Projects
![]()
No projects found
Investors
New
DAO Treasuries
DATs
Lend / Borrow APRs
Chains
Categories
Spaces
KuCoin x CCD
Recorded: Dec. 19, 2023 Duration: 0:37:49Space Recording
Full Transcription
Thank you so much for having us.
So hi, everyone.
My name is Maria Pilch.
I work at the LIA1 called Concordium and my responsibilities there is heading up everything
we do within ESG and we do within ESG and sustainability and my background is sort of a mixture.
So I have a business degree, so I have a techie by training, so I work with AI and various
other exponential technologies, but it's always been within a focus on climate and climate
impact, which sort of led me to Concordium here at the end where I've been helping a lot of
projects on board, and one of them is Tim, who's here from Climify, that I thought would be a nice little
mix to give you guys sort of an insight into what is actually possible in this little niche of Web3 and climate impact.
Great. And Tim, do you want to do the same?
I'd be delighted. Good morning, Tim. Good morning, Maria.
This is Tim DeRozan. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Climify.
We are very much involved in developing new methodologies, primarily to very accurately measure
carbon removal, and this has become very important, which we'll explain as we have this conversation.
My background is in tech. I'm a serial tech entrepreneur.
I've been in tech for rather longer than I care to remember, and been in the carbon space,
climate space, for the last two or three years.
And a little bit more about Climify?
Well, as I say, we specialize in developing new methodologies, primarily using techniques such as Earth observation,
and that involves the use of satellites for geophysical location,
but also using meteorological weather stations to measure what's happening in terms of carbon stocks,
so measuring carbon emissions and carbon removals as they occur in real time.
This is pretty much state of the art, and really none of the major standards groups like VERA and the gold standard,
if your listeners are aware of those organizations, have yet really got involved in this.
So it's a technology that's literally just arrived in the last year or so,
which will have an instrumental impact on measuring carbon accurately,
as opposed to using modeling and theoretical estimations.
All right, and this is a great topic, especially because we've just had our sustainability green gala dinner in Dubai recently
at the COP28 conference.
So I'm happy to dive deeper into this subject and have you guys share your insights and how you think about sustainability.
So I prepared a few questions for both of you guys, and then if we have enough time at the end,
we can see if some of the audience members want to ask any questions.
So first of all, I'd like to ask Maria, what is ESG and sustainability in the context of Web3,
and how is Concordium sort of thinking about sustainability?
All right. Yeah, well, I think that's probably a pretty good header for this conversation.
I think a lot of the times when I get into a dialogue about it, it's like taking,
for a lot of people at least, two different subjects that are quite new and quite unfamiliar.
So ESG and sustainability, obviously, a lot of companies have been working with it for quite a few years.
You know, everything almost dates back to the Kyoto Protocol,
when all of the nations tried to come together on setting climate targets.
But I think really within like the last few years, there's been an acceleration in what both individuals and companies are doing
in terms of trying to do better for social measurements, but also in terms of staying within our planetary boundaries.
And so for a lot of companies, that really looks like what is the products that we produce
and what is the services that we contribute with and how are they green in their own.
And then when you put that into the context of Web3, which is also for definitely companies,
but also for individuals quite new, it's really about seeing how can we use the infrastructure
that Web3 provides to build products that are actually truly green
and also create a better and more fair future for those who are involved with it.
So within this little niche, we call it regenerative finance.
And essentially, it's just a movement about what the power of blockchain and Web3 can do to address climate change,
but also, you know, biodiversity and conservation projects, which is a huge topic within this space.
And then also creating more fair and sustainable financial systems,
which I think is quite high on the list for everyone involved in the Web3 space.
So at Concordium, what that really means is that we're trying our best to create the infrastructure tools
that anyone who wants to work with climate impact needs to actually make an impact.
And that looks very different depending on what sort of that market it is actually in.
So what we've been focusing on for the past two years or so is trying to help projects
that are within renewable energy certificates.
So obviously, energy is sort of at the key of the climate challenge.
It powers everything we do, even these conversations.
That's been a huge focus for us, figuring out how we can support renewable energy sector.
And then obviously, carbon markets.
I'm really excited for Tim to share a lot more about how that the voluntary carbon market is evolving.
