Our purpose is to make a positive impact in the world through our investment and engagement.
Digitalization
Transportation and tourism have been left behind in terms of digitalization. Often reliant on outdated technology or traditional paperwork, the industry has been resistant to change. In fact, nearly 50% of vacation rental properties don’t have a digital presence, the aviation sector is using communication tools from the 1930s, and one in five container ships arrives over 24 hours late.
As transport accounts for about 64% of global oil consumption, 27% of all energy use, and 23% of the world’s energy-related CO2 emissions, digitalization is crucial for improving sustainability and emission reduction.
Digitalization of tourism is critical to the fulfillment of UN Sustainable Development Goals. Tourism is responsible for 1 in 10 jobs in the global economy and 10.2% of global GDP so improvement of conditions and upskilling of talent will have a global impact.
Measuring Impact
Carbon Emissions
We measure the level of reduction in carbon emissions or decarbonization achieved through the technologies we invest in.
Workforce Diversity
Diverse teams are more successful and are better equipped to scale. We invest in diverse teams.
Digitalization
Digitalization leads to efficiency and emissions reduction and contributes to the democratization of technology. We invest in innovative digitalization solutions.
Jobs
Jobs have a dramatic impact on communities and help develop talent hubs that strengthen ecosystems. We help create jobs.
Developing Regions
Efficient transportation and sustainable tourism are critical for successful development. We invest in and support founders that can contribute to regional development.
Waste Reduction
We report on the impact of circular economy technologies funded by us in terms of waste reduction and water saving/cleaning.
Impact experience & training
UNEP FI
Through Journey Partners, Team ABC Ventures are signatories and members of the UNEP FI Sustainable Blue Economy Principles.
EU Transition Pathway for Tourism
The transition pathway identifies areas of measures for the green and digital transition, and for improving the resilience of EU tourism. Team ABC Ventures joins Ryanair as the Irish representatives, putting forward six pleadges
EIC
Our Partner Clyde Hutchinson is a jury member of the European Innovation Council, which is an EU Commission mechanism for taking equity in Europe’s most innovative scaling startups. He has evaluated equity investments for the Green Deal initiative as well as for other projects in the field of transportation and mobility.
Finance for Biodiversity
Pledge signatories call on global leaders and commit to protecting and restoring biodiversity through their finance activities and investments by:
Collaborating and sharing knowledge
Engaging with companies
Assessing impact
Setting targets
Reporting publicly on the above before 2025
UN ICAO
Team ABC Ventures are the only investors on ICAO’s taskforce on sustainable aviation fuel. We have presented at ICAO annual stocktaking and contributed to UN biannual Environment Report.
WOC
Through Journey Partners, Team ABC Ventures are full council members of the World Ocean Council. WOC is a multi-sectoral, industry leadership alliance for "Corporate Ocean Responsibility".
Team ABC supports of UN Sustainable Development Goals
Team ABC Ventures ESG Reporting 2023
Team ABC Ventures is early-stage venture capital fund focusing on making transport and travel more efficient by investing in sustainability and digital solutions. The fund’s HQ is in Dublin, Ireland and is made up of three general partners (Aurelius Noell, Brian Marrinan and Clyde Hutchinson) who cover international hubs of Dublin, Vienna and Mexico City. From the onsite of the creation of Team ABC fund in April 2021, we decided to be transparent on the following factors:
Carbon Emissions
We measure the level of reduction in carbon emissions or decarbonization achieved through the technologies we invest in.
Digitalization
Digitalization leads to efficiency, emissions reduction, and contributes to the democratization of technology. We invest in innovative digitalization solutions.
Workforce Diversity
Diverse teams are more successful and are better equipped to scale. We seek to invest in diverse teams.
Jobs
Jobs have a dramatic impact on communities and help develop talent hubs that strengthen ecosystems. We help to create jobs.
Waste Reduction
We report on the impact of circular economy technologies funded by us in terms of waste reduction and water saving/cleaning.
Developing Regions
Efficient transportation and sustainable tourism are critical for successful development. We invest in and support founders that can contribute to regional development.
As we are in the very early stages of our fund, having not yet held our final close and investing in only three companies. We are using our first reporting to establish some baselines while we await useable data to accurately report others. Read our full report here.
