Michael Kanellos

Carbon Counting Companies Get Cash. Can You Believe It? July 21, 2008 at 11:36 AM

It’s carbon week in clean technology.

CarbonFlow, a software company baking an application that can calculate carbon credits, has raised $2.9 million. Neal Dikeman, at Jane Capital Partners, founded the company with Karla Bell, a noted expert on emissions credits. Investors include Clean Pacific Ventures (which led the round), OVP Venture Partners and Meridian Energy Limited, a power provider based in New Zealand. The investment marks Meridian’s return to venture investing in the U.S. The company participated earlier in a fund managed by Nth Power, according to Dikeman.

Meanwhile, Carbonetworks, which makes software for companies that want to track, reduce and/or monetize their carbon emissions and credits, raised $5 million from NGEN Partners, one of the leading greentech VCs.

What gives? Carbon trading is coming. The EU is fine-tuning its existing carbon trading program and both major presidential candidates support carbon emissions controls. (Later, I will ask the guys in downtown S.F. stumping for Lyndon LaRouche if they support emissions caps and whether their candidate is still alive.) Corporate customers are flocking to the exchanges run by Climate Exchange. Sequestration ideas are also gaining traction.

One of the major problems, however, lay in calculating the value of carbon, a problem both CarbonFlow and Carbonetworks want to attack. There’s another company I’ll be writing about soon in the same space.

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