Why We Invested in Revalue Nature

As the earth’s climate crisis continues to unfold, SJF Ventures is engaging with a broadening array of companies fighting climate change. We are looking to back businesses not only in areas where we a have been active for decades – such as in clean energy, energy efficiency, mobility, circular economy and sustainable agriculture – but also in new strategies that can help change the earth’s warming trajectory.

Today we are excited to share our most recent investment in the climate crisis fight. SJF Ventures and Ecosystem Integrity Fund have co-led a $10 million Series A financing in Revalue Nature. Headquartered in London, Revalue Nature develops nature-based carbon projects that protect against deforestation and advance reforestation – in addition to enhancing biodiversity and driving local community economic development.

One of the items that makes us most excited about Revalue Nature is its ability to help address climate change at scale. The company’s projects, some of which cover landscapes as large as U.S. states, are gaining traction in multiple tropical areas, currently spanning more than 8 countries and 3 continents.

This type of scale is badly needed. Immediately. The Science Based Targets initiative, which is a leading organization focused on helping corporations set decarbonization targets, emphasized the urgency surrounding deforestation this way in a recent blog post: “Nature-based solutions that could protect the world’s tropical rainforests and peatlands receive just 3% of global climate finance, and the United Nations Environment Programme estimates that financing must triple by 2030… Humanity has little to no chance of avoiding the catastrophic impacts of climate breakdown unless it finds a way to end deforestation this decade. Even if every company adopted and implemented a [decarbonization] science-based target, there are no current trajectories for staying below 1.5 degrees without protecting the world’s remaining tropical forests.”

Our investment in Revalue Nature is the culmination of a year-long evaluation of nature-based solutions. Nature-based carbon projects are complicated. Among other challenges faced, they often need to tackle intricate calculations pertaining to items like baselines, additionality, leakage and permanence. These types of assessments at best are complex and at times can lead to severely inflated carbon benefits, damaging the integrity of individual projects and eroding confidence in carbon markets in general. Although Revalue Nature immediately struck us as a forward-thinking, thorough and authentic company to address these challenges, we spent an unusually long time verifying our initial instincts. We came away with conviction that Revalue Nature has the ingredients to drive a step-change in project integrity. This can be seen in the company’s culture of analytical rigor, the demonstrated values of team members, the alignment between business objectives and project integrity, the emphasis on enduring partnerships, and market validation by participants along the industry’s value chain.

For a glimpse into the passions and aspirations of Revalue Nature, we encourage you to read a recent letter by the founder and CEO, found here. It helps to illustrate why we are thrilled to be partnering in its important journey.