Startup from Leiria with technology for carbon credits receives 1.5 million euros

The Portuguese startup CO2offset, which developed a technology to calculate the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that is captured by forest areas and generate carbon credits that are then sold, closed a pre-investment roundseed (initial) in the amount of 1.5 million euros.

The investment came from the venture capital fund manager Ged Ventures Portugal, through the Ged Tech Seed Fund – which has been attentive to companies in the digital and clean energy sector (cleantech). Investors were pleased with the mission to combat climate change and the business opportunity created by CO2offset, which they characterize as “one of the most promising national clean tech startups”.

CO2offset was born in 2021, by the hands of physicists Rui Lopes and Pedro Cipriano and managers Sérgio Lorga and Rui Maia, and is headquartered in Ansião, in the district of Leiria. The company’s innovative solution allows meticulously measuring CO2 emissions and then transacting the carbon credits generated through smart contracts (“smart contracts”), between people and/or companies, on the blockchain.

The amount now raised will be used to develop this technology, whose main purpose is to democratize access to carbon credits and reward landowners, and increase the team from nine to twelve people. CO2offset expects to recruit, by the end of April, three people in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, programming and legal.

“We are in a product development phase and we are also going to create what we call digital twins [«gémeos digitais»] of the forest that will later allow us to scale the solution to any part of the world. At this time, our customer base is more between Portugal and Spain. I would say that, at this very moment, we have a solution aimed at the European market and we intend to export to the whole world”, reveals Rui Lopes, co-founder of CO2offset, to Jornal Económico (JE).

The issue of carbon credits is particularly pressing when, last Friday, the Minister for the Environment and Climate Action, Duarte Cordeiro, held a public session in Coimbra to present the law on the voluntary carbon market, which is currently being consulted until mid-April.

According to the Government, the objective of the voluntary carbon market is to generate economic incentives to reduce emissions or increase carbon sequestration (the term used to define the process of removing CO2 from the atmosphere), as well as creating an opportunity to increase income from short term to the forest sector.

Rui Lopes tells JE that the Government “can be an important partner” in the development of this market and in the energy transition, alongside the private sector. “Especially since during the Friday conference it demonstrated a clear openness for private solutions to also submit proposals. It is also our responsibility to be an important partner in this debate and construction of the law”, he said.

In his opinion, Portugal has been walking at the pace of Europe on this issue, although there are Member States where carbon markets are more developed – which is also good news. “We have noticed an increasing interest and need on the part of companies to carry out their carbon mitigation. Of course there are countries where the voluntary market has already grown a lot, but the fact that it arrived here a little slower gives us the opportunity to see what went wrong in other places. For example, we saw many projects that were approved by standards and by certifying companies that did not make much sense and now maybe we can avoid these mistakes”, explains the entrepreneur to JE.

Francisco Lino Marques, partner and member of the board of directors of Ged Ventures Portugal, publicly mentioned that “at a time when the world aims to achieve the goals defined by the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations”, the society believes “that the The pioneering solution developed by CO2offset can make an important contribution to achieving this ambitious goal”.

In turn, Pedro Cipriano, co-founder of CO2offset, mentioned that this new investment “will allow us to reinforce the R&D work [Investigação e Desenvolvimento] that” the startup has “been developing, as well as internationalizing the solution” in order to “ensure the sustainability of Humanity”.