Our Portfolio Companies and ESGs
Covid has led to the resetting of passenger behavior as well as revenue management tools and models used. YieldIN takes a holistic view of revenue management including ancillaries which other tools fail to include. This system has potential application for passenger transportation on land and sea.
Our investment in YieldIN assist in our ESG of making transportation more efficient and reduction of transport related emission. According to an article in Nature[1], if U.S. airlines increased the number of passengers on every flight by 2 percent, they would save $280 million in operating costs and cut emissions by 0.3 percent per flight. YieldIN’s technology makes this percentage increase an easy target for airlines and other forms of transportation.
YieldIN also has a focus on transportation companies from developing countries to democratize access of digital transformation technologies to smaller transportation firms previously restricted due to cost and complexity of these systems. For example, they are currently working with Safarilink in Kenya to digitalise their processes to allow their operations to become more efficient to carry more passengers on fewer flights thereby reducing emissions.
[1] Schäfer, A., Evans, A., Reynolds, T. et al. Costs of mitigating CO2 emissions from passenger aircraft. Nature Climate Change 6, 412–417 (2016)
Méremer is tech company seeking to work in the intersection of Fintech & ClimateTech. Using satellite remote-sensing and field data to develop artificially intelligent measurements, monitoring and metrics to create dependable standards and ratings for climate positive projects. By creating a reliable science-based data model we bridge environmental projects to the financial world, and vice versa.
The company is currently in Beta and hoping to launch projects in Georgia USA and DR Congo.
Coral reefs are one of the most valuable ecosystems on Earth, conservatively generating $30B+ annually. However, 90% of the worlds’ reefs are expected to die by 2050. Coral Vita are global leaders in coral reef restoration using new innovations in breeding and scaling to create Super Coral which grow up to 50x faster, more resilient to climate change, and genetically diverse. Their commercial model to expand to other regions & support local eco-tourism.
In 2023-24, saw the company saw a Royal visit by Prince & Princess of Wales as apart of the Earthshot Prize. They company also partnered with Cariuma’s OCA Low Sneakers to promote coral reef conservation.
Directly relating to our ESGs, Coral Vita is headquartered in the Bahamas providing high quality training and employment within this SIDS region. Coral Reefs, through the production of Calcium Carbonate have the potential to remove 2% of human made carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This figure is conservative as it doesn’t take in account coral photosynthesis or carbon stored by reef associated fauna. The work of Coral Vita coral reef restoration farms can make a dramatic difference in a small way as 1 KM2 of restored coral reef can remove over 3000 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere every year, making them six times more effective than the equivalent forests.
Freight is responsible for 8% of all Carbon emissions. Searoutes Searoutes offering includes accredited scope 3 emissions reports all modes and insightful CO2 emissions analytics per carriers to improve the procurement process and easily reduce their carbon impact. This is achieved through a range of easily implemented APIs. There is an opportunity to use this platform for Air & Land based Cargo.
Directly related to our fund’s ESGs, SeaRoutes have been selected by the Global Logistics Emissions Council Framework (GLEC) as an official tool for the measurement of logistics emissions. GLEC is the only globally recognized methodology for harmonized calculation and reporting of the logistics GHG footprint across the multi-modal supply chain and includes all major shipping and logistics industry players. SeaRoutes APIs have enabled a major shipping line to reduce its eCO2 (t/TEU) by 42% by route planning as well as identified most carbon efficient carriers, routes and PODs (Ports of Discharge).
Our Fund and ESGs
At time of writing (Spring 2023) Team ABC Ventures has major investments in four companies which is not enough to provide meaningful data on the fund structure, and we will wait until we close our fund later in the year before establishing fund structure ESG baselines. However, we did feel these three companies could provide enough data to provide a baseline on one of our key metrics which was job creation and workplace diversity. The infographic below provides our first reporting on performance of our investment in terms of job creation and diversity.
Our Employment ESGs in Numbers
39 people employed by Team ABC portfolio companies
74:26 Male:Female Employee Ratio
Nearly a fifth of employees are based in SIDS/LDC regions
23% employees are non-white
In summary, Team ABC Ventures are proud that their fund’s first investment are starting show real impact in terms of reduction of carbon emissions within global transportation as well allowing habitat restoration for future generations. We continue to assist our portfolio to increase workplace diversity as well as providing meaningful employment opportunities.