Space details: Next Thursday: 9am PST, 12pm EST. Link coming soon.
Adrian and Alex @ Aera Force are starting a series of Twitter Spaces on carbon market x web3 challenges. The first space will happen on the 28th of April.
Please comment on the following points and we will wield it into the agendas of the Spaces.
Goal
High level discussion of major challenges, setting the landscape for what needs addressing (&does/doesn’t drive impact).
Challenges web3 VCM startups must address
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💡 “There's serious value here, but we all lose if we sacrifice fidelity in our race to build the next multi-billion dollar business.” - Alex Harbour
- The opportunities and “serious value” of web3 approaches to carbon markets:
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Goal: allow customers to make “net-zero” claims (differentiate good from bad); stop the mistakes of the past (we’d ideally avoid repeating history with $Bs of climate capital wasted), allow founders to work on legitimate challenges.
The market needs incentives to reduce or act as zero-sum in terms of removals and reductions — to reach a global net-zero
Currently the market drives you to offset with the cheapest possible credits instead of reducing emissions.
- Should our industry stop offering carbon credits a “carbon offset.” i.e., calling them offsets is likely misleading outside of ultra clear quality removals.
- Educating demand
- The main incentive for voluntary “offsetting” is currently marketing benefit — be “net-zero” or net-negative. That drives a demand for the cheapest possible (likely questionable) credits
- how to change that?
- what is a rigorous and robust framework that represents total ecosystem benefits and includes key stakeholders?
———> i.e., how do we avoid drastic oversupply of credits, but still value ecosystem services (what economic/govt models could allow global commons)
- Do we set a base removal price in the VCM like the EU market?
Does avoidance needs separating because it’s outside of that zero-sum paradigm?
- Does Avoidance and Removal in the same market cause problems