The climate tech industry is booming as more businesses commit to reducing their carbon emissions. While these commitments are notable, tracking a company’s carbon footprint is easier said than done.
That's where Denver-based Aclymate aims to help. The climate tech startup works with small to mid-size businesses to accurately track their emissions.
“When we're talking about climate, what we're talking about is a lot of relationships,” said Mike Smith, co-founder and CEO of Aclymate. “It's relationships between different companies. It's relationships between the companies and their employees and all those relationships have an accounting associated with that. And that's been part of the stickiest problem with the whole thing is how do you do that accounting? How do you make it approachable for everybody?”
When a user signs up for Aclymate, they fill out a brief survey and provide data about their carbon footprint. The user-friendly software then color codes emissions by category, making it easy for businesses to see where the bulk of their emissions come from. From there, Aclymate makes suggestions as to how a company can reduce or offset its emissions.
Smith and William Loopesko, Aclymate’s co-founder and CTO, launched the startup out of frustration surrounding the complexities of carbon markets and climate change. They were also frustrated that businesses were pushing off caring about climate change until next year, or the year after.
Some businesses are even waiting for government mandates before they begin tracking and reducing their emissions.
In the U.K., the Steamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting Regulation requires large businesses to report on their energy and carbon emissions annually. In the U.S., there is currently no mandate to reduce or track emissions, though some states, including Colorado, require certain industries to report emissions.
Change may be coming on the federal level, though. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission released a set of proposed rules that would require companies to disclose certain climate-related information in their reports, such as greenhouse gas emissions.
“The world is literally boiling right now,” Smith and Loopesko said. “Oceans are turning green. … Canada is burning. New York is suffocating. … [Climate] is the most important concern of our generation. … [Changes] are happening right now and if you’re not part of it, you’re late.”
Aclymate, which participated in the Techstars Sustainability accelerator in 2021, now works with several hundred businesses across North America. It serves customers from various industries, including dentist offices, moving companies, security firms, doulas, e-commerce brands and manufacturers. Having customers across the U.S. and Canada indicates that people are really starting to care about climate change, Loopesko said.
The startup’s ideal customers are organizations with 50 to 200 employees, although the platform can cater to solo entrepreneurs or companies with 650 employees.
Aclymate covers 90% of a company’s emissions, Loopesko said, and helps reduce the barrier to entry for businesses that want to track emissions. Its business software starts at $29 per month for the first 10 employees a business has, and an additional $29 a month for each group of 20 employees thereafter.
Aclymate is also beginning to branch into climate tracking in the events industry. Event company Planet Bluegrass, which hosts Telluride Bluegrass, Rocky Mountain Folks Festival and several other music festivals each year, recently partnered with Aclymate to track travel-related emissions for each festival. Aclymate is still going through data from this year's Telluride Bluegrass festival but Smith said it is already finding ways to reduce the company's travel emissions and those caused by people attending the festival.
Aclymate, which has seven employees, is also looking to raise a seed round early next year. To date, the startup has secured about $800,000 from angel investors, Techstars and a grant from the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) Advanced Industries Accelerator program.
“Climate change is a big enough problem that I don't think Mike or I are crazy enough to think that we're going to solve it single-handedly, but we would like to be a major, meaningful part of the solution,” Loopesko said.
This is not Smith’s or Loopesko’s first business venture. Smith co-founded Denver-based RenewWest, a climate-mitigation company that leads regenerative land projects. Loopesko founded Denver-based PuppTech, which monitored a dog’s condition when they are left in a car.
