The opportunity for deeper CIO-CSO collaboration

Most sustainability executives are well accustomed to fighting for budget. Perhaps fewer have thought to use the money that's already there. That was the provocation at the center of a recent Terras Member call with Neha Manaktala, Global Head of Climate Tech Innovation & Investments at J.P. Morgan, Scott William Ryan, Founder and CEO of Investature, and moderator Robert H. Edwards Jr., GCB.D, Managing Director at Hamilton Clark Sustainable Capital.
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The collaboration gap between sustainability and investment leadership is rarely about values. It's about language. And the balance sheet is where that gap shows up most clearly.
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Every organization carries a balance sheet. On it: long-term investments in pensions, foundations, endowments, and treasury. For large multinationals, that can mean billions, sometimes trillions of dollars. Without intentional management, the majority of it becomes "zombie money"; still invested, still earning, but actively working against the organization's stated values. As one participant noted, roughly 20% typically sit in oil and gas or heavy industry. That's not a small operational footprint to offset. It's a structural anchor pulling against every initiative the sustainability team is trying to run.
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The traditional levers, greening operations, pressuring supply chains, and borrowing capital for building retrofits are real. But they operate on the P&L. The balance sheet is a different instrument entirely, and it's largely untouched.
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Fixed income is where impact actually happens

There's a persistent mismatch between where sustainability attention goes and where impact actually lands. Moving money between public equities feels meaningful, but that transaction has a negligible climate impact. No capital reaches the underlying business.
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The fixed income markets are different. A bond is a loan. Moving capital from a bond financing a polluting industry to one financing clean energy is financing, not signaling. The evidence consistently points to fixed income and then private markets as the areas where impact per dollar is greatest. The financial return differential is minor, particularly for long-horizon investors.
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Local green bonds, blue bonds, and transition bonds (instruments tied to the communities where an organization operates) offer financial return alongside reduced operational risk. A company running data centers faces localized water and energy pressure. Investing treasury in bonds that address those infrastructure pressures isn't charity. It's coherent risk management.
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Twenty years of ESG data is finally paying off

ESG as a marketing vehicle is finished. As an analytical framework for investment professionals, it remains sound.
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The 'E' has generated two decades of increasingly structured data, now good enough to feed AI optimization models and make environmental impact measurable alongside financial return. Climate tech as an asset class has moved from roughly 2% of global private markets to around 12%. The current cycle has been turbulent, but the underlying thesis hasn't changed. Significant dry powder remains, and the companies that attract it will be the ones that can demonstrate a clear path from innovation to commercial scale.
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The CSO who speaks finance wins
‍The sustainability executives gaining real influence have learned to operate inside the logic of financial decision-making: return expectations, IRR benchmarks, and portfolio construction, rather than asking to be accommodated alongside it.
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One example raised in discussion illustrates this well: a vast real estate portfolio generating genuine ROI from sustainability-led asset optimization. Unused land monetized through battery storage. Warehouses evaluated for solar positioning. Resilience scenarios stress-tested asset by asset. The sustainability insight isn't the soft layer on top of the investment thesis. It is the investment thesis.
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But the analysis alone is not enough. As one participant put it, a compelling case that stays in someone's inbox is not a lever for anything. The CSOs making progress are the ones who know how to get in front of the right decision-maker with the right framing at the right time.
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Water is the next conversation

Energy transition has dominated the climate investment narrative. The data center buildout is quietly making water the next one. AI infrastructure is a localized water risk at scale, and the cities absorbing the most capacity are already under supply pressure. Capital is starting to move. The organizations mapping water risk to their operations and investment portfolios now will be the ones setting the terms in five years, not reacting to them.
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What members are asking

The most pointed question from the group was around governance: when a sustainability team identifies a clear misalignment between the balance sheet and the company's public commitments, who owns the decision to fix it? The answer in most organizations remains unclear. That ambiguity is where the opportunity sits for CSOs willing to step into the conversation.
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Looking ahead

These conversations happen year-round through Terras membership, and in person at Terras Tuscany in June.