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DURHAM – The Climate Service, based in Durham, is currently raising $1.5 million, and has closed $500,000 of the round so far, according to an SEC filing.
But that’s not what James McMahon, co-founder and CEO of The Climate Service, said was most interesting about the company at this time.
“What’s more interesting is the fact that we’re responding to, for example, the Biden Administration’s executive order on financial-related climate risk, and that’s exactly what our platform does, and we’re seeing an uptick in demand across all sectors,” said McMahon in an interview with WRAL TechWire.
The company recently won an Energy Risk 2021 award as the climate risk advisory firm of the year and was also selected as the winner of the best specialist ESG data provider by ESG Investing.
“That’s very significant, that’s not just ESG, how are you impacting the environment, it’s risk, how is the environment impacting you,” noted McMahon about the awards.
The company hired two additional scientists in June, and announced the company had developed a novel method of predicting hurricane changes.
The Climate Service in Durham adds two scientists, develops climate risk assessment platform
“From my point of view, the field is growing enormously, with regard to both demand and supply, driven by three things,” said McMahon about the growing interest in climate, sustainability, and risk management.
First, is regulatory pressure, both national and international, as disclosure of financial risk is becoming more and more required. Second, is investor pressure, which is ensuring companies are taking notice, said McMahon, including increased focus resulting from statements such as the one that Larry Fink, the chairman and CEO of Blackrock, noted in a letter to CEOs last year, stating that “climate risk is investment risk.”
Finally, said McMahon, there’s the inescapable impact of climate itself. “We’re seeing it in the news every week,” said McMahon. “It’s just hard to escape the financial impacts of climate change at this point.”
The company provides the Climanomics platform, giving its clients the ability to analyze climate risk, even decades into the future, using analytics and existing research to do so. The company raised $3.825 million in April 2020, and could raise up to $1.5 million more in its latest fundraising process, according to SEC filings.
