Nori

Overview

Nori is a cleantech company launching a carbon dioxide removal marketplace in 2020. It will allow anyone globally to pay farmers to remove a set amount of carbon (in tons) from the atmosphere, store it in their farmland soil, and verify the work was completed. Farmers can sequester carbon by planting certain crops (called cover crops), not tilling their soil, and other techniques that are known to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and restore nutrients to the soil.

The way it works is US Farmers earn Carbon Removal Certificates (CRCs) by removing carbon from the atmosphere and independent 3rd party verifiers are paid to verify that the carbon was actually removed. Buyers purchase Carbon Removal Certificates through the marketplace that are then retired. Suppliers (initiallly at launch farmers but could be others) sell their CRCs to these buyers to get paid for their work. The Nori marketplace utilizes its own blockchain to make it easy to transparently verify the work was completed.

The system has a double benefit to farmers - it directly pays them but it also helps them change to farming practices that fix soil erosion, a huge issue facing farmer globally

The team is based in Seattle, Washington.

Why I like Them

This is an extremely innovative solution to reversing climate change, not just slowing it down like most solutions out there. Will it work to make an impact on climate change - I have absolutely no idea! However, its easy to see this or a similar mechanism potentially catching on. Nori’s model would incentivize farmers to switch to farming practices that help regenerate the health of their soil while pulling greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Buyers of these CRCs include everyone from governments, companies that pollute or want to do a public relations actions, or individual citizens that see this as a form of charitable giving.

It will be a fascinating experiment to see if business models like these take off in the coming decades as the planet gets ever hotter.