John Kelleher is a fourth generation farmer, a seasoned businessman with expertise in digital transformation and a passionate advocate for standards on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. He is also one of the co-founders of ConnectGreen, a business that matches climate conscious companies with certified local carbon offset projects.
At the heart of ConnectGreen is rigorous verification – something the wider carbon offset sector has not addressed convincingly. This has led to fraud and a great deal of scepticism about who is selling what and whether the promised offsets are real.
“Some 90 per cent of rainforest carbon credit offsets sold today are fraudulent or non-existent,” Kelleher says. ”This is a big problem for businesses that want to offset their emissions, yet have very little trust in the carbon market.
“By contrast, transparency is the cornerstone of our approach and we provide access to verified data and ongoing monitoring so companies can have confidence in their offset investments.”
The ConnectGreen platform allows businesses of all sizes to calculate, purchase and seamlessly track their offsets, says Kelleher, who adds that with directives such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (putting in place mandatory emissions reporting for companies of a certain size) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (which relates to supply chain emissions transparency), so called “carbon accounting” is fast becoming as important to running a successful business as good financial management.
Getting into carbon offsets is a complex business but tapping into his farming background and combining it with his corporate experience, Kelleher was able to see a viable way into the market. Carbon offsets require land, whether that’s in a rainforest or closer to home, and Kelleher decided the way forward was to tap into the land resources of Irish and EU farmers “who are sitting on a gold mine of biodiversity initiatives yet they do not have a viable means to manage and sell those assets”.
“We are the first carbon exchange that focuses on connecting local farmers and landholders within the EU with large corporates looking for guaranteed, certified and verified carbon and biodiversity assets,” he says.
“The idea for ConnectGreen was essentially born in a field in north Cork,” Kelleher adds. “As an Irish farmer with woodland on my land, this was a natural site for carbon sequestration. Yet I had no avenue or opportunity to sell those assets.
“If a company is emitting greenhouse gasses locally, it should be offsetting that carbon locally and paying farmers for their carbon and biodiversity assets will bring socio-economic benefits to communities across Ireland.”
ConnectGreen is in the process of building its portfolio of potential offsets and already has more than 7,000 acres of land available. It will essentially act as the bridge that matches the ESG initiatives a company wants to take with a suitable land option. Over time, the plan is to greatly expand its land bank both here and overseas and to bring more willing farmers into the scheme.
In so doing, Kelleher says it may be possible to reduce some of the current farming practices that do not stand up well to sustainability scrutiny.
ConnectGreen was founded in 2023 and officially launched in January. The company has five co-founders who, between them, contributed sweat equity and around €620,000 in hard cash. “We’ve bootstrapped to the nth degree and phase one, which will never end of course, was all about starting to build the land bank,” Kelleher says.
The company is now looking to raise €300,000 to fund its next phase of development.
“The other key element was developing the software and establishing the technical support infrastructure we need to provide companies with a central place to collate all of their emissions information and provide them with investment grade data.
“We essentially have two products right now: the carbon biodiversity offset credits business and our carbon accounting software which we will sell on a SaaS basis,” Kelleher says.
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