Freiburg, 24.03.2022 - Carbonfuture, a fully digital marketplace and platform has reached another milestone in its mission of providing large-scale climate impact. In 2021, Swiss Re, one of the world’s leading providers of reinsurance, insurance, and other forms of insurance-based risk transfer, purchased the significant amount of 850 tonnes of EBC-certified biochar certificates. The certificates stem from projects operated by Carbonfuture partners in Europe and North America, where residue biomass is converted to biochar that stores the carbon robustly for hundreds of years.

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Founded as an answer to the lack of trust in the voluntary carbon credit market, the climate tech startup focuses on solid climate performance by placing integrity at the root of its business model. This is made possible in multiple ways: Carbonfuture guarantees scientifically defensible and long-term certificates by taking a conservative approach to calculating the carbon removal capacity of a given technology.

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Its tamper-proof tracking, based on an innovative and low-energy blockchain, further supports the trustworthiness of the certificates. This approach offers a unique “credit to cradle look-through”, allowing Carbonfuture to granularly trace climate action from e.g., production of biochar to final carbon-preserving application. Hosting the anonymized credits on a public registry eliminates the possibility of double-counting.

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Combining secure and rigorous tracking, credit management, and registry into one, Carbonfuture considers the entire life cycle of its certificate, making them transparent, auditable, and able to meet stringent selection criteria of climate-leading clients such as Swiss Re.

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Mischa Repmann, Senior Environmental Management Specialist at Swiss Re: “The scientific facts are clear – on top of massive emission reduction efforts, the world needs billions of tonnes of negative emissions to stabilize the climate. Swiss Re is committed to achieving net-zero emissions across our value chain by 2050, and in our own operations by 2030. To prepare for neutralizing our residual emissions through carbon removal, it is part of our strategy to work with market makers like Carbonfuture, adding to the demand for top-quality removals".

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The carbon removal solution offered by Carbonfuture’s credits converts CO₂ from the atmosphere into stored carbon, using a mature and well-understood process called pyrolysis. Pyrolysis converts the carbon into a high-integrity, stable form called biochar, an IPCC-recognized climate mitigation approach, often hailed as a “sweet spot” between the nature-based and technical carbon sequestering solutions.

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The stored carbon in the form of biochar is then applied to soils, providing significant co-benefits, such as increased water retention capacity to help farmers cope with both droughts and floods, and the reduction of nutrient leakage. Not solely due to its verifiable climate impact but because of its additional environmental, social, and risk reduction co-benefits, biochar as a long-term carbon removal solution is considered the most economical, ecological, and market-ready solution available today.

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Hannes Junginger-Gestrich, CEO at Carbonfuture: “We are delighted by the forward-thinking spirit Swiss Re proves with the purchase of Carbonfuture’s carbon removal credits. These joint efforts bring wind into the sails of an emerging movement. All investing sectors – from finance to tech, to heavy industry, will be able to profit from such actions in the future, by having laid the foundation of a credible and market-ready carbon removals industry, today.”