Companies can deliver great climate impact with Ceezer’s digital carbon bank

By Elcke Vels

More and more businesses are aiming to compensate their carbon footprint and invest in climate projects that help them achieve their goals. However, in its current form, the voluntary carbon market will not reach its potential. Direct trading, data and transparency will help drive the necessary change. Ceezer is a digital carbon credit platform that gives companies access to and guidance through the complex voluntary carbon market. In this instalment of Start-up of the day, founder and CEO Magnus Drewelies talks about how the company is doing.

Can you explain exactly what you are doing?

“Ceezer is a fully digitized platform that allows for investments in the carbon market. Clients have their own portfolio on our platform. They can make transactions directly with project developers world wide and add certificates. We help them with making the right investments. For example, if a company wants to remove 30 percent of their residual emissions, we help them connect to the right companies and technologies. This can range from nature-based solutions like mangrove restorations to new technologies like enhanced weathering and carbon capture.

We do this by making use of data. A lot of data regarding carbon markets are prone to errors and overestimations. Therefore, we work together with universities, for instance the ETH in Zurich, and only focus on scientifically validated data. We take a look at where data comes from, the methodology behind it and so on.”

What stage is the company currently in?

“We shifted to production mode a while ago. We have a working product, it’s live and running well. Furthermore, over 50 customers are making use of our platform. Some of them are large corporations. We are growing fast and steadily with new companies joining every week.” 

Up until now, what has been a big champagne moment for the company?

“Recently, we launched a partnership with Milkywire, a Swedish start-up that launched the Climate Transformation Fund (CTF). This is a charitable fund supporting projects that make net zero a reality. On our platform, it is now possible to invest in this fund directly from a portfolio. I think this has huge potential, as, in addition to climate investments like purchasing carbon removal and avoidance credits our clients can now choose an entirely new category of climate finance to invest in.” This funnels capital into even newer technologies that are often not yet available as more formal credits. We keep the data and impact clean and allow our users to track their investment.”

And what challenges have you run into lately?

“One of the challenges is finding people with the right level of expertise. We focus on a new market that is relatively small. At the same time, we need a strong tech and data team in order to build the infrastructure for the carbon market. Furthermore, we have an impact team with climate researchers and carbon analysts that look, for instance, for new technologies and climate projects that we want to add to the platform. There are only a handful of people in the world with significant experience in that field. Also, we have a commercial team that makes sure that our transactions are running smoothly. I feel like we have been lucky to find the right people to work with. And I hope we will continue to find them in the future.”

What’s next for Ceezer?

“Up until now, we have been focusing on Germany, Austria and Switzerland mainly. But I think it might be interesting to expand to the Nordic countries and the Netherlands, as well as other countries in Europe. In order to do that, we need to make sure to have colleagues located in those countries. Because obviously, we don’t want to fly around the world in order to meet up with our clients. We ourselves need to keep our carbon footprint low as well.”

What does Ceezer’s future look like, let’s say ten years from now?

“When I see how much we have already achieved in a year, I am confident that in 10 years we will be a major player in the market. The carbon market is our first asset category, but I think with the years to come, we will focus on other markets as well, for example new categories like biodiversity and plastic reduction. With our platform, it’s relatively easy to expand. In the end, I hope Ceezer has the best infrastructure to allow for investments in all of those spaces, so that corporations can make the best provable impact.”

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