Keeling Curve

Primary Project Category:

Project Summary / Description:

Our purpose is to enable developers of natural climate solutions to account for and get financial value for their sequestered carbon as well as other benefits. Climate Cleanup Foundation, Drawdown Europe and partners are for this purpose developing an Open Natural Carbon Removal Accounting standard. We make accounting, certifying and transacting credits / certificates for natural carbon removal as open, simple and holistic as possible. This is a systemic missing link towards removing gigatons of carbon while regenerating nature.

How Project Affects Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions:

We increase uptake by very specifically enabling entrepreneurs in nature based solutions to monetize their added value. We work closely with a good number of these entrepreneurs and have analysed the market, which convinced us that open, holistic and effective carbon (+) accounting, certificate creation and sales is a pivotal missing link. Oncra will very measurably increase uptake, as we account for that uptake and then enable the financing of projects. Carbon accounting has become a business model in itself. Certification costs of ~$200.000 rule out all small (local) projects, whilst these can scale fast and distributively. And to limit global warming well below 2¬∞C, we now need exponential action, which is by definition distributive. We focus on finding carbon accounting bright spots ‚Äî the best of what‚ already out there ‚Äî while discarding any unnecessary weight. In a community of practice we unite scientists, policy makers, accountants and entrepreneurs to develop a lightweight yet comprehensive carbon accounting methodology. By streamlining the accounting process, capital flows directly to nature-based solutions. A proof of concept web-app has been delivered and a MVP-transaction platform is under construction. There are multiple scalable natural climate solutions that all require different accounting systems. That‚ why we follow a portfolio approach to develop a number of models, as 'calculation tools', for bio-based building, regenerative agriculture methods, enhanced rock weathering and, later this year, seaweed solutions. A seaweed sinking method is in the making following our work in the carribean done around the great atlantic sargassum belt. For biobased building for example this also results in a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool to easily compare scenarios of the impact of different building materials, looking at carbon, nitrogen, biodiversity, well-being and affordability. Project developers are very interested in selling these ‚ full carbon credits‚ . We continue to build the portfolio with regenerative farmers, rock weathering innovators, seaweed and blue carbon entrepreneurs and others. We work closely with climate innovators, including Commonland, The Seaweed Company, reNature Foundation, Bamboologic, Miscancell, True Nature Foundation, Treemendo, Project Vesta, Land Life Company and others. All these partners have nature inclusive ecosystem approaches. These innovators in natural solutions all have identified a common roadblock: mainstream carbon accounting was developed for energy projects and large scale afforestation/reforestation/forest conservation. These ‚ advisor-heavy‚ carbon accounting approaches do not align with the reality of innovative projects like agroforestry, seaweed cultivation, and other nature based solutions that sequester carbon and can scale distributively. As a result, emerging value chains for which carbon sequestration and other natural benefits are required develop slowly. Effective accounting for natural carbon removal solutions is a missing link for the development of new projects ‚ and hence for the removal of CO2 from our oceans and atmosphere. Current carbon accounting is closed, complex and narrowly focused on carbon. We make it open source, simple and holistic. According to the World Economic Forum, the new nature economy and the Fourth Industrial Revolution go hand in hand, by blurring the lines between our physical, digital, and biological spheres. Soon, it‚ possible for billions of people to have open access to real-time data of crop growth, soil nutrients, water levels and carbon removal. But as of now, carbon accounting takes place behind closed doors. Models, calculations and (to a lesser extent) methods are proprietary, as the salaries of third party certifiers depend on it. To fully harness the symbiosis between nature and technology, carbon accounting requires effective data governance mechanisms that support the exchange of information and protect against misuse. Oncra follows an open, data-driven approach for underpinning the specification and presentation of effective accounting for natural carbon removal solutions. The aim is to provide robust but free, open, and easy-to-access information and make all Oncra methodologies and solutions more accessible to people‚ lives and to provide data in a format that makes it useful for its users at every scale and context. Our frameworks, calculation sheets and models will be made open source and open access. Oncra uses a variety of data sources and providers for creating the most detailed up-to-date natural carbon accounting database. The identification, characterisation and integration of relevant data sources is based on a common framework for documentation, comparative analysis and synthesis. This doesn‚ t only allow to provide the most suitable information, but also to analyse the user experience and data gaps for improving future carbon accounting systems. In this regard, an important pillar of the project is the Partnership with Drawdown Europe Research Association (DERA). DERA is an independent but interconnected organisation within the Drawdown global research collaborative (next to Drawdown USA research Association, Drawdown India, and a growing list of regional efforts globally). Underpinning this work is the premise that implementing the right ‚ system of solutions‚ to solve the climate emergency will enable a new, regenerative system and economy based on human and planetary well-being, of which enhancing carbon sinks is a main cornerstone. Oncra collaborates with Drawdown Europe Research Association to define the climate solution potential on a global and local level. This is because we believe that down-scaling the information from global to local is essential to support decision-makers to implement regional Drawdown solutions rapidly and sustainably. The created full carbon credits will be registered in a distributed ledger, independently governed and owned by all participants in a carbon commons. Oncra organises trust not by endless assessments and validation but by peer review, open calculations and a personal, human centered approach. Oncra will speed up development of value chains, as ecosystems, by collaboratively developing full carbon accounting for natural climate solutions. This will make early phase projects attractive to investors by enabling innovators to connect to (voluntary) carbon markets.

Sustainable Development Goals:

Impact on Underrepresented Groups:

Oncra empowers entrepreneurs of all ages, colours and feathers to close their business cases, from tree farmers in Kenya (Africa Wood Grow) to seaweed farmers in the Caribbean. Our team consists of a diverse group of people with diverse backgrounds. We work with volunteers, interns, recently graduated students and (re-starting) professionals. Oncra gives young professionals the opportunity to develop themselves, while developing the platform. Amongst others, we work with Future Planet Studies, Utrecht University, the Tesla Minor from the University of Amsterdam, the MSc Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences based Digital Society School. 
Oncra recognizes the need to identify measures and initiatives to promote gender-balance. Gender balance is considered a factor within our holistic carbon accounting assessment framework. 
Also, infrastructure and design of ONCRA will promote inclusion and non-discrimination. For example, the graphical interfaces developed account for accessibility to include people with disabilities and multilingual interfaces to promote adoption amongst non-native English speakers regardless of the level of digital maturity.

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