Climate tech firm Patch nets $55 million to streamline carbon-offset transactions

Sept 13 (Reuters) – Climate technology platform Patch said on Tuesday it had raised $55 million in its latest funding round as it looks to spur businesses to take climate action by making it easier to strike deals in the voluntary carbon market.

Patch’s Series B financing was led by US-based Energize Ventures and counts Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC among its new investors. The money will be used to hire more staff, expand into new markets and develop its technology.

“The market for carbon credits is on a trajectory to reach $50 billion in the next 10 years, making it one of the largest and most prominent markets of our time,” Energize Ventures Partner Tyler Lancaster said in a statement.

Removing carbon from the atmosphere is seen as a key plank of global efforts to fight climate change, and many companies are looking to help fund the extraction as part of efforts to offset their emissions.

Still, the market remains unregulated despite growing demand, and there are concerns over the quality of some of the credits being sold.

Lancaster, who is joining Patch’s board of directors, said that while the current carbon credit infrastructure was highly fragmented and lacked standardization, making it difficult to access, the group’s technology would help simplify and scale up the market.

“Our infrastructure lowers the barrier to entry for both businesses and climate project developers looking to enter the carbon market which, in turn, could help unlock 20% of the climate change solution the world so desperately needs,” Patch’s Chief Executive Officer and Co- Founder Brennan Spellacy said.

Emissions regulated under Europe’s carbon market grew 8.1% last year, excluding aviation, according to preliminary European Commission data examined in April by Refinitiv carbon analysts, although the bloc’s climate policies leave it on track to slash net planet-warming emissions by 55% by 2030 , from 1990 levels.

Reporting by Juliette Portala, editing by Simon Jessop and Bernadette Baum

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.