This project, installed in Cambodia, produces biochar and sequesters carbon using pyrolysis in a rice mill, transforming an undervalued byproduct of the rice industry into effective and affordable agricultural inputs for smallholders. The result has been a 40% average increase in crop yields, which means higher revenue for farmers as well as a reduction in chemicals and irrigation costs.

HUSK is the leading producer of biochar, carbon-based fertilizers, and natural pesticides for smallholders. Biochar is a pure, high-carbon form of charcoal made from plants, which improves soil quality and increases crop yields by enhancing water holding capacity, nutrient uptake, and fertilizer efficiency, as well as by stimulating microbial activity in the soil—all while sequestering carbon.

The main purpose of this project is to generate clean forms of electricity through renewable wind energy sources. The project involves the installation of a 100-megawatt wind farm in the state of Gujarat, India. Over the first ten years of its crediting period, the project will replace anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gasses (estimated to be approximately 172,333 tCO₂e per year), thereon displacing 183,960 megawatt-hours/year of electricity from the generation-mix of power plants connected to the Indian grid—itself dominated by thermal and fossil fuel-based power plants.

In addition to expanding renewable wind energy production, this project offers myriad co-benefits, from local job creation to the assurance of higher quality air for those living within the Gujarat region, thanks to the prevention of environmental pollution from oil, gas, and coal-generated electricity.

This project is both additional (it would not have happened without the carbon credit revenues that make the project financially attractive for investors) and permanent (the avoidance of the emissions that would have occurred from a non-renewable energy facility occur in perpetuity).

For as long as fire and plant life have coexisted, biochar has played a role in the fertility of topsoil, having been used by Amazon farmers over 2000 years ago to improve soil health and plant growth. That's because it’s effective in retaining water and nutrients in the root zone where it's later made available to plants, increasing soil tilth and supporting microbial communities.

Nowadays, biochar production can be optimized through million dollar installations—a substantial investment that’s not often feasible in the global south. In addition to the initial costs, these installations also require great amounts of centralized biomass, which rural infrastructures do not support and whose transport in such a context would be detrimental from a carbon footprint standpoint.

Dutch Carboneers focuses on decentralized project development, in which biomass owners benefit from the presence of biochar in their soils. The company provides local farmers with technology and training to become certified carbon-sink biochar creators. By selling carbon credits on the voluntary carbon credit market, Dutch Carboneers provides these farmers with greater economic stability while improving their soils and effectively storing carbon for over a thousand years. In later phases, Dutch Carboneers will move towards more robust technology solutions that will require logistical infrastructure improvements.

Every project under the Global Artisan C-Sink Guidelines, developed and published by Carbon Standards International, is certified by CERES CERT. Each project carries modifications, as local practicalities differ from one geographical region to the next.

From a carbon sink perspective, the training of the farmers who will be making the biochar is by far the most important. If the biomass is too wet, for example, it does not provide enough energy to maintain a steady fire. This causes it to smoke with subsequent methane emissions, which is of course the very opposite of a carbon sink. By training farmers to skillfully store and dry the biomass, as well as to properly control the fire by adding biomass in a timely and precise manner, methane emissions can be really low. It's worth noting that the Global Artisan C-Sink Guidelines establish a rather high methane-emission average to err on the side of caution. It also conducted its research with relatively wet biomass, leading to high methane emissions. In the future, Dutch Carboneers aims to chart methane emissions from different biomass sources at varying moisture levels for a more representative average.

Because of the decentralized set up, transparency and traceability are important. To track every step in the entire process, Dutch Carboneers has developed a closed mobile application through which all farmers trained to produce biochar are registered. In addition, local supervisors will be trained and certified. Supervisors will receive a notification once the farmer wants to make a batch of biochar, in order to physically supervise the entire production. They will then upload critical information to the mobile application to provide evidence for biomass presence, biochar production, produced volumes, and biochar end application.

To lower the initial investment costs and speed up the project's launch, the initial phase of the project will see the digging of soil pits. Traditionally, this is the way biochar is crated. In the next phase, soil pits will be replaced by Kon-tiki kilns to give farmers better tools and to improve production comfort. The Kon-tiki kilns will be financed through the income of carbon credit sales. In a following phase, Dutch Carboneers will look into other small/mid-size technology options. By offering different solutions, Dutch Carboneers aims to make sure that it doesn't force a project into a specific direction of biochar production, thus maintaining independence in solving for a project's structure.

Everest Carbon is a US-based Enhanced Weathering (EW) company running projects in India. Their mission is to be the first ERW company to offer carbon removal below $100/tonne at an annual scale of over 1 million tonnes—with a targeted annual capacity of 1 billion tonnes before 2035.

To do so, the company applies Wollastonite, a natural mineral that weathers orders of magnitude faster than other materials. This enables them to directly measure their irreversible carbon removals in the form of additional solid inorganic carbon content in soil samples from their fields—providing the strongest possible evidence of carbon removal. The methodology is based on the academic work and field trials of their scientific advisor, Prof. Rafael Santos, a leading scholar on ERW worldwide.

