Voluntary carbon market rating platform BeZero Carbon has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round as the company announced on November 14th. Quantum Energy Partners – a US-based fund, led the round with follow-on investments from Molten Ventures, Norrsken VC, Illuminate Financial, Qima, and Contrarian Ventures.
The company, founded in 2020, also secured a strategic investment from EDF Group’s venture capital arm EDF Pulse Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). The investment is expected to help it open a new location in Singapore and expand its New York office.
Relevant: BeZero Report: 56% of CO2 Offsets By 2030 Will Be For Removal Technology
“Set to reach $50bn by 2030, the Voluntary Carbon Market will play a central role in the transition to Net Zero… BeZero Carbon has built the biggest rating agency in the market, with an incredible team of experts that are leaders in their fields,” said Jeffrey Harris, venture partner at Quantum Energy Partners.
BeZero provides a platform to its clients that rates carbon credits, assessing their quality. The ratings are free for people to access on BeZero’s website. However, paying clients can see fuller project assessments and risk tools to avoid purchasing lower quality offsets or such that fail to match up to the claims they were making.
BeZero’s API of ratings can be plugged into marketplaces and exchanges, where offsets are bought and sold. The company is working with carbon markets like Cloverly and Patch, and energy and commodity companies like Glencore and Equinor.
Relevant: BeZero Carbon And senken Partner To Host Ratings On The Carbon Credit Marketplace
According to BeZero there is a strong demand for infrastructure in the new green economy, including complex content-led platforms like carbon credit rating systems. So far the company has raised $74m in a bit more than twelve months’ time which is an acknowledgment of the scale BeZero needs to reach to become the category leader in the sector.
Scaling carbon removal is an enormous undertaking, so the industry needs tools and infrastructure to be able to deliver on its mission. Building information infrastructure in new categories like carbon credits, carbon footprint analysis, etc is not a one-industry or one-team task, therefore, companies across multiple industries need to work together to launch high-quality products that would truly serve the net zero economy.
