William Butterly grew up on a mixed farm in Co Louth. He graduated in agriculture and worked in project management before setting up the environmental company Bionua in 2023.
Bionua is a data and tech business with two strands. On the product side, it has developed a breakthrough sensor that measures soil health in real time at a fraction of the cost of traditional soil-monitoring methods.
On the services side, it connects landowners and corporates to create large-scale nature restoration sites that generate carbon and biodiversity credits for companies looking to rebalance their climate impact.
“The idea for the sensor came from a realisation that there was no way to monitor soil health and get verifiable data at an affordable cost,” Butterly says. “Soil health is the single most important element as we depend on it for so many things, from food production and water filtration to carbon sequestration, yet up to now, the only measurement options available were sampling every few years or DNA testing, which is very expensive. Our monitor is a game changer due to its low cost and ease of use, but also because 75 per cent of biodiversity is below ground.”
The monitor, about the size of a litre milk carton, is a “bury-and-forget” device that delivers precise data about the health and abundance of the organisms living in the soil biome. This, in turn, gives an accurate measure of soil health. The device works across Irish clay soils, peatlands and even arid soils in warmer climates, sending its data directly to a mobile phone, laptop or tablet.
Bionua plans to manufacture the monitors in Ireland, with a likely price of about €50. Users may need multiple units depending on the area to be covered. Its potential customer base will include individual farmers, landowners, conservation, restoration and biodiversity organisations and corporates such as food processing companies that need proof that their ingredients come from sustainable farms.
Users get access to their data for free when they buy a unit, but Bionua will retain the right to keep the data, which it will crunch and sell on to interested parties such as government departments, research organisations and large agricultural concerns.
“As the business moves forward, the data element will become the main commercial focus,” says Butterly, whose company is Dublin-based and employs five people.
Bionua has grounded its operations on science and standards to underpin its operation, using ISO 14064 and the Restor platform from Crowther Labs in Zurich to integrate global restoration insights into its thinking.
It is also taking its lead from Oxford University’s offsetting principles, which guide organisations towards credible net zero. Butterly says the company’s strong emphasis on verification and best scientific practice puts Bionua a level above companies using AI to drive soil monitoring estimates.
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In 2023, Butterly completed a postgraduate course in digital assets and blockchain technology at Trinity College Business School, and it was around this time that the idea for Bionua began to take shape.
“I was aware of two big shifts happening simultaneously,” he says. “Companies were setting net-zero goals and building climate change risk into their corporate sustainability, and agriculture was moving more towards regenerative farming. Allied to this was the fact that serious money was being directed into nature and biodiversity restoration.
“Our regenerative projects focus entirely on nature and on transitioning land from intensive agriculture to permanent rewilding. This not only removes significant amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere but exponentially enhances biodiversity, which we can now measure accurately thanks to our monitoring system,” he adds.
“Corporates benefit by reducing Scope 3 emissions [indirect greenhouse gases in their value chains], improving corporate sustainability reporting and achieving their zero carbon goals while the income generated by the credits opens up a financial pathway for a move away from intensive agriculture to sustainable farming.”
Well aware of the poor reputation of carbon offset credits, Butterly stresses that Bionua is only interested in building high-integrity “in-setting” credits that are locally sourced. This means that rewilded sites are generally within 30km of the buyer and can be visited by staff and stakeholders. A biodiversity credit is equal to one tonne of carbon removed from the atmosphere and corporates sign up for a fixed period over which they buy a set number of credits. Bionua makes its money from this strand of the business by charging landowners and corporate customers a fee.
“We use advanced satellite imagery to measure carbon sequestration and storage at our sites to ensure that our nature capital credits reflect real, measurable environmental benefits,” Butterly says, adding that the company has tapped into the technical and scientific expertise of the Irish research community and its pool of PhD students to develop the company’s technology and data management capabilities.
“We needed to work with high-level data analysts, but as a start-up, we couldn’t afford to employ them full-time. So, we approached some PhDs who were working part-time jobs in cafes and bars to support themselves and asked them if they’d work for us instead,” says Butterly, who has self-funded Bionua to the tune of €350,000.
The company is now starting field trials for its soil monitor while applying for patents and looking to raise about €300,000 to fast-track the technology to market. Ireland is its initial focus, followed by the EU with particular emphasis on France and Germany.
