The cleantech crusaders of the world (including many of you!) have been pouring time and energy into battling climate change. And for the most part, the goal has been to slow down carbon emissions by transitioning to clean energy and clean vehicles.

Though, here’s the thing… we are already 750 billion tons of carbon over the “safe” atmospheric CO2 level. It doesn’t take a mathematician to realize that we need start subtracting. But how?

How to Remove CO2 from the Atmosphere

Ecological

The old-fashioned way to do something often gets overlooked. Think back to biology class. Trees, shrubbery, kelp, and all other photosynthesizing lifeforms take carbon right out of the air. Seeding forests would do the trick to lower CO2 levels.

In China, where one million people die from air pollution each year, the southern city of Liuzhou has given the green light to construct 70 buildings intertwined with green life. Liuzhou will become the world’s first “forest city” housing one million plants and 40,000 trees, absorbing almost 10,000 tons of carbon per year.

Industrial

Other methods of removing carbon from the atmosphere have come about from brilliant innovations, which we have previously written about. Various methods to capture carbon exist, some more energy intensive than others. UC Berkeley chemistry professor Peidong Yang is developing a process that emulates plant life by using water, sunlight, and carbon to produce fuel. The promise of this technology goes further than solving environmental issues; it could one day provide fuel and oxygen for people on Mars.

Check out this video of Professor Yang’s talk to understand this artificial photosynthesis:

We Have the Solutions! What’s the Holdup?

Here’s the challenge: currently there is no incentive for people to spend money to remove CO2. Think of carbon as waste, like garbage, and we’re all able to put our “garbage” on the street because there’s no cost to do so. One startup is creating a “street sweeper”.

Enter Nori, the Carbon Street Sweeper

An ambitious team has come up with the right incentive to get people to not just reduce, but to remove carbon. They have created Nori. Nori, the Japanese word for a type of seaweed, will create tokens on a blockchain to pay people for one exact thing: removing carbon from the atmosphere.

Anyone who successfully removes carbon from the air, verified by uploading data to Nori’s platform, will receive a Carbon Removal Credit (CRC) smart contract. Nori tokens can be used to purchase these carbon removal credits. Purchasing these CRCs will give people and businesses a direct method to combat climate change. And as more people buy into the system, investments in CRCs will be worth more.

The folks at Nori believe that “There is a sufficient potential to store carbon in soils, biomass, minerals, in buildings, underground, and in the deep ocean.”

“The challenge of reversing climate change therefore becomes a matter of having properly aligned incentive structures to pay for pulling carbon out of the atmosphere, easy ways to trust that carbon has been removed, and a distributed and open-sourced system that can scale to address the scope of the problem.” -Christophe Jospe, Nori co-founder

Act on Climate

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