Introduction According to the latest IPCC report, we are not able to reach the 1.5°C target by 2050 with reduction and avoidance voluntary carbon market (VCM) methods alone but need to heavily supplement them with carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects and credits.¹ Biochar is one of the most currently scalable CDR technologies² and is going to be the focus of this blog. 1. Definition and Overview of Biochar Biochar is charcoal that is produced by heating organic material, such as wood, crop residues, or manure, in a low-oxygen environment. The typical process for developing biochar i ..read more

In this blog, we summarize the findings from the second AlliedOffsets Buyer Ratings Report and zoom in on some trends we’ve noticed in the data. Overall, we have now rated 370 offset buyers from 22 industries, compared to 312 entities before. These now account for 238 million credits retired. A small portion of these are carbon dioxide removal (CDR) credits, which are new to this report. We’ve also slightly altered the methodology by changing the pricing data used in calculations of the buyer rating. This helps us reflect buyer spending activity on smaller registries; we have also incorpo ..read more

The latest IPCC report suggests that all pathways to limit global warming to 1.5°C depend on carbon dioxide removal (CDR)¹. Long term CDR can be both natural solutions, such as sequestering and storing carbon in trees and soil, or emerging technologies, such as direct air capture (DAC)² of CO2 directly from the atmosphere. However, how quickly can these long term CDR technologies be adopted by the voluntary carbon market (VCM)? While natural solutions such as agroforestry offer a low cost pathway to impact, costing less than $50 per tonne of CO2³, it has been calculated that to achieve ne ..read more

The AlliedOffsets API has seen big improvements in the last two weeks, with three major data points being added to help companies and organizations make better sense of the voluntary carbon market (VCM). The three categories of data improvements are: Data on corporate activity in VCM: underpinning our corporate ratings is a plethora of data on company activity — this is now included in the API for clients to make use of. The data includes scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, revenues, number of employees, and more. Coming next is data on SBTi activity among these firms. Historic price trend ..read more

Forestry Retirement Activity Up to Start 2023 It’s been a bumpy start to the year for the voluntary carbon market (VCM), with a stream of negative headlines leading to high-profile soul searching from some of the industry’s biggest players. Forestry credits have been especially maligned, with one firm even having its registry account suspended following an unflattering expose. Despite the gloomy narrative, however, retirement activity has generally kept pace with last year’s numbers: retirements are down just 6% vs. same time period last year. As of February 20th, retirements in the marke ..read more

We’ve launched the corporate buyer rating report! You can download the report here. The inaugural edition of the report outlines our methodology and shows the grades for 300+ companies we’ve rated to date. Higher estimated price paid = higher grade. Financial services represented the highest share of A+ firms. Overall, they make up the largest sector of the companies we’ve rated at 20%, followed by energy firms (17%) and industrial / manufacturing (14%). To find out more about how the scores are created, and how your company scored, download the report here! The Buyer Ratin ..read more

AlliedOffsets is happy to announce that we’re launching an alert service for the voluntary carbon market! We’ve already written about fire alerts, and this latest update opens up other alerts to the market. Kariba has been in the news lately: get updates whenever new retirements are made from the project. Users can sign up for alerts around the following topics (among others): Large project issuances and retirements: Find out when a project of interest is issuing or retiring new credits Corporate buyer activity: Keep track of what corporates are doing in the mark ..read more

Voluntary carbon markets are an increasingly popular way for organizations to offset their carbon emissions and take action on climate change. These markets provide a platform for organizations to purchase carbon credits from offsetting projects, such as renewable energy projects or reforestation projects, which help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the impact of climate change. However, accessing and utilizing the information from these offsetting projects can be challenging, especially for organizations that want to integrate carbon offsetting data into their existing sys ..read more

In this blog post, we will introduce carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methodologies which will have an important role in limiting global warming to 1.5C, as stated by the Paris Agreement. CDR methodologies range from widespread solutions such as agriculture and forestry to new technologies like direct air carbon technologies. The methods are explained in more detail in the points below. These technologies remain expensive compared to traditional offsetting methods and require a large amount of funding to scale. Here is how we define the methodologies: Direct Air Capture: Technologies that p ..read more

With an up and down 2022 coming to an end, we take a look back at the sectors which retired the most credits this year in the voluntary carbon markets. The total retirements this year have hit 190m, which is a decrease compared to 2021 total retirements (208m). With ten days to go in the year, the numbers will creep up, but it’s highly improbable that the amount of credits retired this year will match the number of retired credits last year. The top three sectors these credits have been retired from are renewable energy, forestry and land use and chemical processes. Both renewable ..read more