Pina (YC W22) has closed a $2.5 million seed round to grow sustainable forestry carbon credits.
As the threat of climate change looms, big businesses have felt the pressure to contribute to green efforts, starting with the low-hanging fruit of decarbonizing their operations. This has led to a huge demand for carbon offset options, enabling companies to buy carbon credits to ‘offset’ emissions so they can claim to be ‘greening’ their activities, without having to make more substantial changes. Unsurprisingly this has created lots of wonky incentives attached to forestry resources and carbon offsetting projects.
Founded in 2021, YC-backed Pina Earth is trying to tackle some of the problematic incentives around carbon offsetting projects by creating smarter skews that encourage landowners to increase woodland biodiversity and future-proof forests against the hotter, harsher climate predicted to come.
By pitching forest owners on making sustainable improvements to existing woodlands that will enable them to get certification for additional carbon credits, generating a “recurring income” via selling any extra stored carbon to the scores of companies eager to top up their offsetting. With this approach, carbon credits are being attached to — and contingent on — improvements to forestry that will generate extra carbon.
Earlier this year, the startup was operating two pilot projects across 1,200 hectares in its home market of Germany and preparing for a commercial launch this year.
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