Technology for Carbon Sequestration

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Will farmers get paid for the carbon they are sequestering in soil through soil health practices? Well, the short answer is yes and it’s already happening. But the longer answer is there is still a lot of tooling and infrastructure that needs to be built for this to be viable long term approach to climate change mitigation. Investor Sarah Nolet of Tenacious Ventures says they are investing in businesses that can help.

Nolet… “Then you get into sort of the marketplaces and the incentives, like what is actually driving the behavior change and how is the data flowing and how are those incentives being created? We think that that space is really interesting. And so Nori would fall into that marketplace category. Then you've got to actually validate that when you have an incentive and you have behavior change and you have data flowing that the practice you wanted to incentivize and the outcome you wanted to create actually happens. And that would be the measurement, reporting and verification space or MRV. Another space that we believe is incredibly susceptible to technology entering and playing a role.”

Nolet says technology is needed so that the carbon data can be managed and rewarded in aggregate.

Nolet… “Like we don't buy car insurance based on like you, Tim, as an owner and your specific car, we buy it in the aggregate. And so why would we think that carbon would be any different? And so we see that as high potential and have invested in Regrow there.”

In addition to the two investments she mentioned, Nori and Regrow, Nolet sees further opportunities in this area of climate-smart agriculture.