, with very little life in them. They're effectively green deserts.”

The CreditNature platform is an end-to-end system which creates an accredited measurement methodology so that landowners, communities, and project developers can design restoration projects. This includes an Ecosystem Condition Index, which helps track progress and helps developers report on results and achievements. Crucially, it’s the first and only independently accredited ecosystem condition index in the world.

Financing
The next stage of the infrastructure value chain is Financing. As a nature capital fund manager, Murray outlined their four returns framework:

1. Financial returns: How much return will be generated? Who will pay for this, and how much are they willing to pay? What’s the most appropriate type of finance?
2. Nature outcomes: See flood and drought risk reduction, water quality improvement, biodiversity increase, and carbon sequestration.
3. Social impact: See job creation, equitable access to nature, community capacity and skill building, community resilience and social connection.
4. Inspirational return: Ensure replicability, operate at a sufficient level to make a real difference.

Murray highlighted three different project types they get involved with: parter-led opportunities, customer-led projects, and catchment-led projects. “Let me give you a general picture of what we’re trying to achieve,” he concluded. “Over time, we hope that we will generate that full landscape or seascape recover. But none of that is going to happen without covering the necessary data to provide us the incentive.”

Collaboration and examination
On the topic of data, Peers explained that the exchange of data across the community is one of the big challenges. He highlighted one of the possible solutions to this as a large infrastructure project data hub or marketplace.

“With the advent of cloud, mobile phones and artificial intelligence, there are many differentiated systems out there which can break that wall and allow for innovation,” he expanded. “What we need is something that brings all of the old and the new together, a system of reference that allows data to be surfaced safely and securely to a marketplace or data hub, where it can be used across this kind of [sustainable] supply chain.”

Finally, Albrecht showcased TransparenC. He argued that, today, people consume data in different ways, identifying four key personas:

1. The visual scanner: Prefers visuals and short summaries for quick decisions.
2. The insight assembler: Collects data from diverse sources to draw conclusions.
3. The multi-source juggler: Consumes data from multiple sources and formats.
4. The tool thinker: Uses AI assistants to support decision-making.

On top of these different personas, scattered data further inhibits effective consumption of data, which can lead to constrained understanding, reduced trust, and limited engagement. In order to combat this, TransparanC offers varying information hierarchies to address these key challenges and personas, enabling users to better consume and understand data on carbon markets, climate risk, construction, and industrial goods.

Panel Discussion: Dissecting the showcase

After the showcase, a panel session moderated by Emma Maltby, technical director at Arcadis, examined the key steps of the value chain. The panel consisted of Cole Dittmar, climate change officer at Southwark Borough Council; Sam Longman, head of sustainability and corporate environment at Transport for London; Stewart Mounsey, deputy director, Operations Catchment Services at Environment Agency; and Tom Harris, partner - Sustainable Business Solutions at Deloitte.

Speaking on how to integrate sustainability into the business case, Mounsey began by explaining the short-term on long-term considerations. “The short-term answer is about being really clear about the benefits of [for example] flood schemes. The long-term aspects are about [highlighting the cost] of the do-nothing or do-minimal options. We need to look much further about what investment can be put in the ground or in the catchments today to deliver future resilience.”

Longman additionally highlighted the importance of addressing sustainability as a safety concern: “Certainly safety is a number one priority in any meeting. If you say ‘I think it’s a safety issue’ — even if you don’t know the answer — people will sit up and listen. That’s the journey we need to go on for sustainability.”

Harris explained that he’s observed a “shift from the reporting on impact towards [recognising] the inherent value of these investments. How do we measure and calculate it? How do you build resilience into the system? For example, at Deloitte, we’ve done a global analysis looking at infrastructure resilience. We modelled that, by 2050, potentially up to $240 million is at risk.”

Dittmar echoed the importance of articulating climate risk and understanding what it means for high-level strategies. At Southwark Borough Council, “we try to articulate those benefits in terms of the priority expenses for our housing department. Building safety is key, but equally, we have constrained budget and require a systemic approach. Having the balance between high-level outputs versus deep analysis which supports design is really important.”

The panel agreed on the need for more robust data and data sharing (both within the industry and within organisations), as well as the importance of incentivising nature-based solutions.