As countries across Asia push toward their climate targets, a new wave of startups is putting artificial intelligence (AI) at the centre of decarbonisation efforts. These companies are applying AI to a range of challenges, from cutting energy use in buildings and data centres to improving how we measure carbon savings in farming and forestry.
This article highlights six startups based in the region that are using AI to drive real emissions reductions. Whether it's helping businesses track Scope 3 emissions, fine-tune cooling systems, or verify carbon credits, each one is finding practical ways to make climate action more efficient, reliable, and scalable.
The Japanese startup offers a cloud-based platform designed to help companies measure and reduce their carbon footprint. The software tracks CO₂ emissions across business operations and supply chains, helping organisations set and meet their net-zero goals. With its recent acquisition of US-based startup nZero, ASUENE Inc. can now integrate real-time energy data, using AI to optimise both greenhouse gas emissions and energy costs.
As Japan moves toward its 2050 carbon-neutral target, companies face growing pressure to decarbonise. Asuene’s platform gives businesses the tools to identify energy waste and emissions hotspots, making it easier to comply with new disclosure regulations. By helping companies across Asia-Pacific clean up their operations, Asuene contributes to decarbonising entire value chains and supports the region’s shift away from coal-based energy.
Founded in 2019, Asuene already serves more than 10,000 clients. Its acquisition of nZero in May 2025 marks a major step toward global expansion, bringing advanced energy intelligence capabilities into its offering. This positions Asuene as a key player connecting climate tech ecosystems in Asia and North America.
Mitti Labs is working to reduce the climate impact of rice cultivation through a mix of technology and on-the-ground solutions. Founded in 2023, the Indian startup partners with smallholder farmers to promote sustainable practices that significantly cut methane emissions and water use.
The company’s platform combines remote sensing and AI-driven analysis to monitor rice paddies and assess outcomes. One key technique they support is Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD), which involves periodically draining rice fields. Using satellite data, Mitti Labs helps determine when fields should be flooded or left dry and shares guidance with farmers through local partners and apps. The platform also quantifies emissions reductions, enabling farmers to earn income through carbon credits.
Rice farming is a major source of methane, especially across South and Southeast Asia, where it accounts for a large share of agricultural emissions. Techniques like AWD can reduce methane emissions by up to 50% while saving water, an important benefit in drought-prone areas.
By making it easier for farmers to adopt these practices and by connecting them to carbon markets, Mitti Labs is turning a high-emission activity into a climate solution. This model not only reduces greenhouse gases but also supports farmers with additional income.
Though still early-stage, Mitti Labs has already launched five pilot projects across 30,000 hectares in India, reaching over 40,000 farmers. Independent validation shows a 35% reduction in methane emissions on participating farms. In 2024, the company secured a $3 million seed round to expand its work and is collaborating with institutions like the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) to refine its measurement tools.
Nika uses artificial intelligence and geospatial data to simplify and speed up the development of nature-based carbon offset projects. The Singapore-based startup has built proprietary machine learning models that assess forest carbon and land use data, helping project developers and investors evaluate a project's carbon potential much more quickly. Its audit-grade tools analyse critical factors such as baseline emissions, additionality, leakage, and permanence to determine the overall credibility of a carbon removal project.
Southeast Asia holds enormous potential for nature-based climate solutions, including forest conservation, mangrove restoration, and reforestation. Yet, turning these into viable carbon offset projects is often slow and resource-intensive. Nika’s platform cuts feasibility study timelines from the typical six to eight months to just about one month.
This faster, more accurate process helps get high-quality carbon removal projects off the ground, which is crucial as Asian countries lean on offsets to reach their climate targets. Better verification also helps ensure those credits are legitimate and trustworthy.
Founded in 2022 by former AWS engineers, Nika recently secured a seed round led by Silverstrand Capital to scale its platform. Its tools are already being used by leading carbon investors and financial institutions to evaluate project quality. By combining AI with ground-truthed climate science and academic partnerships, Nika is emerging as a go-to digital solution for bringing transparency and speed to nature-based climate action.
