A common theme among founders and startups at Antler’s European Founders Conference was their commitment to helping tackle the climate crisis. However, most are more terrestrial in their approach. TFN met with Daria Stepanova, whose startup AIRMO is heading into orbit to help lower emissions.

We spoke to her about her journey to becoming a founder, the development of AIRMO, and some of her advice for fellow founders. Here’s the full interview below:

A career in the space sector

Stepanova has been working in the spacetech sector for more than a decade, and that was where the idea of AIRMO came from.

“I’d been studying space engineering in my masters, and during my work at Swiss space centre, where they did a project while starting at EPFL,” she told us. It was there, when she was building components for CubeSat, that she started taking an interest in the small satellite field.

Working on building small, satellite-based missions for various applications, she received many requests for missions around carbon monitoring. However, she was surprised that it would be fairly straightforward, but quickly discovered that it was not. “After some research, I figured out that it’s not that easy and straightforward,” she said. The large satellites that were available at the time were incapable of providing high-precision data. The idea developed and AIRMO was the result.

Precision emission tracking from space

AIRMO’s mission is to provide accurate, actionable, data on emissions. “We are building one source of trust for greenhouse gas emissions monitoring,” Stepanova said. At the heart of that is Stepanova’s belief that the transition to net-zero should be data-driven. “We put our sensors in space and on aircraft, to collect the data about our emissions to make our decision process around achieving our net-zero goals more efficient.”

Her technology means that AIRMO is working with both carbon emitters, and the regulators that monitor them, to help bring down emissions and identify those that might be creating the problems.

“That’s how we support our clients,” Stepanova explained. “With our technology, we detect emissions with aircraft and soon with satellites. We quantify how much gas is emitting per unit time. And localising the spot where the emissions are coming from. With this information, our clients can make informed decision-making, and decarbonise their infrastructure faster.”

Unsurprisingly, as a space-based venture, AIRMO is looking for global coverage. “Our end goal is to deploy the constellation of twelve to achieve a near real-time and global outlook on emissions,” Stepanova said. “We see quite a lot of need and quite a lot of traction from our customers.”

That traction reflects a large market size. Stepanova estimates that the emissions monitoring to be globally valued at €22.4 billion, with three distinct sectors, environmental sustainability platforms, regulators, and the emitters themselves.

Surprisingly, for such a large market, Stepanova doesn’t think there are many direct competitors to AIRMO. “Our biggest competitor is still Excel,” she told us. “Most carbon accounting is done in Excel sheets using formulas and emissions coefficients.” But Stepanova estimates that results in about 70% of emission calculations being wrong. And while some competitors use ground sensors or aircraft, they lack the precision, coverage, and scalability of satellites which can provide time-series data of, potentially, the whole planet.

Helping the emitters be the good guys in the climate crisis

Working as a female in a tech startup, and coming from an aerospace engineering background, Stepanova might be expected to have experienced challenges in such male-dominated sectors. However, for her, the challenges have always been technical.

“I feel you have challenges in everyday work,” she said when asked. “We’re building very complex instruments, and every day there’s another engineering task to solve.”

She also challenges perceptions when it comes to environmental damage. “It might be a bit strange to hear,” she said, “that the bad guys who are polluting our environment are willing to cooperate in the field of emissions management.”

Stepanova’s clear passion perhaps guides her advice to others, “have a very strong story and as many proof points as possible,” she suggests. But perhaps her best advice is to be doing something, and making a difference, that you believe in. “It’s really great to be a part of this change, and to help companies be more environmentally responsible.”

This article is part of a media partnership with Antler. For partnering opportunities, contact [email protected] or [email protected].