RenewWest, a Denver-based developer for climate-mitigation projects, raised $3.2 million in seed funding to restore more land through the use of carbon markets.
The climate-financing company Aspiration and One Small Planet led the round, and Clear Sky Advisors also participated. The startup plans to use the funding to grow its technical staff and take on more projects across the globe.
RenewWest leads regenerative land projects that produce carbon credits, creating economic value for investors and land stewards. It's running projects in the U.S. and Mexico and is planning more in Jamaica, Peru and Papua, New Guinea.
"We are advancing scientifically rigorous methodologies in order to deliver high-integrity, long-lasting conservation and restoration outcomes while ensuring frontline communities have tangible economic benefits like revenue sharing, jobs, education and economies," RenewWest CEO John Cleland said in a statement Tuesday. "This funding will allow us to expand globally, helping communities that are disproportionately impacted by climate change."
RenewWest rose to prominence in 2020, when it spearheaded the Collins-Modoc Reforestation Project, the largest carbon reforestation project in U.S. history. As part of the project, Collins, an American forest products company based in Oregon, is planting 2 million trees on 10,000 acres in the Modoc Plateau in Northern California — the site of the Barry Point Fire, which burned nearly 93,000 acres in 2012.
The reforestation project is expected to recreate a sustainable forest that can capture and sequester hundreds of thousands of metric tons of carbon dioxide and allow for timber harvests.
Since the start of the project, RenewWest has broadened its scope. It's working on a project in Yucatan, Mexico, to restore and preserve a 1,600-acre mangrove parcel. Mangroves, which are trees that grow in coastal water, have the ability to capture and store carbon and are seen by experts as a potential climate solution.
The Yucatan Peninsula contains 60% of the mangroves in Mexico, but the ecosystem there has been highly damaged, according to RenewWest. Dr. Jorge Alfredo Herrera Silveira, a marine biologist in Yucatan who has researched mangroves, said in a statement that the RenewWest project in the region is having a "direct economic benefit for local communities."
"In my country, local communities are benefiting from conserved wetlands, which ultimately provide better livelihoods through protection of their houses, protection and recovery of fishing, ecotourism income, and a growing cultural appreciation for their natural assets," Silveira said.
The startup is also planning projects across the U.S., South America and Oceania to regenerate forests, rainforests, wetlands, peatlands and rangelands.
According to RenewWest's website, the state of Colorado has turned to the startup to assess the potential of using carbon markets to reforest state land that was burned by wildfire. Further details about that project weren't provided Tuesday.
Elsewhere in the U.S., RenewWest is assessing wetland and forest conservation potential in Tennessee and the regeneration of native habitats and forests to Midwestern grazing lands.
Since closing its seed round, RenewWest has hired experts and brought on partners in remote sensing, forestry, ecosystem services financing, international development, climate-change modeling, wetland science and silvopasture systems, the startup wrote in a LinkedIn post.