And then there's new things coming in, like track and trace, which at least within the European Union,
you have things as the digital product passport, where you need to be able to prove where your garments are from,
where some of your technology components are from.
And lastly, also ESG reporting, which for a lot of companies is a huge challenge.
Currently, they need to be able to prove how much they actually emit.
So it's sort of those four areas where we at Concordium, at least, have been trying to support with tools for any project who wants to build.
And then obviously, there's the let's look inside and see how we're doing ourselves.
It's also about ensuring that the network that is operating is as green as possible, which is quite a big challenge.
But with the new Mika reporting guidelines coming out next year, there is obviously going to be some movements there for anyone operating on a layer one that needs to be able to prove how much energy they consume.
So it's sort of, yeah, it's sort of twofold.
One thing is definitely the biggest thing is supporting anyone who wants to make an impact and also ensuring that we are as green, as clean as possible.
All right. And I think perhaps why don't we do one question each.
So next one is for Tim.
So you touched on this a little bit already, but can you just give some more details as to what you guys are building at Clamify and what problems are you guys trying to solve with your tech?
Sure. I'd be delighted to.
What we're building at the moment are three different standards for carbon removal.
That's really where we're focused is is is how to how to tackle this immense problem of carbon removal.
And there are all sorts of ways of doing it.
At the moment, we're focused particularly on the industrial hemp sector, working with both farmers and processes, processes of industrial hemp in the United States and Canada primarily, but also in in parts of Europe.
And we're using blockchain for two purposes.
One is to report on carbon removals so that what we're reporting is truly transparent, immutable, and we can avoid double counting of carbon credits that are produced as a result.
That's been a major problem of credits maybe being overreported, overreporting of carbon credits has been a huge problem.
We're also using blockchain for trace and track, as Maria referred to earlier on, in respect of what's happening in the whole process of farming industrial hemp right the way through to end use.
Because one of the most important things in terms of carbon credits is the durability of those credits or the permanence of those credits.
In other words, how long the carbon removed stays locked up for.
So there's no point, obviously, in measuring carbon removal and having it released straight back into the atmosphere.
That doesn't really do any good at all.
So what we're looking for are durable, long term, what we call carbon sinks, where the carbon removed is stored.
And part of the process of blockchain is to be able to identify very clearly all along the chain what emissions have taken place and therefore being able to calculate very, very clearly the amount of carbon removed and also to be able to monitor into the future over decades, sometimes hundreds of years into the future to ensure that that carbon remains locked up.
So that's a very, very important key process.
All right.
And back to Maria, what is the driving movement and what use cases are there in refi?
You brought this up earlier, but perhaps you can give some examples of real use cases.
Yeah, I'd be happy to.
So I think one of the bigger ones and probably the first one driving the movement, I think, is definitely carbon markets.
So you had a huge influx of carbon projects going into Web3 within the past year or so.
But I actually think, you know, the movement came actually maybe a little bit before that.
So there was, I think, one of some of the first use cases I saw that actually got me into this space was the track and trace cases around coffee beans, which is, I think, one of the first examples that I saw of some real life impact where people would track and trace the coffee beans of where they're produced or the source of origin of them all the way up until the selling point.
So everyone could check down the value stream, who actually handled it, and whether the money that was actually involved were given out proportionately throughout that value chain.
And those were, I think, one of the first examples of this.
And I think that whole track and trace way of thinking about products has really evolved quite a lot into this space.
So some of the things that you can use that for currently is, for instance, there's a new regulatory instance coming in in the EU, which is the Deforestation Act, where any companies importing goods into the EU need to be able to prove.
I think it's six different crops that one of them is soy, one of them is coffee as well, rubber, natural rubber.
And they need to be able to prove that that production isn't coming from land that is deforestated.
And you use sort of the same methodology around that.
We have a project building called Arrivo currently, and they're helping anyone importing goods with the right satellite images,
the audit controls for actually ensuring and improving and proving that whatever products that you're importing isn't coming from land that is under the risk of being deforestated.
So I think that that whole track and trace element of it sort of opened up the arena of refi.
And it's a lot of the same ways of thinking that you're putting into the carbon market, as Tim was explaining before.
It's really about tracking and tracing the component that goes into capturing carbon and storing it off for a longer period of time.
So Climify is obviously one of the ones that I think is really interesting.
