BOSTON, MA, MAY 11, 2021 – Clean Energy Ventures announced today the launch of an open-access calculator to estimate a climate tech innovation’s potential impact on climate change. The Simple Emissions Reduction Calculator (SERC), which Clean Energy Ventures developed to help evaluate climate tech startups seeking funding, will be used by partners including Cleantech Open, Cleantech Scandinavia, and by any climate tech startups that are looking to validate their carbon emissions reduction potential. The open accessibility of SERC represents a first for clean energy and climate tech venture capital investors.
“Many startups and founders have large ambitions for mitigating GHGs, yet the task of estimating their company’s emissions reduction potential can seem overwhelming,” said Shanbor Gupta, Investment Manager at Clean Energy Ventures who helped build SERC. “The Simple Emissions Reduction Calculator was developed to fix this problem and provide a baseline for startups and investors to build on during investment discussions.”
With only six questions, SERC allows startups and investors to estimate the number of tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) a technology can prevent. Clean Energy Ventures has been using the tool as the first step in the investment screening process to ensure that every startup they evaluate is able to mitigate a minimum of 2.5 billion tons of CO2e by 2050, an investment requirement. CEV is now offering the tool to the wider clean energy and climate tech community to fill a gap in the current solutions landscape and support organizations’ efforts to reach ESG goals.
Cleantech Open, Cleantech Scandinavia, among other climate tech industry investors and accelerators, are now utilizing the SERC tool for education, screening and/or diligence.
“The explosive growth of climate-focused investment means more entrepreneurs are being asked to quantify their current and potential impact on climate change to receive funding,” said Beth Zonis, Director of Cleantech Open Northeast. “Empowering our entrepreneurs to quantify their CO2e impact should help them not only secure funding, but also attract customers, partners and employees. We have decided to incorporate the SERC tool into our curriculum this year to give the startups a boost as they launch and scale their businesses.”
“So many investors are looking into throwing their hat in the ring for climate investments and SERC can provide a standardized, measurable way to evaluate a company’s potential,” said David Miller, Managing Director and Co-founder at Clean Energy Ventures. “We want every entrepreneur focused on solving climate change to have an accessible, reliable method for calculating their emissions reduction potential and to standardize the process by which companies can share that data with potential investors, customers, employees and the public. Over 140 startups have already used the SERC tool.”
