Carbon dioxide has received much attention as an abundant, nontoxic and renewable C1 source. One of the promising areas is a coupling reaction of $CO_2$ and epoxides to produce industrially important commodity chemicals, polycarbonates and cyclic carbonates. Cyclic carbonates have potential applications in various indus-tries as the intermediate of organic synthesis, solvents of electrolyte and precursors for polycarbonates. In order to work with the effective and selective conversion of $CO_2$ to cyclic carbonate, we have designed a new type of a ligand scaffold that can accommodate a preorganized iron center. Specifically, we are developing a new catalyst based on understanding the relationship between the geometry of a metal center and the catalytic activity. We have synthesized a series of iron and aluminum complexes supported by tri-anionic tetradentate $C_s$ symmetric $NO_3^{3-}$ ligand (1a, $NO_3H_3$ = (E)-2,2'-(((2-hydroxybenzylidene)amino)methylene)diphenol) and its analogue sub-stituted with a nitro group $(5-NO_2)NO_3^{3-}$ (1b, $(5-NO_2)NO_3H_3$= (E)-2,2'-(((2-hydroxy-5-nitrobenzylidene)amino)methylene)diphenol) in order to accommodate pre-organized rigid structure for 6-coordinate species. A series of iron and aluminum complexes, ${(NO_3)Fe(THF)}_2 (Fe-1a), {(5-NO_2)NO_3}Fe}_2 (Fe-1b), {(NO_3)Al}_2 (Al-1a)$ and ${(5-NO_2)NO_3}Al (Al-1b)$ were fully characterized including X-ray crystallog-raphy. Solid state structures revealed the dimeric nature of Fe-1a, Fe-1b and Al-1a where the available binding sites for each metal center are occupied by bridging phenolate oxygen atoms, while Al-1b exhibits mononuclear 5-coordinate environment. The coupling reaction of $CO_2$ with propylene oxide (PO) was investigated using Fe-1a, Fe-1b, Al-1a and Al-1b as a catalyst. Among these complexes, Fe-1a exhibited highest catalytic activity for the selective synthesis of propylene carbonate. In order to achieve the high catalysis with Fe-1a, several varia-bles including pressure, temperature and co-catalyst/catalyst ratio were adjusted. Under the optimized reaction conditions, Fe-1a showed unusual $4,400 (h^{-1})$ TOF values toward propylene oxide.