There are three different methodologies, as far as I remember, currently building, Tim, but I will let you expand on that afterwards.
So those are two of the elements.
And then I think, as I mentioned in the beginning, energy is really, really a big one.
So we've had, you're probably aware of this after your dinner at the COP28 as well.
We just had the first written piece of text from the Climate Change Conference in the UN,
where they said that it was sort of the beginning of taking out fossil fuels as one of the founding energy sources in our world.
And I think as we transition away from a fossil fuel era, it's really about figuring out how can we then prove that the new energy sources that we're putting into play, that they're actually green and sustainable.
And here, I think we're looking a lot into this.
One of the projects that we have is with the Danish National Transmission System Operator in Akinet.
So for them and the entire grid of Denmark, we're timestamping every renewable energy hour being produced from windmilled energy.
And that really allows anyone to prove that whatever energy source that they're consuming, that it is actually green.
And once we start opening up this energy arena into new different energy sources, I think that whole provenance of energy is really going to be a big, big thing.
And especially within the refine movement.
So those would be the ones I would say.
All right. And in terms of, you know, the current state of VCM or voluntary carbon market, Maria mentioned this earlier as well.
But I think, Tim, perhaps you can answer this.
How do you see it developing and how does this affect the Web3 space overall?
Well, I mean, to answer your question on the current state of the VCM, that it's this year has been a year, really a considerable transition.
There was and has been and continues to be quite a lot of criticism of older methodologies.
And I referred to some of the big standard setters earlier on, like Vera and the gold standard, who played a very important role over the years.
But their methodologies really did need to be updated and they weren't very accurate.
And if you recall me mentioning a few minutes ago about precision measurement of carbon, what they were using was definitely not very precise.
And that resulted in a lot of criticism from sources such as the Guardian newspaper in the UK.
And that's had an effect on the VCM this year.
What we've seen is the what's called the spot market declined considerably.
So these are transactions to purchase carbon credits that are already issued.
But on the other hand, we've seen the investment or forward market for future credits expand dramatically with a fivefold increase in volumes and a much bigger emphasis being placed on carbon removal as opposed to carbon avoidance.
And I won't go into the technical details, the technical differences between those.
But carbon removal, a lot of a lot of that is features new ways of removing carbon using things like biochar or in our case, industrial hemp or directly capturing carbon from the atmosphere.
And what we're looking at is hopefully a reinvigorated voluntary carbon market over 2024 to 2025, more regulation, hopefully convergence with following COP.
Eventually, what's called the Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, particularly Article 6.4.
Now we're getting very technical, I know.
But these things are important in terms of giving confidence to buyers, corporate buyers, big buyers of carbon credits.
And I think the Web3 space has a lot to contribute to this, mainly in terms of the use of blockchain, which is now becoming rapidly adopted across the industry.
And even, as I say, the older established standards bodies are starting to see the benefits of using blockchain for both tracing what's happening through the lifecycle assessments to ensure, as I mentioned earlier, that carbon remains locked up for monitoring purposes,
for recording data on the blockchain around carbon credits, so to increase the level of transparency and immutability.
But, you know, we're always open and looking for more use cases for Web3 technologies.
I think the other thing, particularly if I can mention with Concordium, is that because it's got built in ID verification, that that's going to become very important,
particularly in relation to the regulation of carbon credits, which is definitely coming.
And we can see the Chicago Board of Exchange and the U.S. commodities and future trading organization looking to add more and more regulation to this space
and to make sure that the cowboys or the cowboy element is removed from the market.
Got it.
And Marina, I'd like to zoom out a little bit and get your thoughts on what's building in the Concordium ecosystem within the space.
You can talk a little bit about that as well.
So obviously, we've focused a lot, as I mentioned in the beginning, just to be able to offer the tools that any project would actually need to start building.
So one of the bigger focus for us this year was focusing on getting some sort of marketplace tooling ready that would be easily adaptable for anyone wanting to build a carbon marketplace.
So that was one of the bigger ones.
It was really about creating a tool that was sort of agnostic for anyone who wanted to contribute with a methodology that is set by any standard,
but then allowing them to quite simply just upload the documentations that they need and then from that create the carbon credit.
So that was one of the bigger ones.
And we've had, as I mentioned, Climafy is one of the bigger projects that we have here, building three different methodologies on that area.
