Juno Capital Completes Series A Financing of Tens of Millions of Dollars to Provide One-Stop Carbon Asset Development and Management Services
A low carbon service operator, recently announced the completion of a series A financing round of tens of millions of dollars, led by Fresh Capital. This round of financing will be used for the expansion of carbon asset development business such as forest and grass carbon sink, and the company has recently started the follow-up A+ round of financing.
Juno Capital was established in 2002 and has been officially involved in the carbon market since 2009. Based on the different mechanisms of the carbon market, the company provides four core services to its clients: first, carbon asset management and trading services for emission control enterprises; second, carbon asset development services for emission reduction enterprises; third, green consulting business for enterprises with the will to reduce emissions; and fourth, digital intelligent carbon asset management SaaS platform for enterprises.
Carbon trading is the most core market-based means to achieve carbon neutrality. For enterprises with high emission reduction costs, they can achieve compliance at low cost through market transactions and gain time for transformation and upgrading; for enterprises with low emission reduction costs, they can gain extra income through the carbon market and accelerate the implementation of emission reduction projects.
Wang Kelei, chairman of Juno Capital told that carbon assets are new assets generated by the carbon emission trading mechanism, and carbon trading mainly includes two types of trading assets, namely “carbon allowances” and “carbon credits”, which correspond to the mandatory emission reduction market mechanism and voluntary emission reduction market mechanism respectively. The core services of Juno Capital are also based on these two types of carbon assets.
Under the mandatory emission reduction market mechanism, carbon allowances are traded in the carbon market. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment issues carbon quotas to the emission control enterprises every year, and since the annual carbon quotas of each emission control enterprise and the actual annual carbon emissions do not exactly match, each emission control enterprise has the need to transfer the quotas. Emission-controlling enterprises can hand over their carbon assets to Juno Capital for carbon asset management, optimize the allocation of carbon trading resources and develop carbon trading strategies to enhance the operational efficiency and effectiveness of enterprises under the carbon trading mechanism.
Under the voluntary emission reduction market mechanism, the main trading species of carbon market is carbon credit. Carbon credits are registered in the form of emission reduction projects and realize the issuance of emission reductions. Emission reduction enterprises can entrust Juno Capital with the declaration and issuance of carbon credit assets, including CCER and VCS (International Voluntary Carbon Standard), and sell carbon credits to revitalize their carbon assets.
Wang Kelei introduced that Juno Capital cooperates with partners of emission reduction projects (covering wind power, photovoltaic, forestry, wetlands and other fields) to develop carbon asset products to realize a diversified portfolio of emission reduction projects and provide more flexible solutions according to the cost and benefit requirements of emission control enterprises, so as to reduce the compliance costs of enterprises.
Regarding the price of the carbon market, Wang Kelei said that the current level of China’s carbon price is generally in line with the level of China’s economic development, and in the future, with the improvement of the market system and economic growth, the carbon price will also tend to converge with the carbon price in the mature international market.
It is reported that since 2013, Juno Capital has been continuously participating in carbon market trading in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Chongqing, Guangdong, Hubei, Sichuan, Fujian and Shenzhen, and also participating in carbon market trading abroad, with projects located in China, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Poland, Jordan, Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, India, South Africa and Chile.
Since 2009, Juno Capital has developed more than 300 carbon emission reduction projects and sold the corresponding projects in the secondary market. The types of projects now cover all industries, including wind power generation, solar power generation, biomass power generation, household biogas power generation, waste power generation, forestry carbon sink and other fields.
At the software service level, Juno Capital has developed a carbon application service system — Zero Carbon Cloud Platform, which is based on a general SaaS application cloud platform for all scenarios, combining the historical emission data and production plan of enterprises, predicting the implementation of carbon emissions, and analyzing the space and cost of emission reduction of enterprises, etc., and providing customers with an enterprise-level carbon application SaaS platform using the industry knowledge system. We provide customers with enterprise-level carbon application SaaS platform service by using industry knowledge system.
In terms of green consulting business, Juno Capital’s achievements in recent years include emission reduction project methodology development, enterprise dual carbon path planning, scientific carbon target consulting, ESG report for listed companies, green park/factory/supply chain consulting, energy audit, clean production audit, LEED green building consulting, product carbon footprint accounting, carbon neutral planning for large events, etc.
During the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, Juno Capital assisted Bank of China to complete its service of carbon neutralization of events during the Winter Olympic Games, and jointly helped Beijing Winter Olympic Games to achieve carbon neutrality. In addition, Juno Capital also helped the 14th National Games, the 11th National Paralympic Games and the 8th Special Olympics, and the 2023 China Development Forum to achieve carbon neutrality for these large-scale events and forums.
Wang Kelei introduced that the trading scale of China’s carbon market will exceed 10 billion yuan in 2021, and the future growth potential of the market is huge, and it is expected to break through hundreds of billions of yuan rapidly. However, the threshold of the carbon market is high, and practitioners need to have strong professional ability in the policy side, carbon management field and financial field.
The founding team of Juno Capital has many years of experience in the field of finance and carbon trading, and the current technical team of the company is over 30 people, which is a large scale in the industry.
Investor’s view
Lu Xuan, Investment Director of Fresh Capital: As a leader in carbon asset services for many years, Juno Capital has a deep knowledge of the industry, an excellent and mature team and the ability to provide carbon asset services across multiple sectors, and has been recognized by domestic and international clients. China’s carbon market is in an unprecedented development opportunity and carries the market-oriented mission to achieve China’s double carbon goal. As the lead investor in the first round, we are optimistic about the long-term development of China’s carbon market and highly recognize the entrepreneurial spirit, comprehensive service capability and forward-looking strategic layout of the team. We believe the company can continue to build and lead the development of the carbon asset service and management industry. We believe that the company will continue to build and lead the development of the carbon asset service and management industry. Clear Capital will also work closely with the team to develop innovative practices in the field of carbon finance, promote business synergy among enterprises in the dual carbon ecosystem, and contribute to the high-quality low-carbon transformation in China.
