deCarbonized #24: Improving quality of carbon credit demand; Soil carbon finding scale in the VCM

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Image from the Indigo Ag website

💡 Spotlight story

Historic number of soil carbon credits enter the VCM

Indigo Agriculture have completed production of the first crop of verified, registry-issued agriculture carbon credits generated at scale, which will be issued by the Climate Action Reserve.

Each credit will retail for $40 a tonne, reflecting the growing corporate demand for credible options to meet net-zero emission targets.

Indigo's carbon farming program supports the development of agricultural practices that improve soil health, verifying resulting reductions in emissions and selling this impact on as carbon credits, sharing 75% of profits with the farmer. This establishes both a new global revenue stream for farmers and a credible, nature-based climate solution for businesses.

The issuance of around 20,000 credits will be the first in a repeatable process for producing the highest quality offsets among agricultural carbon farming programs.

You can read the full press release here.

Historic number of soil carbon credits enters the VCM

📢 Top news picks

  • Carbon removal funding initiative Frontier taps six companies in first round
  • World's first blockchain-based algae biomass project announced by Globacap
  • International carbon credit alliance expands its quality accreditation to reach new market entrants
  • European Parliament vote in favour of major expansion of the EU carbon market to include shipping and road transport

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⛓ 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 28.06- 04.07.22:

Carbon prices as of 04.07.22, with 7 day change:

BCT -  $1.89  (-5.5%)  |   NCT - $3.14  (6.5-%)

NGEO - $8.29  (-6.5%)  |  GEO - $4.10  (+3%)  |  EU-ETS - $86.18  (+3%)

🦜 This week Toucan will be at ETHBarcelona- come say hi to the flock!

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🌟 Blog feature

Scaling VCM Integrity: Quality of Demand


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

In our last post, we explored what makes a high quality carbon credit and their essential role in scaling the VCM. Their effectiveness  however, relies on being used to meet high quality demand, driven by offsetting organisations.

This week, we explore what high integrity demand looks like and the role of carbon offsets in delivering an organisation’s net zero targets.

Enjoy! 🌞

In recent years the VCM has grown at an unprecedented rate, accelerated by corporate offsetters engagement in net zero narratives. 60% of Fortune 500 companies have now made climate commitments, alongside many other of the world’s largest companies pledging to reach net zero by 2050. According to the Net Zero Tracker, nearly 40% of companies surveyed intend to use carbon offsets to achieve these aims.

It is important however, to understand what exactly net zero commitments entail and the role that carbon credits will play in their achievement, with analysis revealing often gaping holes in current company strategies.

There are several reputable standards under which commitments are now being made, such as the WCSBD’s Natural Climate Solutions Alliance and the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). These stipulate that comprehensive net zero strategies have a clear focus on two key aspects that effect carbon credit demand:

  1. Scope 1-3 emissions are first minimized, with carbon credits used only to offset residual or harder to abate emissions
  2. A shift in the longer term from carbon reduction to carbon removal offsets

Check out the full post to explore the role of scope 1-3 emissions, removal credits and standards development for quality VCM demand ✨

Photo by Boris Smokrovic

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What is Toucan?
Toucan is building the technology to bring the world's supply of carbon credits onto energy-efficient blockchains and turn them into tokens that anyone can use. This paves the way for a more efficient and scalable global carbon market.