Then we have the three other areas, which one of them is ESG reporting.
It's always a tricky one.
So basically, any company in the world would need to do ESG reporting for coming the next few years.
And when you do that, it's really about finding data points that you can share with both the people that are in your company,
but also with your supply chain to actually demonstrate what the emission levels are of your company,
so that they have a better chance of choosing what suppliers that they want to work with.
And here we're really focusing on creating a tool or at least the infrastructure to allow companies to do sort of a data fossiling
so that you have the data points and you can prove where they came from, what the audit trail is and who actually audits them.
And then you can upload that into your ESG reporting.
So that's one of the other ones that we have building.
But then I think the two biggest ones for the next year will be, one of them will be on track and trace.
So I mentioned in the beginning that you have on a product track and trace area,
you have the digital product passport coming in, which is essentially for any company working within textile,
working within technology, and also actually in the buildings industry,
that they need to be able to prove where the source of origins of the materials that the embed actually come from.
And there's a lot of examples going on with digital product passports.
We've seen them on, you know, luxury goods like watches.
There are a lot of book chains out there that are doing quite interesting digital trend products.
But this one is a bit more on the provenance of where they're coming from.
So we're looking a bit into finding the right projects that are working within that space.
And then it's also on the process track and trace, which for me, I have more of a corporate background.
I think that's really interesting for companies to figure out ways where they can actually prove that they are as green as they claim to be.
And one of those projects is one that is currently building in South Africa,
where they are producing the, you know, the bubbles that goes into your sparkling water or your beer.
They are producing what we call food grade CO2, which are these little carbonated bubbles.
And when they do that, they want to do it as green as clean as possible.
So they're capturing carbon and then they're fermenting it, they're cleansing it,
and then they're reintroducing it into drinks.
And that whole process, to me, it's sort of an invisible process, right?
So you can't see it, actually, but you know it's happening and you can see measurements
and chemical formulas changing, but you can't really touch and feel it the same way you can
with a typical production line.
So what we're helping them with is actually documenting each of those data points in that process
to be able to prove to the tax authorities that they are, because it is capturing carbon,
that they are actually reducing their carbon emissions.
And those are really the projects that I also think are going to be quite big within this refi movement.
So it's about anyone being able to prove the green credentials that they claim to have.
So I'm sure one of the topics of COP as well, and probably the dialogue that you've been part of,
is there is a lot of greenwashing and also a little bit of greenhushing,
where you just don't say anything.
So what we're trying to do is really figure out how we can support both projects,
but also corporates in proving that they are as green as they claim to be.
And then probably the final thing is, I think, as I mentioned, energy is really a big one.
So now we've done the project with Inakinet.
It's live.
It's an open source project.
But the core thinking behind it is really applicable to any type of energy source you can think of.
So it's more from a power-to-ex perspective, where you can start using the same methodologies on,
for instance, hydrogen production, where you want to prove whether it's green, blue,
or gray hydrogen that is being sold and produced.
So I think it's really, I think we're going to see a lot more things unfolding within the next year,
within sort of a provenance focus on being green.
And back to Tim, I'd just like to also get your thoughts on what role you think Concordium can play in this unfolding scenario.
Well, I think Concordium has been very front-footed, particularly in the ESG space, led by Maria.
And, you know, she's traveled all over the world, particularly into the EU and all sorts of other places,
spreading the Concordium gospel.
But as I said earlier, I think one of the big things is that, unfortunately, as we all know,
blockchain has been tarred in the past with the sort of crypto brush, crypto wild west.
And, you know, what Concordium are doing is bringing greater regulation,
or the recognition that there needs to be greater regulation,
and that blockchain projects need to be regulation ready.
And that creeping form of regulation, both in the USA and the EU, is continuing.
And so Concordium represents a raft which we can all jump on in order to make sure that our projects are ready for regulation when it comes.
So I think that's part, that's one thing.
Also, Concordium seem to be opening up a lot of new applications for grants for new businesses looking to enter the ESG space.
I think that's pretty unusual at the moment.
There aren't many of those type of financing facilities available.
So that's very welcome.
And we need more and more use cases.
And I think that's really what Concordium is doing, is really building the ecosystem around ESG.
And I think that's very exciting.
Thanks, guys, for all the insights and the knowledge that you guys bring.
