On Thursday, Seattle sustainability startup Nori announced that it raised a $4 million funding round from Placeholder, North Island Ventures, Tenacious Ventures and other investors.
Scientists are predicting that climate change could have disastrous effects in the immediate future, so everyone from government bodies to individuals are trying to take measurable steps to combat this catastrophe. This includes large corporations, which are often guilty of releasing large amounts of the greenhouse gases that accelerate climate change.
In response, many of these corporations — like Amazon — have made pledges to be “carbon neutral” or “carbon negative” by a specific date. But does that mean that Amazon is going to stop burning fossil fuels and releasing greenhouse gases all together? Not entirely. Instead, companies will likely reach this goal through carbon credits.
Carbon credits allow companies to pay for a service that offsets their carbon footprint. So if Amazon emits 51.17 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, its goal is to pay for services that take 51.17 million metric tons of CO2 out of the environment.
Nori was founded in 2017 to allow companies and individuals to buy these carbon credits through a blockchain-backed marketplace. On one end of the marketplace, there are farmers who are actively removing carbon from the atmosphere and putting it back into the soil through sustainable farming techniques. These farmers receive a blockchain token for every metric ton of CO2 removed, which can then be sold to companies or individuals. On the customer side, these tokens cost about $15 each, and Nori helps calculate how many you’d need to buy to offset your carbon footprint. Nori customers are also given a certificate to prove how much carbon has been removed.
“Nori’s mission is to reverse climate change. Climate change is caused by too much CO2 in the atmosphere, and farmers have the potential to store billions of tonnes of CO2 in their soil by using regenerative practices. Our marketplace creates significant financial incentives for them to adopt these practices and pull meaningful quantities of carbon dioxide out of the air,” CEO Paul Gambill said in a statement.
This new funding will help Nori launch its “industrial-grade” carbon credit marketplace. The capital will also be used to onboard more farmers to remove more carbon from the atmosphere, and to onboard more employees. Right now, the company is hiring for open roles on its product and supply teams.
Gambill spoke with Built In in January after Nori raised its $1.3 million pre-seed funding round. He stressed that Nori is doing important work, because emitting less carbon into the atmosphere won’t be enough to reverse climate change. We must also actively remove it.
“Even if tomorrow, everywhere around the world, we were able to immediately and magically turn off all sources of greenhouse gas emissions, there’s still far too much CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” Gambill said. “The only option is to emit less and remove the rest.”
