Yield Lab Europe leads funding for carbon footprint tracking start-up

12 Oct 2021

Image: © Swetlana Wall/Stock.adobe.com

The agritech investor has backed Dublin-headquartered start-up CarbonSpace in a €900,000 funding round.

Dublin-headquartered start-up CarbonSpace has raised €900,000 in a funding round led by The Yield Lab Europe and Rockstart as co-investor.

The start-up plans to use the funds to expand its operations in the EU and US. It already has offices in New York.

CarbonSpace was founded in 2020 with the aim of addressing carbon emissions from companies in the agriculture, forestry and other land use sectors. These companies can account for up to a quarter of global carbon emissions.

Its satellite-powered platform for carbon footprint monitoring provides these companies with global carbon footprint estimations. The platform also provides users with insights about their carbon footprint from land use, with the aim of making it easier to manage supply chains and create potential for nature-based carbon removal projects.

With the funding, the start-up wants to strengthen its technology offering by integrating new sources of data and optimising machine learning algorithms.

“Our immediate plan is to scale business development efforts in the food and forestry markets and help more customers quantify the carbon footprint of the farms, fields and forests within their supply chains,” said Oleg Demidov, CEO of CarbonSpace.

He added that the company’s platform could prove to be an “effective tool to guide public and corporate investment and to facilitate the global transition to net zero” carbon emissions.

Demidov also said he was pleased to have received funding from two “leading funds in the agrifood sector”.

David Bowles, general partner of Ireland-based The Yield Lab Europe, said the impact venture capital fund was excited to invest in CarbonSpace’s plan to “bring a new level of transparency” to carbon footprint monitoring.

“Their technology is set to create the global standard and make a real, measurable impact on carbon emissions,” added Bowles.

The Yield Lab Europe typically invests in early-stage European agrifood and agritech companies, and runs an accelerator for early-stage companies called The European Ag Tech Accelerator Fund. Earlier this year, it closed a €50m fund to back these companies.

Some of its investments in Ireland include bee health tech start-up ApisProtect, IT-Carlow spin-out MicroGen Biotech and Micron Agritech, which develops parasite testing kits for animals.

Last week, Swedish start-up Normative raised €10m in funding for its automation software to calculate the emissions of companies and provide insights on how to reduce their carbon footprints.

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Blathnaid O’Dea is Careers reporter at Silicon Republic

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