Sept 13 (Reuters) – Climate technology platform Patch said on Tuesday it had secured $55 million in funding to spur businesses to take climate action by making it easier to strike deals in the voluntary carbon market.
Patch’s Series B financing was led by US-based Energize Ventures and counts Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC among its new investors. The money will be used to hire more employees, expand into new markets and develop the technology.
“The carbon credit market is on track to reach $50 billion over the next 10 years, making it one of the largest and most important markets of our time,” said Tyler Lancaster, partner at Energize Ventures, in a statement.
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Removing carbon from the atmosphere is considered a key plank of global efforts to combat climate change, and many companies are seeking to finance emissions reductions as part of efforts to offset their emissions.
Still, demand is growing, but the market remains unregulated, and there are concerns about the quality of some of the credits being sold.
Lancaster, a member of Patch’s board of directors, said the current carbon credit infrastructure is too fragmented and unstandardized, making access difficult, but the group’s technology will help simplify and grow the market.
“Our infrastructure lowers the barrier to entry for businesses and developers of climate projects looking to enter the carbon market, which in turn, helps unlock the 20% climate change solution the world so desperately needs,” said Brennan Spellacy, Patch CEO and co-founder.
Emissions regulated by Europe’s carbon market rose 8.1% last year, excluding aviation, according to European Commission data analyzed in April by carbon analysts Refinitive, even though the bloc’s climate policies leave it on track to cut net planet-warming by 55% by 2030. From 1990 levels.
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Reporting by Juliet Portala, editing by Simon Jessop and Bernadette Baugh
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