Industrial IoT platform Kuva Systems announced today the closing of an $11.3 million Series A financing round, with proceeds aimed at accelerating the growth of its platform, used by oil and gas companies to monitor and reduce methane emissions.

Kuva provides a fully automated, image-based, continuous methane monitoring and quantification solution. Using a low-cost camera to pinpoint methane release locations and quantify flow rates based on minute-by-minute measurements, the solution enables upstream and midstream oil and gas companies to improve their operations and meet ESG and methane intensity goals.

Stefan Bokaemper, CEO of Kuva Systems, said:

“Methane is an invisible gas – customers love the Kuva solution because it is intuitive to use, comprehensive and does not provide false alerts. Customers are informed as soon as a problem happens, they can pinpoint remotely at what specific equipment and when the problem occurred and how much gas was released.”

Reducing methane emissions has taken center stage in the fight to address climate change in recent years. Methane, emitted from activity such as agriculture, fossil fuel production and transport, coal mining and landfills, is an extremely potent greenhouse gas, with as much as 80x the warming power of CO2. Given its much shorter lifetime in the atmosphere, however (10-12 years, vs 50-100 years for CO2), near-term reductions in methane emissions can have a meaningful climate impact over the next few years.

Energy companies are coming under increasing pressure to address methane emissions from their operations, as countries ramp their own methane reduction goals. At 2021’s COP26 climate conference, the U.S. and EU launched the Global Methane Pledge, aimed at reducing global methane emissions by at least 30% by 2030, compared to 2020 levels. Since launching, the pledge has reached more than 130 signatory countries, representing over half of global methane emissions.

The financing round was led by climate tech fund Climate Innovation Capital and technology company and existing investor Draeger, with participation from existing investors Launchpad Ventures and Clean Energy Venture Group.

Paul Atkinson, Managing Partner at Climate Innovation Capital, said:

“Methane emissions are a climate risk multiplier. We see tremendous opportunity for Kuva’s end-to-end platform to enable oil and gas companies to detect and mitigate methane emissions quickly and cost-effectively.”