Sustainability-focused behavioral science startup Signol announced that it has raised £2.5 million (USD$3.3 million) in a new funding round, with proceeds aimed at supporting its solutions to help hard-to-abate industries to decarbonize.

Founded in 2017, London-based Signol provides data and behavioral science-based solutions to help companies in emissions-intensive industries to reduce emissions by motivating and engaging employees towards sustainable decisions in their daily tasks. Initially focused on the aviation and maritime shipping industries, the company offers a scalable communications platform to deliver behavior change techniques aimed at reducing barriers for crew members to acting on opportunities to save fuel. The platform uses data to learn key actions that crews can take to reduce fuel usage, incentivizes the crew to take the key actions, and provides a dashboard to demonstrate carbon savings and to analyze data to understand the actions driving the savings.

The investment round was led by New York-based venture capital firm TMV, and included participation from industry stakeholders including ship operator Ultranav, and shipping company Mitsui’s venture arm MOL PLUS, in addition to reinvestment from VC firm East Innovate.

Ultranav’s Per Lange said:

“During my 40+ year maritime career, I’ve seen first-hand that it’s not always straightforward to appropriately engage crew members in efficiency initiatives without adding to their workload and mental stress.

“With a strong foundation in behavioural science, Signol’s solution enables crew members to contribute as much as possible to sustainability goals while also improving the day-to-day experience at sea for our vital workforce.”

TMV’s co-founder and general partner Marina Hadjipateras added:

“It’s crucial that we invest in solutions which can have an immediate impact to improve the sustainability and efficiency of legacy industries like shipping.”

According to Signol, the company’s offering enables rapid progress for companies towards their climate goals, with the company having achieved 100,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions savings at shipping and aviation companies to date, through reductions in fuel consumption of up to 1% in aviation and 12% in shipping.

The company added that following the new investment, it will focus on enhancing its solution and increasing commercial traction in the aviation and shipping industries, in addition to implementing a proof-of-concept in the corporate travel sector to use behaviour change to reduce avoidable emissions from business travel.

Michael Fanning, Signol’s CEO, said:

“Securing investment from industry-leading companies like Ultranav and MOL is a significant endorsement from the maritime industry that our human-centric approach is seen as a critical lever in companies’ sustainability strategies.”