On February 18, Prime Coalition and Rho Impact hosted a live webinar to mark the next chapter of the CRANE Tool: the launch of the CRANE Tier, a free tier hosted on Rho Impact’s AI-accelerated Koi platform.
The webinar featured a partnership update led by Anna Goldstein (Chief Program Officer, Prime Coalition) and Gilman Callsen (Founder, CEO & CTO, Rho Impact), a live CRANE Tier demo led by Amber Gold (Founder & Director of Products, Rho Impact), and a moderated panel discussion with three ecosystem experts on what practitioners most need from forward-looking GHG impact assessment tools.
Webinar Summary
CRANE’s Next Chapter: More Data & Improved Usability
CRANE was originally co-developed by Prime Coalition and Rho Impact in 2020 as an open-access way to calculate forward-looking GHG impacts for early-stage climate technologies—designed to be fast, standardized, and transparent.
Over time, the CRANE community has grown significantly, reaching 6,300+ users across 90+ countries, with thousands of models generated. This growth reinforced both the demand for credible, decision-ready impact estimates and the need for stronger data infrastructure behind them.
The CRANE Tier on Koi carries forward what worked in CRANE: free access to science-backed software that fills a critical resource gap in climate finance by enabling standardized, user-friendly GHG impact calculations.
Now, CRANE is even more powerful because it is paired with Koi’s expansive model library, AI-accelerated Data Lake, and other advanced features. During the webinar, Amber Gold walked attendees through the CRANE Tier on Koi, showing how to find a relevant starting model, review key metrics and assumptions, and adapt models for specific use cases.
Four Expert Insights for Emissions Impact Measurement
The webinar moved from how to model to what decision-makers actually need. The moderated discussion included insights by three guest speakers spanning the climate investing ecosystem:
Carol Moreno | Director, Investor Network, Ceres
Dennis Pamlin | Senior Advisor, Research Institute of Sweden (RISE)
Jessica Lajoie | Impact Investment Specialist, Alberta Ecotrust
key TAKEAWAYS:
1) Avoided emissions is about proactive investment, not just “tracking reductions.”
Dennis Pamlin framed avoided emissions—and tools like the CRANE Tier—as a way to guide proactive investment into new technologies. He emphasized that this is especially true in early-stage contexts that are currently building the “tomorrow” that will become normal in 10–20 years.
Climate investment decision-making should prioritize avoided emissions, because we can’t “reduce our way out of this,” said Pamlin, without scaling the solutions that will materially shift systems.
2) Standardization, auditability, and credibility are what make impact usable in investor workflows.
Carol Moreno, CFA emphasized that standardized methods and tools help investors screen for high-impact potential earlier, so diligence time goes where it matters most.
Transparent, auditable inputs also build credibility and confidence for decision-makers (including LPs), while reducing risk around impact claims.
3) The hardest gap remains: translating future impact into financial return signals.
Carol also named a challenge many investment teams feel: the market often has either financial upside or modeled impact, but not a consistent bridge between the two. There is a real appetite for ways to value future emissions impact without overstating certainty or encouraging over-claiming.
4) AI can accelerate the work, but only with transparency
Jessica Lajoie highlighted both the obvious win, such as fewer “mountains of data,” and a subtler one: AI can help practitioners understand complex solutions faster and surface questions they might otherwise miss during early screening.
At the same time, assumptions and context are non-negotiable, and credible impact practice requires both rigor and narrative:
“No numbers without stories, and no stories without numbers.”
Jessica Lajoie
Looking ahead, the discussion pointed to key priorities: wider adoption of a smaller set of trusted approaches to impact measurement, the importance of impact narratives, and connecting emissions metrics to real-world human outcomes. Ultimately, the goal isn’t more outputs, but clearer answers about what progress looks like and how investments improve lives across diverse, real-world contexts.
Get Involved
Sign up for the free CRANE Tier and explore Koi.
Review our FAQ page for key details about the transition from the current CRANE tool.
Explore Koi Documentation for getting started and more.
Reach out to us with questions or support requests at info@cranetool.org.
Disclaimer: CRANE's content should not be considered financial advice. Our work is intended for users to review and use their best judgment to accelerate GHG mitigation with transparency and accountability.