🇩🇰 Electricity Maps raises €5M to scale its global impact
We’re very excited to announce that we just closed a financing round of €5M led by climate funds Transition and Revent.
Are you a journalist? Find our press release, press kit and additional resources for your coverage here.
How we got here
Electricity Maps had been mostly bootstrapped since its inception in 2016, which meant we only scaled and hired when revenue allowed us to. Even with these limited resources, we ended up doubling our revenue every year, while growing our app to millions of yearly visitors, and having our commercial API serve close to 10 million daily requests. However, the increased scrutiny of our data has left users and customers asking for more. Until now, we’ve struggled to answer that demand, given that we had limited ability to hire and scale. This changes today.
Why now
The year 2023 was the warmest year since global records began in 1850, being 1.2°C above the 20th century average, breaking the previous record set in 2016 when Electricity Maps was founded. Most of this is attributed to human-induced emissions of greenhouse gasses, where most are CO2 from the energy sector.
Driven by the urgent need to get rid of all fossil fuels, the world is in the midst of the most profound transformation in humankind’s history. It will require large-scale electrification and a supply of fossil-free electricity, available every second of the year.
On one hand, the amount of renewables on the grid is exploding (it’s the cheapest way to supply electricity when the sun shines and the wind blows). On the other hand, we’re electrifying all energy usages, driven by the need to depart from fossil-fuel-based transportation, heating and industrial systems.
Fortunately, most of the new electricity demand is flexible, meaning their usage can be shifted to times where electricity is cheaper and cleaner (see our previous work with heat pumps, electric vehicles, data centers and home appliances).
Matching an increasing electricity demand with a growing intermittent energy supply will require interacting with the grid in real-time using data APIs. Furthermore, greenwashing has become a significant risk which could slow down the energy transition. Therefore, we have set ourselves the mission to enable a data-driven decarbonisation of electricity.
This additional financing round will enable us to accelerate delivering on this mission, where we will map the world’s electricity grids in even more detail, extending our app and API to include many more relevant signals. This endeavor will require the brightest minds to join us.
Want to partner with us? Reach out here.
Interested in joining the adventure? Explore all open positions here.
Originally published on 7 May by Electricity Maps.
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