Adam Neumann was the CEO of WeWork. Flowcarbon raised $70 million in its first round of funding.
Silicon Valley venture capital fund a16z is run by two men. Other investors include venture funds.
What is the company that got all that money? According to a report, Neumann is moving away from real estate and towards a carbon credit trading platform. It is a carbon credit trading program.
Is it still not clear? The company website has an explanation.
Flowcarbon operates at the intersection of the voluntary carbon market and Web3.
To drive billions of dollars directly to projects that reduce or remove carbon from the atmosphere, they created the first open protocol for tokenizing live, certified carbon credits from projects around the globe.
It is a company that makes carbon offset projects, like tree planting, for companies to buy and sell. Why? According to Flowcarbon, they're trying to build an easier, more accessible, and more transparent system of exchange.
One of the investment partners from a16z said that the carbon market is very opaque and that demand for offsets is out of control.
It sounds good on paper, but it's important to remember that carbon credits and offsets are often bullshit. The state of California learned that planting trees in a distant place doesn't actually mitigate the damage. Even though there are some wild claims, the blockchain can't even reduce its own emissions through offsets.
California's catastrophic state program is one example of carbon offsets doing more environmental harm than good. According to a ProPublica investigation, carbon credit purchasing made a difference in Brazil. The industry can use offsets as an excuse to keep emitting pollutants.
Flowcarbon may be trying to solve an issue in the trading of carbon credits by making them more readily exchanged at a lower price. The primary problem is not ease of exchange. We will keep Adam Neumann off the climate heroes list until he backs an effort to meaningfully decarbonize.
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