A Chat with Brennan Spellacy, Co-Founder and CEO at Climate Action Platform: Patch

Brennan Spellacy

Patch is the platform scaling unified climate action. We connect companies looking to take climate action with access to carefully vetted carbon credit projects.

Whether that’s through an API that can connect any product experience to climate action or through direct purchases on a one-time basis or recurring multi-year agreements, we aim to make the action seamless and ultimately enable climate project developers to grow their projects to the scale the planet requires.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company and what do you think makes the business unique?

 
I met my co-founder, Aaron Grunfeld, while working at the hospitality tech company, Sonder, in 2016. After we helped Sonder go public, we knew we wanted to build something together again and I was keen to focus on climate change.

With so much existing activity in the area of decarbonization, we saw a clear opportunity to help catalyse growth for the other piece of the climate change equation – carbon removal. We’re applying the same marketplace principles we learned at Sondor to help create more efficient and effective carbon markets.
 

 

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

 
We’ve grown quite fast since our launch in early 2020. We now have over 200 companies across the world working with Patch to take climate action. This means that the 115+ climate projects available on Patch are seeing increased funding to scale their work and drive greater climate impact.

In terms of how we’ve evolved, our goal is to drive activation energy on an individual level to zero, so we’re constantly expanding our solutions to meet our users where they are. For example, we recently launched a multi-year carbon credit pre-purchase agreement. This type of transaction is innovative because it enables businesses to secure future inventory and helps project developers secure revenue essential for scaling their production capacity.

We closed our Series B funding round of $55M in September, which means we can continue to grow and iterate quickly, moving into new markets and expanding our technology footprint.
 

What can we hope to see from Patch in the future?

 
The market for carbon credits is on a trajectory to reach $50 billion in the next 10 years and Patch’s infrastructure will be pivotal for transacting within this market. We are building a system through which all carbon credit metadata is open and accessible.

This infrastructure will enable buyers, and ultimately the larger market, to make informed decisions around carbon credits and create the climate impact essential to a liveable future.