Amee - the Avoiding Mass Extinction Engine - has built up a loyal following since it launched in 2005, its strategy of developing a "Wikipedia for carbon data" approach hitting a very distinct need among government and big business alike.
The site, which has grown from 2.5 staff at the start to 12 today, has scored seven-figure funding from O'Reilly Alphatech Ventures, Tag Venture, and Union Square Ventures, one of the investors behind Twitter.
Most of the money will be spent on new staff, chief executive Gavin Starks told us, to build up expertise in the data and science teams and on the business development side, where Amee wants to expand many more partnerships.
Starks estimates Amee has calculated the carbon footprint of 1 million people. Will the recession make it tougher for these kind of socially minded sites? Quite the reverse, he says.
"As Tim O'Reilly said, people want to work on stuff that matters. The budgets for sheep-throwing applications will dry up first, but there are two more drivers. Firstly, people wants to save money and we can help with that by making consumption more visible, and secondly we can help particularly with a reduction in footprints and consumption."
David Miliband, no less, signed off the site when it launched in 2005 to support the government's Act on CO2 programme, and since then the roll call has extended to the UK and Irish governments, Google UK, Radiohead and Morgan Stanley.
The site harvests data from all manner of sources, both public and private, to help monitor and analyse the world's energy data. That data has also been used at several hack days, including the Guardian's last month and at BBC Mashed in June.
Footprint. Photograph: Frames-of-mind/Flickr/Some rights reserved
