deCarbonized #22: Scaling VCM supply integrity; DAC barriers to scale

Solid World DAO partners with Emstream Carbon Market place to boost forward sale of carbon credits; Crypto's potential to drive planetary regeneration is discussed in Forbes

deCarbonized #22: Scaling VCM supply integrity; DAC barriers to scale
Sourced from the Grit Daily website

💡 Spotlight story

Direct Air Capture industry snapshot highlights barriers to scale

DAC leader Climeworks have released their first 'Industry Snapshot', in which they explore current innovation funding and policy needed to scale DAC development at the pace required.

Promising progress is being made, with multiple technologies reaching demonstration scale. This has been assisted by supportive innovation funding environments; the US for example, has allocated $3.5 billion to four DAC hubs while the UK has dedicated £100m to advancing technology development.

Reaching ambitious IEA targets of 980 million tonnes of removal by 2050 however, require a massive acceleration in the rate of technology commercialization. Four key focus areas are identified:

  1. Continued investments in research and development to test new approaches and support technological breakthroughs.
  2. Improved regulatory clarity to ensure that DAC facilities come online quickly, with strong safeguards and protections in place.
  3. Robust first markets created through government procurement, which can set clear standards for projects.
  4. Dedicated support for community education and engagement, as well as funding to drive local job creation and community wellbeing.

Checkout the full Industry Snapshot here


Carbon capture and storage facility. Photo by the International Energy Agency

📢 Top news picks

💵 If you’re a VC or interested in more investment news, check out the web3 for climate newsletter


⛓ Market action

Weekly carbon stats

Toucan Protocol is building carbon market infrastructure to finance the world's best climate solutions. These are our on-chain stats from 12- 19.06.22:

Carbon prices as of 20.06.22, with 7 day change:

BCT -  $2.00  (-2.9%)  |   NCT - $2.93  (+15.3%)

NGEO - $9.23  (-11%)    |   GEO - $4.51  (-2.1%)   |   EU-ETS - $82.12 (-0.3%)

🦜 Want to learn more about Toucan? Check out Season 2 of our Twitter spaces!


Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko

🌟 New feature series!

Scaling VCM Integrity: Quality of Supply

At IETA's European Climate Summit, integrity was repeatedly identified that the largest barrier to scaling voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) in line with growing demand.

Over the next few weeks we will be delving in to a three part series, where we explore current market trends and emerging initiatives seeking to drive future integrity, covering:

  • 🌱 Quality of supply
  • 🛒 Quality of demand
  • 🌍 Quality of market operation

This week we begin with Quality of supply.

The integrity of a carbon credit consists of both essential quality criteria and more subjective characteristics. Quality generally refers to guaranteeing that one carbon credit = one tonne of carbon reduced or removed from the atmosphere. Achieving this depends on the presence of four key characteristics: Accurate baseline, Additionality, Permanence and Leakage.

Other more subjective aspects include the presence of different sustainability co-benefits (such as improved livelihoods or biodiversity protection) and if the credit is focused on reduction or removal.

To guarantee the quality and integrity of carbon credits, developers should clearly and ongoingly demonstrate that key project milestones are being met. This is achieved by transparently recording and sharing measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) data, a process considered to be highly resource intense.

Reducing the MRV burden on project developers is therefore also key in scaling high integrity credit supply. This can be addressed via greater upfront financing and digital MRV solutions, as well as the tokenization of carbon credits to increase transparency and price signalling.

Check out the full piece for more on key aspects of quality and initiatives seeking to simplify access to high quality credits.


Photo by Hans Veth

💼 Jobs board

https://blog.toucan.earth/content/images/2022/03/deCarbonized-divider.png

Thank you for reading deCarbonized! 👏

Reach out to us on social and join the community ✨

Enjoy deCarbonized? Suggestions on what to cover next? Let me know! @DrHolWat