Hi, climate friends 👋 

We’ve been able to make 13 introductions for the community to the startups I’ve featured this week so far. You are all badass, keep it coming 🔥

Today at a glance:

• Introducing WattCarbon

• Detailing their business model, tech, traction and team

• Why do we need this now?

• How you can help them!

-  Angelica 💜

Featured Startup: WattCarbon

⚡️ How Was WattCarbon Born?

McGee (CEO) spent 5 years as the CTO at Recurve, a company that builds measurement and verification software for utility demand flexibility programs. He built the first tools for using smart meter data to calculate hourly energy savings, but realized that we needed to focus more specifically on climate and provide tools to the world for climate action, not just for utilities. So he founded WattCarbon to enable the rapid decarbonization of the built environment at the scale required to hit our GHG reduction goals.

📍 Headquarters

Lafayette, California

⚙️ Technology

WattCarbon’s tech is anchored in measurement and verification. They believe that the only way to build robust carbon markets is through transparency, so that all stakeholders can have visibility into the actual impacts of the projects being funded.

WattCarbon built the only platform with data infrastructure capable of tracking energy and carbon savings at the single watt-hour and single gram of carbon, on top of a measurement and verification system that uses actual meter data from projects and open-source methods for making savings calculations. They access hourly carbon emissions data from every grid region in the U.S. on a nightly basis so that they can track the carbon emissions for any building in the United States in real time.

WattCarbon believes that our technology will enable the wholesale transformation of the clean energy market in the United States so that it prioritizes carbon impact rather than enabling greenwashing.

💲 Business Model

WattCarbon operates a marketplace, which drives their revenue. They measure success by the amount of funding that they unlock for energy decarbonization projects and the pounds of carbon savings that are delivered as a result of these projects.

🚀 Traction

• Total raised: $6 million

• Raised two rounds of funding

  • Pre-seed round that closed in November 2021

  • Seed round led by True Ventures that closed in November 2022

• Recently launched the world's first energy transition marketplace, decarbonizing buildings as climate action

• Featured in Fast Company

🙏 Founders

McGee Young - Founder and CEO

• Ph.D. in Political Science

• Founded H2Oscore and MeterHero before joining Recurve as CTO

Aaron Gubin - Co-founder and Head of Markets

• Ph.D. in Finance

• Previously joined SigFig to help make wealth management accessible to the 99%

McGee and Aaron believe that the great unlock for tackling climate change will come by massively lowering the costs of making clean energy investments, down to the household level. Starting with high-trust measurement and verification, we can start to build a next-generation market that values the environmental benefits of decarbonization directly and empowers any organization to act decisively to reduce GHG emissions.

📱 Socials

💁🏻‍♀️ Why Now?

The world needs to reduce its absolute carbon emissions by 40% by the end of the decade to prevent runaway global warming.

Buildings are the most accessible lever for eliminating emissions, yet billions are spent each year trying to absorb emissions rather than trying to prevent them. We are overflowing our sink, but instead of turning off the tap, we are vainly trying to mop up the floor.

It's time to turn off the tap. This means building a movement to challenge the oil and gas industry directly. We have to eliminate fossil fuels from our lives. By starting with buildings, we can simultaneously create jobs, lower energy bills, and create healthier communities, in addition to reducing GHG emissions. But nearly all of today's programs are controlled by utilities, who are largely hostile to decarbonization.

WattCarbon’s platform is designed to empower any organization with a climate goal to direct their funding to the highest impact projects that maximize near-term carbon emission reductions.

How Can the Community Help?

👩🏻‍💻 Fractional Talent

WattCarbon is interested in chatting with Fractional Design, Fractional Product, and Fractional Sustainability talent. Request an intro if you or someone you know might be interested!

💡 How Can The Climate Scout Help You?

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