Climate tech startup Pina Earth has just closed a $2.5 million funding round only one year after its foundation.
The seed round was led by venture capital fund XAnge and included backing from a number of business angels and VC firm Nordstar.
Pina Earth is creating a virtual platform that will allow forest owners in Europe to obtain certification and sell carbon credits.
The platform intends to have a particular focus on incentivizing forest owners to boost the biodiversity of their woodlands and securing the future of their forests.
This is especially critical now that climate change is causing more droughts and forest fires that have ramped up the risks to the survival of trees.
The Munich-based company hopes that more sustainable forestry practices can help woodlands withstand the climate crisis, and eventually mitigate it, while also allowing forest owners to profit by generating carbon credits.
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Pina Earth’s premise can essentially be broken down into two parts.
First off, the platform enables landowners to register their woodlands for carbon credits.
And then, it sells what can only be defined as an advanced technological forest management service that gives forest owners the opportunity to adapt their management techniques in a way that will generate them more carbon credits and will also benefit the planet.
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Pina Earth uses AI modeling to forecast that way the future growth of woodlands will be impacted by climate change and combines it with remote data capture that can confirm the improvements to forests of customers.
This in itself is highly significant as this type of close monitoring makes for meaningful and verifiable carbon offsets, as opposed to the low-quality offsets that have given such projects a bad name.
And while carbon offsetting is still the subject of much skepticism and criticism, efforts like those of Pina Earth are aimed at making sure tree-based offsetting can become a driver of positive change.
