CarbonFlow, the How-To Guys in Carbon Credits, Get More Cash

CarbonFlow, which has developed software tools that the company says will make it easier for organizations to devise strategies and corporate policies for managing carbon credits, has pulled in more money from investors, this time from @Ventures. Other investors include Clean Pacific Ventures, OVP Venture Partners and Meridian Energy.

Think of this as Sarbanes-Oxley services for the green market. Carbon regulation is already in place in Europe and will likely be imposed in the U.S. in the near future. Barack Obama wants to reduce carbon emissions to 80 percent of 1990 levels by 2050. (whoops—that said 2010 earlier.) But measuring, tracking and putting a value on emissions, and the emissions that were produced by your suppliers, isn’t easy.

By automating the process, CarbonFlow says it can cut the costs or speed the time required for compliance. Experts on carbon trading have devised the software and it has a relationship with Det Norske Veritas (there’s a name you don’t see everyday), the largest verifier of carbon credit projects in the world.

What’s to stop Oracle or SAP from getting into this market? Nothing. But those companies often show a preference for just buying a startup in a new market than concocting their own software tools if it looks like the idea might take a long time to copy. So who knows, Carbonflow migh get snapped up.

In the past two years, green software has been increasingly grabbing the attention of investors. Unlike many other greentech outfits, software developers have low capital requirements, which makes them attractive to investors. A few million dollars, a foosball table and an Internet connection and you are on your way. Compare that to a money suck like Bloom Energy—the $100 million plus invested in the company has yielded exactly zero commercially available units.

Other green software companies, or companies that use software to reduce the cost of green technology, include Sungevity (Internet enabled solar estimates), Greenbox and Fat Spaniel Technology.