Smart Joules helps commercial buildings like hospitals, hotels, and factories cut down on energy waste through its AI-powered energy management system, DeJoule. This system connects to a building’s HVAC and electrical equipment using IoT sensors, allowing it to monitor performance in real time.
Using machine learning, DeJoule identifies inefficiencies, like air conditioning units running when not needed or chillers operating below optimal levels, and automatically adjusts controls to reduce electricity use. Smart Joules also offers a pay-as-you-save model, meaning buildings can be retrofitted with no upfront cost. Instead, the company shares in the energy savings generated by the system.
Cooling and ventilation can account for up to 60% of energy use in Indian commercial buildings, much of which is wasted due to outdated or poorly calibrated systems. With India’s electricity grid still heavily reliant on coal, that wasted energy comes with a high carbon cost.
Smart Joules’ AI system helps address this by optimising cooling demand, often cutting electricity use by 20-30%. For businesses, this not only reduces emissions but also brings down operating costs. As urban areas across Asia grow, solutions like this play a key role in addressing energy inefficiency and reducing the strain on power grids.
Founded in 2014, Smart Joules has received recognition for its impact, and its CEO Arjun Gupta was named to Forbes' “30 Under 30.” The DeJoule system is now used across major hospital networks, where it has delivered significant cost and emissions savings. Backed by investors such as RMI and ADB Ventures, the company launched JouleCOOL in 2023, offering a cooling-as-a-service model for large campuses.
Accacia is a climate-tech startup using AI and cloud-based tools to help decarbonise real estate and infrastructure. The Indian startup’s platform connects with existing systems used by property owners to measure emissions across entire building portfolios, run simulations for low-carbon retrofits, and track progress toward net-zero goals.
The software estimates both operational emissions from energy use and embodied carbon in construction materials, offering recommendations to improve designs or upgrade systems like HVAC.
Buildings are responsible for a large percentage of global emissions, and Asia’s cities are growing rapidly. With urban construction booming in India, Southeast Asia, and China, the pressure to build and operate more efficiently is high. Accacia’s AI platform helps address this by identifying energy waste, suggesting retrofits, and easing the path toward compliance with new emissions reporting rules, such as those in Singapore. It also supports financial institutions and developers under increasing pressure to decarbonise their portfolios and respond to investor demands for sustainable assets.
Founded in 2022 by a team with backgrounds in real estate and software, Accacia has quickly built momentum. The company is accredited by GRESB, a global benchmark for real estate sustainability, and raised US$6.5 million in 2024 through a pre-Series A round led by Illuminate Financial.
Red Dot Analytics, a spin-off from Nanyang Technological University, uses AI-powered digital twin technology to improve energy efficiency in data centres. Its software builds a dynamic virtual replica of a data centre that learns continuously from real-time sensor inputs like temperature, server loads, and cooling system performance.
The platform then applies AI algorithms to optimise operations, adjusting cooling distribution, predicting equipment failures, and automating workflows to reduce energy use while maintaining uptime. By implementing RDA’s system, operators can significantly cut the amount of power needed for cooling, which is one of the largest energy demands in data centre operations.
Asia is seeing rapid growth in data centres, especially in hubs like Singapore and expanding markets such as India. These facilities consume large amounts of electricity, with cooling systems accounting for a major share of that demand. Since many Asian countries still rely on fossil-fuel power, improving efficiency directly lowers carbon emissions.
RDA’s solution helps data centres reduce unnecessary energy use, addressing both cost and climate concerns. In Singapore, where data centres use around 7% of the country's electricity, this kind of optimisation is particularly important given new regulatory standards for energy efficiency.
Recognised by Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and winner of DCD and ASEAN ICT awards for data-centre efficiency. Its platform, which blends AI, simulation, and IoT in what it calls an "industrial metaverse," has demonstrated up to 40% savings in cooling energy during pilot projects.
The company has also partnered with major data centre operators and received funding through Singapore’s Green Data Centre program. As digital infrastructure expands, RDA is helping reduce the climate impact of the internet across Asia.