Two companies are working together to accelerate the deployment of natural carbon sink solutions. Grassroots Carbon – a San Antonio-based company offering certified soil carbon storage credits and Pledge – a London-based integrated carbon offsetting platform, have announced that Pledge will be offering soil carbon storage credits from Grassroots Carbon to its customers.
Pledge offers tools and infrastructure that make businesses aware of their climate impact and help accelerate their transition to net zero. With that move, Pledge aims to expand the offerings of carbon removal projects to its clients.
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The company is also a believer that nature-based solutions such as soil carbon are an effective method of storing CO2 at scale. Through this collaboration, Pledge will support the scaling of regenerative practices that lead to carbon storage.
“It’s great to be working with Grassroots Carbon’s program as it is a scalable solution, an approach that we share at Pledge where we democratize access to climate mitigation projects. Beyond the climate impact, it’s great to see the partnerships that Grassroots Carbon develops with ranchers, which is clearly a mutually beneficial relationship,” said David de Picciotto, CEO, and Co-founder of Pledge.
Grassroots Carbon is a startup founded in 2021 that links corporate buyers of carbon credits with landowners, interested to use regenerative practices to sequester CO2 in soil. The company claims to offer customers a simple and reliable way to meet their carbon reduction targets through its certified soil carbon storage credits.
What inspires the startup to offer carbon sequestration in soil is that soil contains much more carbon than the atmosphere and all plant life combined. According to scientists, there are 2,500 billion tons of carbon in soil, compared with 800 billion tons in the atmosphere and 560 billion tons in plant and animal life.
The company also states that a large percentage of the sequestered soil carbon below ground will be quite permanent over decades, centuries, and millennia if the management practices that create soil carbon sequestration remain in place. Financial incentives from the purchase of carbon credits help maintain those management practices.
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“Pledge’s purchase of soil carbon storage credits significantly reduces the financial barrier faced by ranchers interested in moving towards regenerative practices by providing a clear return on their investment in order to secure financing or decide to expend their own capital,” said Dr. Henk Mooiweer, CEO and Co-Founder of Grassroots Carbon.
The company also adds that Pledge’s support is key to its efforts to provide access to training, on-site consultancy, and an active learning community of land stewards. For Grassroots Carbon, carbon payments are a driver to turn conventional land into regenerative and restored land.
