London-based Isometric has raised $25 million in a seed round to develop its carbon removal and registry science platform. The financial round – which is one of the biggest for the climate software sector – was led by Lowercarbon Capital and Plural.
With the new funds, Isometric will hire additional scientists and engineers to further develop its public registry for verified high-quality long-duration carbon credits. This is the world’s first registry to only list high-quality, long-duration CO2 removal credits. With its platform, Isometric aims to de-emphasise avoidance-based CO2 offsets and instead focus on actionable CO2 removal.
Relevant: Biden-Harris Administration To Spend $3.7 Billion On Carbon Removal Technologies
“There are two non-negotiable challenges for the human race over the coming decades: first, decarbonise our economy; second, scale carbon removal,” said Eamon Jubbawy, founder and CEO at Isometric. His motivation to build Isometric was to add the “critical missing piece of infrastructure” needed to scale CO2 removal. Jubbawy previously co-founded Onfido, which is one of the biggest digital ID companies in Europe.
Khaled Helioui, who led the investment round at Plural, said that creating trust in the CO2 removal sector is key to allowing the much-needed climate investments.
Recently, the U.S. Government committed $3.7 billion for the development of the CO2 removal sector. At the same time, The UK Emissions Trading Scheme is set to undergo revisions that incorporate engineered carbon removal activities, pending consultation and the establishment of a rigorous MRV (monitoring, reporting, and verification) framework.
Read more: UK ETS Expanded To Include More Sectors, Carbon Removals Added To The Scheme
“De-emphasize avoidance” … why? Why not first avoid the emissions that you set out to remove later? Reducing the need to remove should be highest priority.
Removal starts to make sense once its cheaper to remove than to avoid. In sequence, we need to avoid as many emissions as possible, as soon as possible. And as as we move up the cost curve and converge with removal costs, capital will increasingly flow into removals automatically.
In the meantime, let’s please not have a narrative that prioritzes expensive and small scale removal at the cost of available avoidance measures.
We need both. But right now we need speed and scale.
I think the word “avoidance” in this case is aimed at carbon offsets, which have seen a lot of criticism recently. So it doesn’t seem to be excluding the “reduction” of emissions, which should of course be of the highest priority.