Making Climate Impact Verifiable: Building the Infrastructure for Trust at Scale with Svenja Telle
Svenja Telle
This week, the TTI Interview Series covers our member Svenja Telle. Svenja is the CEO and Co-Founder of Denominator Collective, a Singapore-based climate-tech company building sovereign AI and digital-ledger infrastructure for verifiable hydrogen and ammonia certification. She previously worked with UN DESA during Paris Agreement negotiations, helped develop first-generation carbon removal technologies, and established PitchBook’s climate-tech vertical widely used by impact investors. A member of the U.S. DOE Research Experience for Carbon Sequestration faculty, she also advises the UN Climate Technology Centre, NREL’s certification initiative, and co-chairs the Climate Action Data Trust.
“Trillions will flow into climate solutions this decade, but without trusted data, none of it scales. Climate impact only matters when it is measurable, comparable, and believed.”
Svenja, tell us about how your work intersects with the impact space.
The story behind my company, Denominator, is one of years of seeing a quiet but massive problem: companies building the world’s clean energy future often can’t prove the impact of what they’re doing. Not because the impact isn’t real, but because the data behind it is scattered, messy, or impossible to verify in a way regulators and buyers will accept. That gap creates real consequences. Delayed and stalled projects, lost financing, and entire regions shut out of emerging green markets simply because they cannot “show their work.”
Denominator exists to fix this. We build the digital infrastructure that turns real industrial activity into trusted climate proof: clear, verified measurements that companies can use to sell clean products, attract capital, insure assets and meet fast-tightening global climate rules.
But at its core, this is a mission about fairness and acceleration. The energy transition only works if producers everywhere — not just the ones with perfect data systems — can participate. By making climate truth easy to measure and easy to trust, we’re helping unlock billions in investment and enabling cleaner fuels, chemicals, and materials to reach global markets. What motivates me as a founder is the belief that climate impact shouldn’t depend on paperwork sophistication. It should depend on what you actually do in the real world. Denominator is building the bridge between the two — so that credible climate performance becomes an advantage, not an administrative burden.
Our goal is simple: make trust in climate data a catalyst for growth, not a barrier.
What is your own definition of impact?
Impact, to me, means turning intention into something measurable and lasting. It’s the shift from “we want to do better” to “here is the proof that we are.” Real impact changes behavior, unlocks opportunity, and leaves systems fairer and more accountable than we found them.
Svenja, what do you see as the most important issue to address in the next 10 years?
One of the most important issues we need to solve in the next 10 years is the credibility gap in climate action.
We are entering a decade where trillions will be spent on clean energy, new materials, carbon removal, and industrial decarbonization. Yet none of it matters if we cannot trust the data behind it. Today, much of the world’s climate progress is slowed not by technology, but by uncertainty: inconsistent measurements, unverifiable claims, and systems that make it difficult to know what is actually working. If we don’t fix this, we will misallocate capital, stall promising projects, and leave entire regions out of the transition.
Over the next decade, we must build the infrastructure that makes climate truth measurable, comparable, and universally trusted. When impact becomes verifiable and not just aspirational that's how we unlock scale. This, to me, is one of the defining challenges of our time.
What is the greatest challenge you face to scale your impact?
A major challenge in our sector is the mismatch between ambition and execution capacity. We have global targets, strong investor interest, and promising technologies — but the on-the-ground processes for permitting, procurement, data sharing, and cross-border coordination still move slowly. Many climate solutions stall not because they’re technologically hard, but because the systems around them weren’t built for speed or collaboration. Unlocking faster pathways between developers, regulators, certifiers, and buyers would accelerate impact dramatically.
“Impact is not ambition or storytelling. It is accountability: the ability to prove, with evidence, that what you did in the real world actually changed something.”
Svenja, what is your long-term vision and how do you measure & quantify your impact?
My long-term vision is to make climate truth measurable, transferable, and impossible to ignore. I want to build the underlying infrastructure that allows every industrial product — hydrogen, ammonia, metals, fuels — to carry a verified, trusted carbon identity across borders. When climate performance becomes as standardized as financial reporting, markets can finally reward the companies actually reducing emissions, not just the ones telling the best story.
What are some misconceptions you’ve noticed regarding what “impact” is all about?
Through my work, one misconception I see often is that “impact” is something abstract or reserved for big policy wins. In reality, impact is usually built through the unglamorous, behind-the-scenes systems that make good decisions possible. Another misconception is that impact equals purely on storytelling — when in practice, it depends on measurement, integrity, and follow-through. Many organisations believe they’re doing impactful work, yet lack the data to prove it or the infrastructure to scale it. What I’ve learned is that true impact isn’t the ambition, it’s the accountability: the ability to show, with evidence, that your actions created real change. Impact becomes meaningful when it is verifiable, repeatable, and accessible to more than just the most resourced players.
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