Each tonne of Wollastonite removes 449.5kg of CO2e, including a 19% uncertainty discount to conservatively account for any potential leakage and uncertainty in accordance with the most recent scientific literature and field trial data. Thanks to the close proximity of their fields to the Wollastonite mine, the project has outstanding net negativity with cradle-to-grave emissions equaling only 59.74 kg of CO2e per tonne of Wollastonite.

Beyond high-quality carbon removals, Everest Carbon sets itself apart by combining its EW projects with nature restoration projects in rural areas of India, working hand-in-hand with local communities—and thereby delivering socio-environmental co-benefits that truly stand out. Last but not least, India has highly advantageous geo-climatic conditions that make it ideal for EW.

This project's goal is to protect and restore 149,800 hectares of peatland ecosystems, offering local people sustainable sources of income while tackling global climate change. The project area stores vast amounts of CO₂ and plays a vital role in stabilizing water flows, preventing devastating peat fires, enriching soil nutrients, and providing clean water. Rich in biodiversity, it is home to large populations of many high conservation-value species—including some of the world’s most endangered, such as the Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) and Proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus)—and is surrounded by villages for which it supports traditional livelihoods, including farming, fishing, and non-timber forest-product harvesting.

The project area is located entirely within state-designated production forest which, without the project, would be converted to fast-growing industrial pulpwood plantations. The project prevents this, having obtained full legal control of the production forest area through an Ecosystem Restoration Concession license, blocking the applications of plantation companies.

This project has completed the additional Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) standards. The forest habitat supports 2 critically endangered, 11 endangered and 31 vulnerable species. Preliminary estimates indicate an estimated population of nearly 4,000 orangutans and 10,000 Bornean gibbons, as well as over 500 Proboscis monkeys. These populations represent over 5% of the remaining global populations of these species. Overall, the project area’s biodiversity includes 157 birds, 67 mammals, 41 reptiles, 8 amphibians, 111 fish, and 314 floral species.

The main purpose of this project is to generate a clean form of electricity through renewable wind energy. It involves the installation of a 250 MW wind power project in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, through a special purpose vehicle (SPV). 

Over the ten years of its first crediting period, the project will replace anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG’s) estimated to be approximately 7,07,799 tCO₂e per year, thereon displacing 755,550 MWh/year of electricity from the generation-mix of power plants connected to the Indian grid, which is mainly dominated by thermal/fossil fuel-based power plants.

The Tamil Nadu project fulfills the Ministry of Environment and Forests’ four indicators of sustainable development by improving: 1) social well-being through job creation and infrastructural developments, 2) economic well-being through clean energy investment, 3) technological well-being by the promotion of wind-based power generation in the region, and 4) environmental well-being by the reduction of fossil-fuel dependence and the avoidance of GHG emissions. The project boasts documented contributions to Sustainable Development Goals 7, 8, and 13. Wind energy is considered to be a high-permanence and low-leakage solution.

This project generates clean electricity by utilizing renewable hydropower, then exports the generated net electricity to the regional grid for sale. Doing so results in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) into the atmosphere, which would have otherwise occurred due to the production of electricity from other carbon-intensive, predominantly coal-based power sources.

The project converts the potential energy of water flows into mechanical energy through a 12 MW run-of-river Small Hydroelectric Project (SHP) being developed in the Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh. Following the project's auxiliary consumption, the generated electricity will be exported to the grid for sale, via the Himachal Pradesh State Electricity Board (HPSEB).

This project's goal is to protect and restore 149,800 hectares of peatland ecosystems, offering local people sustainable sources of income while tackling global climate change. The project area stores vast amounts of CO₂and plays a vital role in stabilizing water flows, preventing devastating peat fires, enriching soil nutrients, and providing clean water. Rich in biodiversity, it is home to large populations of many high conservation-value species—including some of the world’s most endangered, such as the Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) and Proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus)—and is surrounded by villages for which it supports traditional livelihoods, including farming, fishing, and non-timber forest-product harvesting.

The project area is located entirely within state-designated production forest which, without the project, would be converted to fast-growing industrial pulpwood plantations. The project prevents this, having obtained full legal control of the production forest area through an Ecosystem Restoration Concession license, blocking the applications of plantation companies.

This project has completed the additional Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) standards. The forest habitat supports 2 critically endangered, 11 endangered and 31 vulnerable species. Preliminary estimates indicate an estimated population of nearly 4,000 orangutans and 10,000 Bornean gibbons, as well as over 500 Proboscis monkeys. These populations represent over 5% of the remaining global populations of these species. Overall, the project area’s biodiversity includes 157 birds, 67 mammals, 41 reptiles, 8 amphibians, 111 fish, and 314 floral species.