ClimaFi fights greenwashing with the first platform for trading UK forest and peatland carbon credits built on the Concordium blockchain
ZUG, Switzerland and LONDON, 10 February 2023 /PRNewswire/ — UK climate technology company ClimaFi announces the first trading platform to offer carbon credits from verified UK peatlands and woodlands. CLMT Exchange, a regenerative project built entirely on the Concordium decentralized blockchain, will allow businesses and organizations to offset their emissions using domestic credits.
Companies face several challenges in the fight against climate change. This includes increasing pressure to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, as well as recent bills to impose “deterrent” penalties on companies that make unsubstantiated environmental claims.
As concerns about climate change increase, many companies are taking steps to reduce their carbon footprint. However, not all claims to reduce emissions are real, leading to the phenomenon known as greenwashing. A solution to this problem is the use of blockchain for issuing verified certificates for emission reductions from peatlands and forest areas.
Peatlands and woodlands store at least 550 gigatonnes of carbon globally, more than twice the amount of carbon stored in all the world’s forests: peatlands cover only 3% of the Earth’s surface, but account for the largest terrestrial carbon store in the world.
In the UK, peatlands make up almost 10% of the total national land, but up to 80% of them are currently in a state of degradation. As they deteriorate, they release 20 million tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere each year, which is 4% of the UK’s total annual greenhouse gas emissions. The UK market has around three million hectares of peatland from which to produce carbon credits, and their successful recovery (an opportunity worth £2.8 billion a year) could play an important role in the fight against climate change.
The CLMT Exchange offers an opportunity to drive this transformation by focusing on high-quality carbon credits with the support of existing government-approved standards agencies such as the Peatland Carbon Code, a voluntary certification standard for UK peatland projects, and the Woodland Carbon Code, a UK quality assurance standard for woodland creation.
A report by the Grantham Research Institute shows that UK companies often compensate for their emissions by buying foreign carbon credits due to a lack of high-quality domestic projects, but by buying carbon credits through the CLMT Exchange, companies and investors will be able to secure credits with high integrity and help drive the regeneration of degraded UK peatland.
The CLMT Exchange’s carbon credits help companies offset emissions while facilitating national efforts to meet Article 6 obligations under the terms of the Paris Agreement. In addition, the CLMT Exchange offers the unique opportunity to trade carbon credit issuance units on a secondary market, thereby providing liquidity and support for investors and traders entering this fast-growing asset class.
As the very first marketplace for trading peatland credits, the CLMT Exchange will be a unique blockchain-based place for companies to buy – and most importantly, trust – regional credits, while increasing demand for high-quality Peatland Carbon Credits alongside national programs. Finally, the program will reinforce the importance of ClimaFi’s upcoming “Peatland Protocol”, a new science-based digital methodology (“dMRV”) for accurate and transparent measurement and monitoring of all projects.
As the only layer-1 blockchain with a built-in self-repudiation ID framework, Concordium blockchain plays an important role in ensuring that all of the above can be done correctly, safely, efficiently and for the betterment of society. The partnership is set to begin immediately, with carbon credits being made available for trading on the CLMT Exchange in Q2 2023.
Lone Fønss Schrøder, CEO of Concordium, says: “On the CLMT exchange, companies can compensate and regenerate land in close proximity to where they discharge using blockchain-based, trusted, verified credits. This creates a tamper-proof record of carbon credits that can be easily audited and verified, and it provides a reliable and trustworthy way to demonstrate a company’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions and combating climate change, reducing the risk of greenwashing and promoting responsible business practices.”
Tim de RosenClimaFi’s CEO and co-founder says: “We are excited to build the CLMT Exchange on Concordium. A very attractive feature of the Concordium blockchain is its regulatory, built-in ID layer.”
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SOURCE Concordium
