Zachary Bogue, a co-founder of the Silicon Valley venture capital firm DCVC, does not invest in companies that depend on carbon offsets to make their business model work. That’s not an indictment of the idea. Bogue wants a carbon credit market to exist, but right now, he does not see the kind of regulation and verification in the space that is needed. The Finnish nonprofit and startup Compensate found that 90 percent of carbon capture projects it analyzed for a white paper out in 2021 were ineffective. Zachary Bogue, co-managing partner for DCVC, speaks during the Future of Innovation: Spotlight on Artificial Intelligence Conference in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Thursday, June 22, 2017. The market for AI technologies is estimated to generate more than $60 billion in productivity improvements for U.S. businesses annually. Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The Silicon Valley venture capital firm DCVC invests in all kinds of climate tech companies including geothermal power, aerial methane imaging, advanced nuclear fission reactors, fabrics made out of mycelium, wastewater filtration technology — to name a few.
But there is one category of the climate tech landscape that Zachary Bogue, a co-founder of DCVC does not invest in: Carbon offsets.
“We really don’t underwrite or like to see companies that are using carbon offsets,” Bogue told CNBC in an interview at the end of September in an interview in the Palo Alto office. “We do not look at companies that need to use carbon offsets to make their business model work.”
A carbon offset is a certificate or voucher that a company or organization buys that represents the reduction of a metric ton, or 2,205 pounds, of carbon dioxide emissions. If a company or organization is unable to eliminate the release of greenhouse gasses in their operations, they may purchase a carbon offset to compensate for their emissions.
“There’s been some studies out there that up to 90% of carbon offsets are completely ineffective —