I'd like to give the audience a chance to also ask some questions, because I think we're a little early.
We perhaps have time for two or three questions.
So give me one second.
All right, first up, we have Ultron.
Ultron, go ahead and ask a question.
If you can unmute.
Hello.
Can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Okay, so actually my question is Concordium doing a technical integration with Frontier Wallet.
So it's your first external wallet.
So what is the purpose of this wallet?
And how will it benefit to Concordium ecosystem?
So the purpose is really about expanding the ecosystem around Concordium.
So one of them is really to help ensure that we get a broader reach and also that we're more available to a lot of the other projects out there.
So we're a bit more agile, let's say, than that sort.
Okay, so we have Jasmine up next.
Jasmine, go ahead, please.
Can you please unmute your mic?
All right, if not, let me get the next speaker up.
Travis, go ahead.
Yeah, can you hear me, sir?
Yep.
Okay, so my question is Concordium was created to help business improve crucial operation using blockchain.
So can you provide us in terms of Concordium utility that go beyond Metaverse and NFTs?
Yeah, absolutely.
So I think we're doing it in a lot of different ways.
As I mentioned on this call, there's a lot of things happening within the track and trace,
which I think for some of the regulations coming in, at least within the EU, there's a lot of business crucial aspects in it.
It's about being able to track your supply chain, for instance.
It's about being able to create a provenance proof of where your products are coming from
and where some of the main materials that you put into them are coming from.
So I think those are really some of the key aspects.
And I also think something like carbon credits and carbon credits, as Climafy is doing, is also quite business crucial, right?
So a lot of companies today are setting net zero targets.
And in order to live up to them, they have to first reduce what they are emitting.
And then what they can't reduce, they have to offset.
And today's world where you're trying to offset it, it's really difficult to prove the provenance of that offsetting carbon credit.
And I think a project like Climafy that is really doing a lot to track the provenance of it
and ensure the authenticity, but also ensure that it lifts up to the standards of a lot of enterprises.
I think those are quite business crucial aspects as well.
I don't think that there's a world where you can not care about being green anymore.
I think it's sort of a business premise.
So I think those two things are quite substantial.
And then we obviously have a lot of other interesting things building within DeFi.
We have some automotive cases as well that are coming.
So there are a lot of interesting things that are building to tackle business crucial tasks that are outside of the NFTs and metaverse, I would say.
All right.
I'd like to thank you guys both again for taking the time to join the space.
And I'd like to give you guys perhaps just a final word or anything else you'd like to announce or anything upcoming in Q1 2024 that you'd like to share to our listeners before we wrap things up.
I think now's a good time to do that.
Maria, do you want to start first?
Yeah, I would be happy to.
So I think, Tim, you probably did a better job than me than attracting projects.
But as Tim mentioned, we do have a grant program that is open, and we are actively looking to build the best ESG and sustainability projects out there.
So if you have anything that's building or anything that you think might be of interest to the Concordium ecosystem, I would love to take a look at it, whether it's energy, carbon credits, track and trace, or something completely different.
I am more than happy to listen in.
All right.
And Tim?
Yes, I'd just like to say that we're working on some very interesting new methodologies in enhanced rock weathering, which involves spreading minerals such as basalt onto agricultural land to remove and sequester carbon over literally thousands of years.
And we've also got a big project that's starting in Malaysia that involves measuring carbon removal, CO2 removal from mangrove projects.
And we're also involved with a big initiative in Canada, where the hemp carbon standard, of which we're selling 50% to a Canadian public company, which is going on the Toronto Stock Exchange in February.
So that will be, for us and for our shareholders, a rather nice liquidity event, sort of proves our concept.
So lots of exciting stuff coming up.
And clearly what we want to see, as Maria has mentioned earlier on, quite rightly, is more companies moving into the space, measuring their emissions and contributing to their unavoidable emissions that they cannot get rid of in the short term by buying carbon credits.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Thank you again, both of you guys, for joining the spaces.
And to the listeners, nothing here was financial advice and only educational.
I'd like to thank both Maria and Tim again for joining us.
And yeah, so hope to get you guys back on in the near future and hear all the amazing updates that you guys have in the space.
Thank you so much for having us.
Thank you very much, Tim.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Host
KuCoin
from
KuCoin Token
