Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

Seeds‚ goal is to create the digital marketplace which harnesses the collective financial power of the environmental movement by lowering the minimum investment in renewable energy projects to just spare change, by giving investors full control of which projects their investments build and by providing a competitive return on investment. 
By using crowdlending to finance the construction of renewables, Seeds creates a virtuous cycle of financial growth for the public which helps incentivize, democratize and decentralize the energy transition. With a minimum investment of just a few cents, everyone can join the fight for a cleaner tomorrow.

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One of the unique advantages of using crowdlending to finance projects is that it decentralizes the financing process of the energy transition and engages the climate movement by transforming the public into stakeholders. In the status quo, large commercial banks, institutional investors and utilities dominate the energy industry due to the large quantity of capital required to build power generation assets. 
In contrast, Seeds is partnering with renewable energy cooperatives which, by definition, are decentralized, non-governmental initiatives of local communities and citizens to promote the production and consumption of renewable energy. These organizations have been largely underfunded by commercial banks due to their size and lack of public debt rating. With Seeds there is a perfect product market fit since crowdlending is capped at 5M‚Ç¨ per project which matches the financing needs of these organizations. Our model of financing these community lead projects helps bring energy independence to the localities and empowers them to have more control over their environmental impact. By providing a channel through which the community members can invest in the projects, then they can reap the financial as well as environmental benefits. Additionally, Seeds plans to look for projects with high social impact such as on schools through partnerships with companies such as Solar for Schools. These projects will provide educational opportunities for the youth, help eliminate the NIMBY effect and will help build the network effect of our platform. 
Another benefit Seeds creates is that by lowering the minimum investment to just a few cents, this lowers the bar for investing down to the financial capability of the youth climate movement. At the moment, this group is limited in their ability to make a difference beyond their individual actions. Our customer interviews have shown that this demographic is particularly enthusiastic about the spare change round-up method which allows them to try investing with a low-risk quantity while aligning their investments with their moral priorities. 
Seeds has the power to allow people to take back control of their money and by investing it transparently and tangibly in the real economy, ethics can be reintroduced into financial decision making. Crowdlending has the potential to make markets social again, and to help build an economy more reflective of its constituent parts. 

Besides the external benefits, Seeds is being built from the ground up with gender and cultural diversity in mind. At the moment, our team of 10 contains 4 women and the team is from 8 different countries. Seeds is implementing Environmental, Social and Governance metrics to ensure that our company and our investments align with the United Nations‚ SDGs. These metrics internally include the gender balance of our Board, management and staff, staff turnover, age distribution and country of origin diversity. Externally, we will apply the same criteria when considering companies to provide finance to, while adding metrics to the projects such as tonnes CO2e avoided, percentage of suppliers and supply chain partners screened for accordance with ESG-criteria and percentage of total revenue spent on worker safety.

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