SparkChange

Founded in 2018, SparkChange is a financial technology company headquartered in London that provides specialized carbon data, analytics, and investment products to financial institutions. The firm was established to address the market's need for integrating carbon pricing into investment and risk strategies, a crucial step for navigating the global shift to a low-carbon economy. The current CEO is Jan Ahrens, a seasoned professional with over 15 years of experience in carbon markets as an analyst, trader, and data entrepreneur. His deep expertise in global carbon markets informs the company's strategic direction. The company's leadership team also includes individuals with extensive backgrounds in financial technology, asset management, and environmental markets from firms like Lloyds Bank, Credit Suisse, and BP.

SparkChange operates on a business-to-business model, serving institutional investors, asset managers, banks, and hedge funds. Its revenue is generated through subscriptions to its data platforms and from its financial products. The company's core belief is that traditional carbon footprinting is an insufficient measure of transition risk. Instead, it has developed a granular, bottom-up model to analyze how carbon pricing regulations specifically impact a company's financial performance. This approach allows clients to identify risks and opportunities that high-level sectoral analyses might miss.

The company offers two primary data analytics platforms: carbonCorporate and CarbonAlpha. carbonCorporate is designed for sales teams and advisors to identify carbon-related risks and opportunities within their client portfolios, providing data to build compelling strategic narratives. CarbonAlpha is a tool for portfolio managers that forecasts the sensitivity of company earnings to various carbon price scenarios, enabling them to use carbon exposure as a factor for generating alpha. A key product milestone for SparkChange was the 2021 launch of the SparkChange Physical Carbon EUA ETC (Ticker: CO2), the world's first exchange-traded commodity physically backed by European Union Allowances (EUAs). This product, launched in partnership with HANetf, offers investors direct exposure to the price of carbon allowances on the EU's Emissions Trading System (ETS), avoiding the complexities and risks of futures-based products like contango and counterparty risk.

Keywords: carbon data, carbon analytics, financial products, carbon markets, risk management, ESG investing, emissions trading, physical carbon, EUAs, FinTech