CarbonStory to launch crowdfunding at Texas festival SXSW

CleanTechnica

Singapore-based social enterprise CarbonStory is set to launch the beta version of its crowdfunding platform for climate change projects at SXSW (South by Southwest) in Austin on March 10.

“We created CarbonStory to make a real impact towards fighting climate change,” said Andreas Birnik, co-founder of CarbonStory. “CarbonStory is game changing because we leverage the full power of crowd funding, gamification and social media to address one of the greatest global challenges of our time.”

Crowdfunding is all the rage at the moment with websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo funding everything from video games to conventions.

“Imagine our platform as a meeting place where people come together to support climate change projects,” said Olof Lundström, another co-founder of CarbonStory. “By coming together we can achieve much more than anyone of us could do alone. This is the strength of our crowd funding approach.”

The plan is simple: participants will be able to contribute as little as a few dollars a month in sponsoring certified green projects that have been carefully selected by the CarbonStory staff.

Users can compare their activities with other CarbonStory users, form teams, share projects they have sponsored on Facebook and encourage friends to go carbon neutral.

Users earn badges, get a personal account visible on the web and can download certificates documenting what they are doing to fight climate change.

“Climate change mitigation is a serious topic but we want to make the experience accessible so that a lot of people will want to participate,” said Victor Cruzate, yet another co-founder of CarbonStory. “We cannot afford to wait for politicians to solve this challenge. We need to act now and CarbonStory makes meaningful climate action easy.”

Another fantastic crowdfunding site for the cleantech fan is Solar Mosaic, a site that we have covered widely here at CleanTechnica. Earlier this year, Solar Mosaic launched its solar crowdfunding site, which it says is “a new, transparent and democratic way of financing clean energy through crowdfunding that could disrupt the two largest industries in the world: energy and finance.”

Within 24 hours, Solar Mosaic’s first four projects sold out: “more than 400 investors put up than 400 investors put up amounts ranging from $25 to $30,000 (the average was nearly $700) for a total investment of more than $313,000.”

My personal favourite crowdfunding green options are the WiFi and Bluetooth enabled lightbulbs that have been popping up all over Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but the options are many and varied, and all you need to do is go have a look for yourself.

This article was originally published on CleanTechnica. Reproduced with permission