Be a carbon hero; buy sequestration credits from a farmer

Some farmers in the USA have been netting about $13 an acre per year, in payments for storing carbon dioxide in soils.

They are working with a start-up company that says regenerative or conservation practices on farms can keep the world on track for climate mitigation targets, to at least 2030, and maybe to 2040.

Nori LLC says the only way to return to safe levels of the greenhouse gases causing global warming is to remove these gases, most importantly carbon dioxide (CO2), from the atmosphere.

There is a theoretical capacity to store 10bn tonnes of carbon per year with regenerative farming practices.

The company has created a financial instrument that supports growers to increase carbon dioxide in their soils, by tapping into the market for products and services powered by captured carbon, which is estimated at $1tn in the US, and $6tn globally.

No fees are required for a farmer to get involved.

Instead, Nori takes a 15% transaction fee, when a buyer purchases one of their carbon sequestration credits, which are derived from regenerative farming, or other ways of sequestering carbon. Since last October, Nori issued 20,000 carbon sequestration credits (tradeable as Nori tokens, or Nori carbon Removal Tons, called NRTs).

Each NRT represents a blockchain verified claim that one tonne of CO2 has been removed from the atmosphere, and a contractual commitment that the recovered carbon will be retained in a terrestrial reservoir for a minimum of 10 years.

More and more companies are getting interested in the transition to a low-carbon economy, and they can buy into low-carbon goods through Nori.

Even ordinary consumers with a climate conscience can become carbon removal “heroes”, getting a digital certificate of ownership for the Nori carbon removals they buy.

A Nori certificate shows the amount of carbon removals, and the farmer and fields where the carbon was stored.

Nori’s system is equally suitable for big business clients or individuals.

To date, all of the sequestration credit digital assets listed for sale on its website have sold out.

The average price buyers have paid has been $16.50 per tonne.

Out of that, about $13 an acre per year gets back to the farmer.

That’s his return for going to minimum-tillage, better crop rotations, cover crops, or livestock integration — any one of the proven ways with which Nori farmers are sequestering, on average, nearly a tonne of carbon per acre per year.

These regenerative practices also include leaving crop residue on the land as long as possible, for natural decomposition, and addition of the residue nutrients to the soil.

Introducing livestock helps to sequester carbon, by naturally removing residue that otherwise would require mechanical removal (and the livestock leave behind residue nutrients in their dung).

Integrating perennial plants in the cropping area helps, by increasing the concentrations of live root systems in the topsoil.

These regenerative practices work in three ways:
• Minimising the time that soil is directly exposed to the air;
• Minimising water infiltration and retention at certain times of year;
• Minimising artificial addition of nutrients to the soil.

Nori are in the early stages of extending their business into Europe, said Aldyen Donnelly, co-founder and director of carbon economics at the Seattle-based company, when she spoke at the recent Alltech ONE Virtual Experience.

She said regenerative practices build up soil organic carbon stocks, increase soil water retention rates, and make soils healthier and more productive, as well as drawing global warming gases out of the atmosphere.

She explained the huge role of such practices in climate mitigation, but admitted that regenerative or conservation practices on farms cannot on their own solve the problem. That is up to the 50 companies which account for 57% of all emissions that originate with human activity.

Ms Donnelly said that since 1999, she has been estimating the greenhouse gas emissions of the world’s top climate polluters, a task made much easier when organisations like CDP started publishing estimates.

She told the recent Alltech ONE Virtual Experience that 28 of the world’s top 50 climate polluters are entirely state owned and controlled.

The others are privately held or publicly traded, but include eight still really controlled by state governments.

“If 50 companies account for so many emissions, and all of the countries around the world are committed to reducing emissions, then this shouldn’t be a huge challenge. But it is, and it’s because not one of these companies has a plan, whether they’re state operated or otherwise, to reduce their emissions and their consumers’ emissions at all by 2030,” said Donnelly.

“I am saying it’s unrealistic to think that the 2030 greenhouse gas reduction goal that we really need to make, we really need to get to, is going to be achieved through the Paris Accord, or other deliberations, with companies or the states that own and control what these companies actually do.”