Economic Carbon Sequestration Monitoring

Reducing our carbon emissions is essential if we are to achieve Net Zero, address climate change and protect our futures. However, mitigation of unavoidable carbon-emissions will also require offsetting through large scale carbon sequestration. Nature Based Solutions (NBS) are emissions offsetting methods which capture atmospheric carbon in vegetation and soils through improved land management. NBS approaches such as tree planting are well known climate mitigation solutions, but restoration of soils also has potential to sequester significant volumes of carbon and are less well established. NBS also bring wider environmental benefit and are less expesive to implement than man-made carbon capture technologies. However, there is currently no efficient and robust way of monitoring and verifying NBS carbon storage, particularly within carbon stored below the ground. This lack of a robust measurement solution is inhibiting the generation of carbon credits and is preventing the financing of large scale NBS implementation.

Existing carbon monitoring solutions use expensive sampling with delayed results (e.g. soil coring), or high uncertainty (e.g. remote sensing and modelling). Eddy covariance monitoring can provide continuous, accurate measurements of carbon sequestration, but is prohibitively expensive for these types of project and requires significant expertise to operate and interpret.

We have developed a low-cost implementation of eddy covariance to allow timely and accurate carbon-credit verification. Using lower-cost instrumentation supported by novel software algorithms we will provide affordable and robust carbon credit verification for NBS. Unlocking the potential for carbon-credits to incentivise better land management will have substantial societal benefits of improved ecosystem and soil quality, food security, and more resilient water systems in addition to contributing to UK climate mitigation targets.

Our commercial approach will also bring wider benefits, including new knowledge-intensive jobs and generation of economic benefit through inward investment and global export of our services.