• Isometric launched its publicly accessible science platform today, with early data from a range of companies working to durably remove carbon from the atmosphere.
• The firm is also building the world’s first carbon registry to list only fully verified, delivered credits from long-duration carbon removal suppliers—which will be publicly accessible later this year.
• Isometric is announcing one of the largest ever seed rounds for a climate software company—$25 million from Lowercarbon Capital and Plural.
• Isometric is founded and led by Eamon Jubbawy, one of Europe’s leading technology entrepreneurs, who is now turning his attention to solving climate change.

In a landmark for the fast-growing carbon removal market, Isometric 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.

The company is also announcing today that it has 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.

Enabling carbon removal at scale

Carbon registries are the institutions that issue carbon credits, and are therefore responsible for confirming whether the credits truly represent the climate impact being claimed. However, the four major 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—which is overseen by the four major 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 characterisation as a “Wild West“.

In contrast, removal activities can be verifiably quantified, and as such, carbon removal is a critical part of an effective response to the climate crisis. 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”.

This need for robust MRV is where Isometric enters. Founded in 2022, Isometric is building the technology needed to accelerate the scale-up of the nascent carbon removal industry. 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.

Transparency that informs

Isometric’s new science platform helps suppliers, buyers and the academic community advance the field of carbon removal. The data on the platform is legible—and built on science. The goal of the science platform is 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. Isometric 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 also been independently reviewing historically delivered tonnes for Charm Industrial—which recently announced $50m+ 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—which is unique in its depth of information, including quantification of durability and uncertainty of removal. 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.

Information the industry can trust

Isometric is looking to bring consistency to carbon removal MRV with a modular protocol framework that can be updated and customized as technology and science evolve. 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.

And with new money flooding into the industry—including via the $1 billion Frontier Fund, which launched last year—trust and transparency are increasingly crucial.

Isometric has been deliberately built with a business model designed to align incentives. Isometric charges buyers—not suppliers—a single flat fee per offtake or purchase. The 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 who are financially dependent on the suppliers being verified, which introduces a conflict of interest that commentators have suggested to be one of the major contributors to the problems in the traditional carbon offset industry.

Technical and scientific expertise

Isometric founder and CEO Eamon Jubbawy is one of Europe’s leading technology entrepreneurs. In 2012 he founded AI company Onfido, which he grew to over 500 employees. By 2020, Onfido became 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 is composed of scientists from universities including Oxford, Cambridge and MIT, as well as technologists from companies including Amazon, Shopify, Wise, Palantir, and Meta.

Lowercarbon Capital’s Ryan Orbuch has joined Isometric’s board. 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).

Isometric’s $25m fundraise is one of the largest ever seed financing rounds for a climate software company. The capital which will be used to hire more scientists and engineers as well as deepening partnerships with academic institutions.

Eamon Jubbawy, founder and CEO at Isometric, said:

“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.”

ENDS

About Isometric:

Isometric is a carbon removal registry and science platform. The urgency of the climate crisis makes it increasingly clear that the carbon removal industry must grow by orders of magnitude: from kilotonnes per year today to gigatonnes in the coming years. Isometric exists to ensure the carbon removal industry scales responsibly and fast. https://isometric.com 

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About Lowercarbon Capital:

Lowercarbon Capital backs kickass companies that make real money slashing CO2 emissions, sucking carbon out of the sky, and buying us time to unf**k the planet. https://lowercarboncapital.com 

About Plural: 

Plural allows experienced operators to become involved, lead investors alongside the next generation of founders. With a passion for the missions that matter, plus our own prior scar tissue as operators, Plural aims to bend the trajectories of its companies. Plural’s ambition is to unlock European GDP growth through technology. We will also partner with bold founders anywhere who are tackling the global opportunity gap or systemic risks. https://pluralplatform.com