Isometric is a company that has transparently surfaced previously unseen carbon removal activity data from companies across different pathways, including bio-oil sequestration company Charm Industrial, enhanced rock weathering company Eion, ocean alkalinity enhancement company Planetary, and microalgae burial company Brilliant Planet.
And the company also announced recently that it had raised a $25 million seed round led by Lowercarbon Capital and Plural. The company will use the funding to hire more scientists and engineers to continue building out its public registry for verified credits—the first carbon registry to list only high-quality, long-duration carbon removal credits.
Carbon registries are the institutions that issue carbon credits and are responsible for confirming whether the credits truly represent the climate impact being claimed. But the four significant registries—Verra, Gold Standard, American Carbon Registry, and Climate Action Reserve—have come under fire recently. In June, the CEO of Verra, the largest global registry, resigned under pressure from critics.
The traditional carbon offsetting market—overseen by the four significant registries—is dominated by avoidance-based offsets with a lack of verifiable impact. The market has historically been characterized by a lack of scientific rigor, misaligned incentives, and poor transparency, prompting its characterization as a “Wild West”.
In contrast, removal activities can be verifiably quantified, so carbon removal is a critical part of an effective response to the climate crisis. And while the industry is currently only durably removing a few kilotonnes of carbon annually, the industry consensus is that the industry needs to grow to at least 3.8 gigatonnes per year and potentially three times more: creating a $1 trillion industry.
The carbon removal market has significant tailwinds: the US Department of Energy recently committed $3.7 billion towards the carbon removal industry, and the UK Emissions Trading Scheme will, in principle, be amended to include engineered carbon removal activities, subject to consultation and “a robust MRV (monitoring, reporting, and verification) framework.”
The need for robust MRV is where Isometric enters. Launched last year, Isometric is building the technology needed to accelerate the scale-up of the nascent carbon removal industry. And by transparently reporting data and verification results from its network of partners on its new science platform and a publicly accessible registry launching in the coming months, the company hopes to build confidence in the market and drive buyers to make larger purchases over time.
The company’s new science platform helps suppliers, buyers, and the academic community advance the field of carbon removal. And the data on the platform is legible—and built on science. The science platform aims to accelerate the development of rigorous protocols.
Protocols describe how to quantitatively assess the net amount of carbon removed by a process and are necessary to verify carbon credits, and the company has been working on protocols for multiple carbon removal suppliers, many of which will go into public consultation on the science platform later this year. Once protocols are finalized, credits can be issued on the registry.
Isometric’s science team has been independently reviewing historically delivered tonnes for Charm Industrial — which recently announced over $50 million worth of carbon removal sales to JP Morgan, Stripe, Shopify, Meta, Alphabet, McKinsey, and others. These tonnes are viewable today on the science platform.
This new science platform is a precursor and complement to Isometric’s registry (launching later this year) is unique in its depth of information, including quantification of durability and uncertainty of removal. And the registry will only surface credits for ex-post verified, delivered tonnes and will allow the public to review the evidence and calculations behind every credit.
Isometric has been looking to bring consistency to carbon removal MRV with a modular protocol framework that can be updated and customized as technology and science evolve. And this will ensure all companies working to take carbon out of the atmosphere are equivalently compared and make it simpler for customers to understand what they are buying when they purchase credits.
With new money being poured into the industry—including via the $1 billion Frontier Fund, which launched last year—trust and transparency are increasingly crucial. And Isometric has been deliberately built with a business model to align incentives. Isometric charges buyers (not suppliers) a single flat fee per offtake or purchase. This fee covers all the costs associated with developing protocols, verifying removals, and issuing credits. Isometric does not sell—or broker the sale of—carbon removal tonnes. This differs from traditional carbon registries, which are financially dependent on the suppliers being verified, which introduces a conflict of interest that commentators have suggested to be one of the significant contributors to the problems in the traditional carbon offset industry.
Isometric founder and CEO Eamon Jubbawy is one of Europe’s leading technology entrepreneurs. And in 2012, he founded the AI company Onfido, which grew to over 500 employees. By 2020, Onfido had become one of the fastest-ever European software companies to scale from $1m to $100m in revenue—doing so in just six years.
Isometric’s Head of Science is Dr. Elizabeth Troein (formerly ARPA-E, MIT, Columbia, and Princeton), a respected industry leader in carbon removal. The wider team comprises scientists from universities including Oxford, Cambridge, and MIT and technologists from companies including Amazon, Shopify, Wise, Palantir, and Meta.
Lowercarbon Capital’s Ryan Orbuch joined Isometric’s board. And the new funding also includes support from luminary angel investors, including Niklas Zennström (founder of Skype), David Helgason (founder of Unity Technologies), Ross Mason (founder of MuleSoft), and Ilkka Paananen (founder of Supercell). And Isometric’s $25 million fundraising is one of the largest ever seed financing rounds for a climate software company. The capital will be used to hire more scientists and engineers and deepen partnerships with academic institutions.
KEY QUOTES:
“There are two non-negotiable challenges for the human race over the coming decades: first, decarbonize our economy; second, scale carbon removal. I decided to build Isometric as the critical missing piece of infrastructure required to scale carbon removal. I knew it would only be feasible to tackle this difficult and important problem with the backing of trustworthy, long-term financing partners who think in terms of decades, not months or years. So I’m happy that Lowercarbon and Plural have put their faith in me. We have a tough journey ahead of us and it was crucial for me to pick partners that were 100 percent aligned with my vision.”
— Eamon Jubbawy, founder and CEO at Isometric
“Bringing trust to carbon dioxide removal is fundamental to allow the kind of investments needed to avoid a climate catastrophe. Eamon is one of the most impressive founders of his generation. His experience building Onfido makes him uniquely equipped to steward the responsible and fast scale-up of carbon removal space. He has already built a stellar team whose talent & devotion are critical to solving the climate crisis we face.”
— Khaled Helioui, who led the investment round at Plural
