Photo: Eric England
In the first eight months of 2021, according to The Wall Street Journal, “global companies spent $107.2 million on carbon offsets, up from $72.1 million in all of 2020.” Experts expect the international carbon-offset market to reach $700.5 million by 2027.
Offset credits, also known as carbon credits, are essentially climate-change currency. Credits are earned through endeavors that remove, reduce or sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. One carbon credit is equal to 1 ton of carbon dioxide. Companies, investment firms, governments and other entities purchase large numbers of carbon credits in order to balance out carbon emissions they cannot eliminate or offset themselves.
The demand for carbon credits has ballooned over the past decade — many companies are looking for ways to reduce or eliminate their carbon footprint, to bolster their appeal to socially conscious investors and customers and pursue their own corporate missions. The price of carbon credits varies widely based on several factors, like the impact of the credit and where the company is purchasing the credit from.
Here’s a look at two Nashville companies producing carbon credits.
Enexor Bioenergy
Humans produce roughly 300 million tons of plastic waste annually. Roughly one-third — 1.3 billion tons — of all the food produced in the world is wasted. These startling statistics gave former Enron executive Lee Jestings some food for thought: What if we could turn garbage into green energy?
Turning organic and plastic waste into energy solves two pressing problems: It decreases waste and addresses energy poverty — that is, the term applying to the nearly 1 billion people worldwide who lack basic access to electricity. In 2014, Jestings and a team of engineers began developing a technology to do just that. The Enexor Bio-CHP is an on-site renewable energy solution that is contained in a 20-foot shipping container and powered by a microturbine.
Because of the technology’s rugged design, it can be deployed virtually anywhere, from a suburban retail center to a hurricane-prone island or even a remote village. Jestings says this eliminates expensive landfill and hauling costs associated with traditional waste practices. “The areas of the world with the most waste are often the areas who lack access to electricity and clean water,” he says. “Think Africa and Central America.”
One pound of organic waste can be converted into 3 kilowatts of energy. Each Bio-CHP — which processes waste through thermal oxidation and particulate filtration — produces 75 kilowatts of electricity and 200 kilowatts of thermal energy per hour, Jestings says. To put that in perspective, the average household in the United States uses 1.25 kilowatts of electricity per hour, or 30 kilowatts a day.
Jestings says a single machine can offset up to 2,000 tons of carbon annually. Enexor tokenizes the carbon credits, which then are sold to companies looking to offset their emissions and meet sustainability goals.
AgriCapture
AgriCapture
Another Nashville startup is helping farmers get paid for putting carbon back into their fields. Headquartered in downtown Nashville, AgriCapture works with farmers and landowners to adopt climate-friendly practices that aim to improve soil health by increasing carbon yields and developing a farming-driven carbon market.
“These efforts allow companies to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by paying farmers for their fields’ capacity to withdraw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and trap it in the soil,” says AgriCapture director of strategy Tyler Hull.
The green startup has teamed up with landowners and farmers with holdings in Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Mississippi for a carbon-capture project. The initial project will quantify, monitor, report and verify climate-friendly, regenerative land practices on 888 tracts of farm land totaling 51,691 row-crop acres, according to Hull.
Hull says regenerative land management practices, such as reduced or no-till farming and cover cropping, can increase and accelerate the amount of carbon stored in soil. These practices can simultaneously reduce emissions from agricultural operations — which, along with forestry and other forms of land use, account for 24 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
After half a decade of lean crop prices, many farmers may be intrigued by the idea of a new source of income that is less dependent on weather and agricultural commodity markets. Farmers who participate in carbon credit programs typically receive between $7 and $40 per acre, depending on practices and yields, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
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