Stone and Chalk group diversifies Australia’s climate tech offerings, says CEO

Innovation community Stone and Chalk is working to diversify Australia’s climate tech offerings according to its CEO Michael Bromley.

While Bromley doesn’t describe the business as either an incubator or an accelerator, he says its role in the start-up eco-system is to help foster innovation for start-ups and scale-ups and help to transform Australia into a sustainable technology driven economy.

“What we really are focused on is helping start-ups and scale-ups and other organisations change the economy through a completely renewable resource, which is ideas,” he said.

Bromley insists that sustainability is a major factor for start-ups today.

“I don't think anybody coming into one of our hubs or working with us in a hybrid or virtual way, none of those companies are ignoring sustainability and the future of our planet. So in a way, it's both an industry and a supporter of all industries. It's an underlying theme for everybody.

“And frankly, it should be. It's all of our responsibility.”

In order to meet the nation’s sustainability targets, Bromley believes that all the technologies needed to do so already exist.

One of Stone and Chalk Group’s residents that is working to streamline the efforts of corporates to sustainably transform is Trace, a digital platform using visual data to measure, reduce, and offset a business’ carbon footprint.

According to Cat Long, CEO & co-founder of Trace, “Stone and Chalk really is the central hub for Adelaide’s start-up ecosystem, so being able to take up residence there positions us well to develop networks with other start-ups in South Australia, and potentially hundreds of Adelaide-based SMEs looking for a solution like ours to help them take climate action. It’s still early days for us at Stone and Chalk, but the benefits provided to date show great promise for our relationship moving forward.”

Another climate tech resident that Bromley highlights is Marli, a global crypto marketplace for standardised carbon credits.

According to Bromley, “They've got platforms and technologies and trading schemes and creating crypto against carbon tokens so that allows people to actually enable that carbon neutrality.”

Marli uses blockchain, cryptography and AI to enable the funding of environmental projects.

“Through a standardised marketplace we provide pre-vetted carbon tokens to make offsetting possible within seconds. Businesses can use our calculators to assess their footprint and then select from curated groups of tokens linked to high quality projects to offset,” said Alireza TayebNama, founder and CEO of Marli Technology Solution.

Bromley said Stone and Chalk Group is leading by example when it comes to climate action.

“We're carbon neutral ourselves. And so one of the things that we offer is any start-up that comes into our programs becomes automatically carbon neutral because they are working within our ecosystem and our infrastructure. And we're working with a lot of climate tech organisations to help people figure that same problem out,” he said.