Patch API layer for carbon
Brennan Spellacy, CEO of Patch, on the API layer of the carbon stack
Patch’s core bet was that carbon buying would become software infrastructure, not a consulting workflow. That matters because a real marketplace has to do more than list credits. It has to standardize project data, aggregate inventory across many suppliers, let buyers compare very different project types, and wrap each purchase in contracts and monitoring so companies can buy repeatedly through an API or dashboard instead of renegotiating one off deals.
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Patch was built around the transaction itself, not carbon accounting. In practice, that means partners like Persefoni calculate a company’s footprint, then Patch handles sourcing and buying the credits. That separation keeps Patch focused on procurement and avoids mixing accounting with credit sales in one product.
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The marketplace design also shaped Patch’s supply side product. It offers project developers commercialization software, inventory management, and buyer access across 30 to 40 developers and 60 to 70 projects, so suppliers get both more demand and less manual selling work.
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Against peers, the differences are concrete. Cloverly also presents itself as an API and marketplace. Pachama grew around tech verified forest credits and monitoring. Nori focused on carbon removal price discovery and tokenized tonnes. Patch positioned itself as the neutral exchange layer connecting many project types, buyers, and accounting tools.
The market is moving toward platforms that look more like payments infrastructure for carbon. As disclosure rules and buyer scrutiny increase, the winners are likely to be the exchanges that can combine broad supply, cleaner data, clear quality signals, and easy integration into the systems where companies already measure emissions and make purchases.