deCarbonized #18: Optimizing digital markets; 7 CDR solutions explained

💡 Spotlight story

Optimizing digital carbon markets for innovation and quality

As increasing numbers of web3 driven projects have entered the traditional VCM, so has interest and concerns over their potential impact.

The VCM is predicted to face a five-fold increase in demand by 2030, meaning that current challenges relating to market transparency, project financing and credit integrity need to be resolved. Web3 holds the potential to directly address these issues, leveraging blockchain technology to bring greater visibility, decentralization and transparency to the whole VCM supply chain.

Since 2021, 25 million carbon credits have been bridged onto the blockchain as the web3 ecosystem continues to expand. As innovation has continued to heat up however, concerns have arisen, particularly in relation to the quality of credits being bridged.

The Gold Standard are therefore setting up working groups to explore best practice for on-chain carbon, digital MRV and technology infrastructure for digital carbon markets. The groups will be accepting expressions of interest to participate until 1st June and be launched by Gold Standard, ClimateCHECK, the IOTA Foundation and Cosmos Partners.

Working group outcomes and recommendations will be referenced for synergies with those of the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA)’s Integrity in Digital Climate Markets Task Group, which were released in March.

Find the full story on Carbon Pulse

📢 Top news picks

• Millions of India’s smallholder farmers could soon access carbon market finance for regenerative practices
• Sinan Energy signs power purchase agreement to supply tokenized energy and carbon credits+
• Perennial has raised $18 million for its remote sensing soil carbon measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV)
• Web3 applications are starting to transform the agricultural sector, reducing carbon emissions
• Study details increasing investment in Direct Air Carbon Capture Solutions

⛓ Weekly market stats

Toucan Protocol is building carbon market infrastructure to finance the world's best climate solutions. These are our on-chain stats from 12.05- 18.05.22:

Carbon prices as of 18.05.22:

BCT - $2.62  |  NCT -  $4.92  |  NGEO - $10.58 |  GEO - $5.52
EU-ETS - $84.72

🦜 Want to learn more about Toucan? Join our Discord office hours- 5pm CET/11am ET Tuesday 24th May.

🌟 Technology snapshot

Carbon Dioxide Removal solutions

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) solutions represent an emerging area of focus and innovation within the voluntary carbon market.

This week’s blog post aims to provide you with a brief overview of seven of the key emerging carbon dioxide removal solutions:

• 🌳 1. Forestation
• 🌱 2. Soil carbon sequestration
• 🌊 3. Coastal blue carbon
• 🦑 4. Ocean based
• 🔥 5. Biochar
• 🗻 6. CO2 mineralization
• 🌀 7. Direct air capture and storage

Each is introduced and discussed in relation to their removal capacity, current cost and any barriers to implementation. This is followed by innovative examples of emerging projects and a case study of successful or scaled implementation.

The first four solutions utilise biological (nature-based) storage and the final three geological storage. There are greater risks associated with biological storage due to issues of permanence and leakage of carbon, as projects may experience some reversal or merely displace harmful activities to other ecosystems.

Conversely, geological storage involves CO2 either reacting with other natural elements to create a solid mineral or being injected into underground storage. Both of these techniques are considered to have high permanence, stable for hundreds of thousands of years.

While more stable however, geological approaches lack many of the sustainability co-benefits that nature-based projects create, such as improved livelihood opportunities and greater gender equality. Both project types are therefore valued differently by different end users.

Get to know some of the hottest projects in the space here.

💼 Jobs board

• Senior Full Stack Engineer, Atem - Global remote
• Director, Forest Carbon Origination, Bluesource - Canada remote
• Policy & Impact Lead, Toucan Protocol - Global remote
• Program Officer, Agriculture Innovation, Verra - Global remote
• Remote sensing/ML engineer, Open Forest Protocol - Europe remote
  

🌳 Hot on web3

Blockchain-powered marketplace launches Catalyst to scale CDR

Carbonfuture is a fully-digitalized carbon marketplace that uses blockchain to verify the life cycle of credits, from production to application. They currently offer high integrity biochar removal credits, guaranteeing a minimum permanence of 100 years.

Their aim is to provide carbon sinks in the giga-tonne of storage range, which has spurred them to launch the Catalyst programme. This will support companies developing innovative carbon removal solutions with the potential to remove mega-tonnes of carbon by 2030.

The Catalyst will take selected companies on the journey from proof-of-concept and demonstration, eventually enabling them to participate in Carbonfuture’s removals market.

Check out the full press release here.

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