Carbon Title Launches Decarbonization Blockchain Technology for Real Estate – Commercial Observer

The commercial property industry is responsible for almost 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and on Thursday a new proptech startup Carbon title launched its online platform to bring carbon transparency to the real estate value chain and the public in its push for carbon neutrality.

In stealth mode since its founding in 2021, Portland, Ore.-based Carbon Title claims it has created the only decentralized, end-to-end platform that brings together the entire value chain — from architects and developers to investors, building owners, and carbon credit providers – to accelerate and scale the decarbonisation of the property industry. The platform will use blockchain technology to ensure that all emissions data from existing buildings and those under construction are easily accessible and searchable by the public.

“Our view is that there is value in being able to track and maintain these carbon accounts for buildings so that people can know how much carbon has been emitted and what has been done to reduce it,” said Trevor dryerco-founder with Miles Halladay by Carbon Title. “We have a subscription fee per building. In addition to carbon calculations and maintaining these accounts, we help people find lower-carbon building materials and decide when to use them to reduce their emissions. We then buy high-quality carbon removal credits to get the rest of the way to carbon neutral.”

One goal of Carbon Title is to prevent companies from greenwashing and for consumers to make informed decisions about where they choose to live and work. The data will be available to the public when CarbonTitle.com goes live Thursday.

“We believe that this data needs to be public, and that’s one of the reasons we decided to get it on a decentralized platform,” Dryer said. “The decentralized platform allows us to create an always public, always immutable and very traceable database that anyone can see. It’s one of the things we’re passionate about in order to achieve our climate goals, especially in the real estate and construction industry. We need to continuously get this data out to the public.”

The founders of Carbon Title note that the real estate industry faces an almost impossible task: to increase construction output to meet increasing housing and infrastructure needs, while combating climate change by self-regulating and reducing carbon emissions.

In fact, from 2020 to 2030, the construction industry is expected to double. In order to achieve the UN’s target of cutting emissions by 45 per cent during that period, it will require a reduction of approximately 73 per cent in emissions in the property industry.

Dryer and Haladay, whose pre-Carbon Title backgrounds were in fintech and construction respectively, are entrepreneurs and soccer dads who met and created their company as a result of their sons playing on the same local team. “I was the coach,” Haladay said.

Both founders see the path to carbon neutrality as a difficult one, and one that will need not only social but also economic pressure to reach the necessary goals.

“This is going to come down to the banks,” Haladay said. “It’s going to be really important for the banks to be the ones holding the developers accountable and encouraging them to start doing things differently. Banks and stocks too, because the stock groups’ employees are also very interested in pushing. That’s one of the wonderful things about this generation coming through the workforce right now.”

Carbon Title has closed a seed round supported by lead investor GreenPoint Partnerstogether with Alpaca, Allegory, Rippleand proptech investor Packy McCormick. It is being piloted by companies such as e.g Hoffman construction, Rent Crutcher Lewis, Killian Pacific, Corigin. Carbon Title also collaborates with carbon offset creators such as e.g DroneSeed. The seed round’s backers declined to disclose the amount raised.

“Accountability and transparency are important components of the global push to decarbonize property, especially in terms of carbon offsets and removal projects,” said Chris Green, founder and CEO of GreenPoint Partners. “We believe in Carbon Title’s seamless, intuitive user experience Experience will allow developers – and the wider property industry – to significantly reduce emissions and meet decarbonisation targets.”

Philip Russo can be reached at [email protected].