Written by Alex Bredeen
51 to Carbon Zero (51-0) announces a funding round led by Fuel Ventures
51-0 is a climate-tech start up, providing a platform based solution to enterprise clients to enable them to spend less time on carbon administration and more time on their climate transformation - helping to reduce their overall carbon emissions.
What are the current issues with enterprise carbon administration and reporting?
Currently, enterprises with a global footprint are bound by resource intensive, complex and ineffective methods to measure, track and report on their carbon emissions. The carbon reporting process can take up to 9 months, meaning by the time the results are actually released, the outputs are out of date and unable to provide the accountability needed to drive transformation
How does 51-0 fix this?
51-0’s platform consolidates an enterprise’s entire carbon footprint into one place, in real time - tagging departments, business units, offices and countries in order to provide a carbon emission view that can provide actual accountability to stakeholders. This combination of real time assessment and tagged accountability means enterprises can use this data to drive actual carbon transformation, and reduce their overall carbon footprint.
Why now?
There are over 12,000 businesses in the UK and over 60,000 businesses in the EU who are required by regulation to report on their carbon emissions. This number is only set to grow, and the status quo of expensive consultants and ineffective platforms does nothing to help drive genuine carbon transformation and emission reduction. Every year humanity emits 51bn tonnes of greenhouse gas. To avoid a climate disaster, we need to get that number down to ZERO.
Meet the founders
Neil Woodcock: Neil has a potent combination of experience on both sides of the table - as a two-time exited founder, having exited his businesses to the likes of WPP and Dentsu, as well as having decades of experience in enterprise sales and leadership, across a wide range of sectors and geographies. Before founding 51-0, Neil was the Global President of Transformation for multi-billion pound enterprise Dentsu Media.
Richard Davis: Richard has spent his career working within the exact kind of clients 51-0 is targeting, having sold and implemented major transformation projects to blue chip organisations. Richard was most recently the youngest member of the Leadership team at Dentsu Media, as Global Chief of Business Strategy and Transformation. Richard combines his professional experience with a degree in Sustainable Business from Cambridge University, and an MBA from Cass Business School.
Mike Stevenson, of Fuel Ventures commented “51-0 is the first climate-tech platform Fuel Ventures has invested in, and we couldn’t have hoped to work with two stronger, more climate-passionate founders than Neil and Richard. We are excited to help guide and accelerate the growth of 51-0 as they tackle the globally significant challenge of reducing corporate carbon emissions.”