Pina Earth gets seed for sustainable forestry carbon credits – TechCrunch
Summary
YC-backed climate tech startup Pina Earth has closed a $2.5 million seed round of funding a year after being founded and a few months since it presented at the accelerators Winter 2022 Demo Day in March.The seed is led by Franco-German VC XAnge, with participation from London-based VC firm Nordstar, as well as a number of business angels and serial founders, including Gustaf Alstromer (partner at Y Combinator), Sundeep Ahuja (partner at Climate Capital), Lea-Sophie Cramer (founder at Amorelie) and Anselm Bauer-Wohlleb (Alasco, Stylight).As we reported back in February, when we took a first look at the Munich-based startup, Pina Earth is building an online platform for European forest owners to get certified to sell carbon credits with a special focus on encouraging landowners to increase woodland biodiversity and future-proof their forests.Thats important as climate change increases risks to the survival of trees, with more droughts, forest fires, disease and other extreme weather predicted. It then sells, essentially, a high tech forest management service supporting landowners to make adaptations to their forests, such as planting climate-resilient tree species, which should, over years, generate extra carbon credits vs if they did not undertake the sustainability-focused measures that will enable the forest to take up more carbon.The startup is using AI modelling to predict how climate change will affect the future growth of forests, combined with remote data capture to monitor customers projects and verify improvements to forests to boost the quality of carbon credits.Thats also important given the proliferation of low quality or bogus carbon offset projects during the greenwashing scramble over the last decade+, as companies have rushed to claim theyre taking steps to reduce their business climate impact while, all too often, not actually taking meaningful steps.The reputation of offsetting as a climate change-fighting tool remains low while tree-based offsetting attracts specific scepticism given the timescales involved and the difficulty of monitoring over the long haul to ensure the claimed carbon sequestration actually occurs but given the scale of the challenge humanity is facing, to rapidly shrink carbon emissions in order to avoid climate disaster, offsetting will undoubtedly have some role to play in the mix of solutions.When we spoke to Pina Earth co-founder and CEO Dr. Gesa Biermann 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.Since then, she says its been focused on moving from initial pilot projects to expanding its reach in Germany. The commercial launch is still pending.We have also recently signed new team members for key positions, in tech, forestry, and business, she tells TechCrunch. This will help us address the needs of a diverse range of forest owners.Asked if the startup is expecting to launch into additional European markets or would it need to raise again before it takes that step, she talks up the prospect of imminent expansion without offering a clear yes or no suggesting its benefitting by being able to draw on its new European investors networks to forge connections with key players, before adding: We are also being approached by both forest owners and project developers worldwide and are keen to bring our product to further regions. These priorities are guided by our mission: To offer landowners the most accessible way to get rewarded for making their forest climate-resilient.Commenting on Pina Earths seed raise in a joint statement, Nadja Bresous, partner (Paris) and Astrid Moull\xe9-Berteaux, associate (Berlin) of XAnge, said: XAnge is proud to continue investing in climate tech and support European forest adaptation.
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