Evergrow has raised a $7M seed round. As one of the world’s first carbon offtake company, Evergrow’s goal is to provide offtake contracts and financing for projects that avoid, capture, or remove carbon emissions.
This seed round, which was co-led by Rodd Fubini at XYZ and Abe Yokell Congruent, will only strengthen Evergrow’s mission as they look to reach their goal of permanently avoiding or removing 1 billion tons of carbon by 2030. They hope to scale to 1 billion tons per year shortly after that.
According to Evergrow’s Co-Founder and CEO, James Richards, “It’s no secret that we urgently need to decarbonize our economy and remove tens of billions of tons of carbon emissions from the atmosphere to combat and reverse climate change.
This will require the deployment of trillions of dollars worth of new infrastructure projects, from clean power plants to alternative fuel refineries to direct air capture facilities and more. The faster we build these projects, the better we will fare in our fight against climate change.”
Many critics feel that the carbon market needs improvement since the lack of standards misrepresents credit quality. Though these concerns are valid, the industry is changing (and for the better).
The carbon market is becoming far more transparent than it has ever been. Plus, there have been talks of enacting a global standard for verifications for quite some time.
Evergrow plans to use their technology, data, and finance to deliver high-quality offtake contracts for carbon commodities. This way, they can pay people to reduce and remove carbon emissions while monetizing their carbon commodities. Richards hopes this will unlock additional financing for carbon reduction and help transition the globe into carbon neutrality.
The round included funds from First Round Capital, Garuda Ventures, Skyview Ventures, My Climate Journey, Zach Perrett (CEO, Plaid), Max Mullen (Co-founder, Instacart), Justin Kan (Co-founder, Twitch), Peter Reinhardt (CEO, Charm Industrial), Maddie Hall (CEO, Living Carbon), Michael Tanenbaum (CFO, Brex), Erica Dorfman (SVP Capital Markets, Brex), Karen Karniol-Tambour (Co-CIO for Sustainability, Bridgewater Associates), and others.
The voluntary carbon market is expected to be valued at $100 billion by 2030 – up from $300 million in 2018.
Richards went on to say that Evergrow is “assembling the world’s best team in climate technology and finance. The climate crisis is an existential threat to all of us, and we’re betting on humanity to win.”