The Solution: Only Verified Removal Counts
TRACER champions a carbon-negative approach, focusing on technologies that actively remove CO2e from the atmosphere. This strategy aligns with the recent COP29 climate finance agreement, which recognizes carbon removal credits as the most viable solution to curb climate change.
Success Factors for CDR Solutions:
Solutions should permanently remove CO2, focusing on long-term sequestration (e.g., geological storage).
Solutions should be scalable to the gigaton level for significant impact.
Robust tracking of carbon credits is essential for trust and accountability.
A liquid market for carbon credits is needed to incentivize investment and price discovery.
Effective governance ensures integrity and sustainability.
The CARROT Approach:
A grading system incentivizes solutions with long-term sequestration (10,000+ years).
A decentralized model fosters scalability and inclusivity.
Each CARROT token is linked to the project and validators, ensuring transparency.
A dynamic marketplace promotes efficient trading of carbon credits.
CARROT's token architecture combines liquidity and traceability.
The TRACER DAO oversees the ecosystem, ensuring fairness and transparency.
Categorize where carbon is captured:
Various initiatives are exploring ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere. These approaches can be broadly categorized based on where the carbon is captured – ocean, land, or air – and the technology used for removal – biological, chemical, or mechanical/industrial.
these include iron fertilization to stimulate phytoplankton growth, which absorbs CO2 and sequesters it in the ocean floor upon decomposition.
these solutions encompass enhanced weathering, where silicate-based rocks are scattered on fields distributed on land, reacting with acidic rainwater to form carbonates that eventually sequester CO2 in the ocean.
these primarily involve direct air capture technologies, which filter air and extract CO2 for storage or utilization.
Nature-based solutions limited and temporary
While nature-based solutions like forests and grasslands exist, their sequestration capacity is limited and temporary. The total CO2 stored in the planet's plant life is estimated at 700 gigatons, a third of the amount that needs to be removed. Moreover, the risk of reversal due to forest fires or decomposition is high, making these solutions insufficient on their own to reverse global warming.
TRACER supports a diverse portfolio of carbon removal solutions, each with its own mechanisms and potential impact, such as, but not limited to:
This technique accelerates the natural process of rock weathering, where certain types of rocks react with CO2 in the atmosphere and convert it into stable carbonate minerals. By crushing and spreading these rocks, ERW can significantly enhance carbon removal rates. This method can be applied to agricultural lands, potentially offering co-benefits such as improved soil health and increased crop yields. ERW has the potential to remove billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere annually, leveraging existing industries like mining and agriculture for rapid scaling.
This approach involves adding nutrients to the ocean to stimulate phytoplankton growth, which absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. While promising, this method requires careful consideration of potential ecological impacts and the need for standardized methodologies to monitor and report its effectiveness. Innovative startups are developing optimized nutrient delivery systems to minimize ecological risks and maximize carbon sequestration.
DAC technologies use chemical processes to directly capture CO2 from the ambient air. This captured CO2 can then be permanently stored underground or utilized for various applications. DAC offers the advantage of being deployable in various locations, independent of emission sources. It can achieve carbon removal with a smaller land footprint compared to natural solutions like afforestation.
Biochar is a charcoal-like material produced by heating biomass in a low-oxygen environment. This process, known as pyrolysis, locks carbon into a stable form, preventing its release into the atmosphere. Biochar can be used as a soil amendment, improving soil health and fertility while sequestering carbon. It is estimated that biochar can contribute to removing between 0.5 to 2 gigatonnes of CO2 per year globally.
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