The global ocean carbon removal company Running Tide announced on February 13th it will partner with Deloitte to conduct an independent review of key components of Running Tide’s carbon removal system to ensure the carbon dioxide removal (CDR) credits it generates are of high quality.
Deloitte’s review will cover the processes for quantifying net carbon removed, assessing its permanence and additionality. It will also ensure the best available science is applied and will conduct a comprehensive consideration of the environmental and ecological impacts associated with deploying Running Tide’s carbon removal systems.
The review will also focus on Running Tide’s planned 2023 carbon removal research and operations in Iceland.
Running Tide is an ocean health company that also removes CO2 from ocean to generate emissions reductions. It is involved with restorative aquaculture, macroalgae enhancement, wild shellfish bed restocking, placement of substrates, and other practices. According to the company, its interventions are monitored and the impact is quantified.
Relevant: Running Tide Announced The Deployment Of Open Ocean Satellites
According to the announcement, Deloitte will review the quality of carbon credits of Running Tide in two phases. The first phase will include a review of Running Tide’s project proposal and Environmental Impact Assessment plans.
The second phase, the financial advisor will assess Running Tide’s Framework Protocol detailing the quantification approach for their carbon removal system in accordance with ISO standards, specifically ISO 14064-2. This part of the internationally recognized carbon removal standards describes the principles and requirements carbon projects must follow as the basis for generating high-quality carbon credits.
Apart from Deloitte’s review of the Framework Protocol, a peer-review process is also being conducted. The process is ongoing and has garnered feedback from experts in the carbon removal, oceanographic, and climate spheres. Its goal is to ensure stakeholder considerations are also integrated into the public release of the Protocol.
Future expert reviews, independent oversights, additional third-party validation, and verifications are expected to be a requirement for all planned and future carbon removal projects conducted by Running Tide.
Relevant: Running Tide Goes International, Elicits Both Hope and Criticism
Increased recent pressure to ensure the validity and additionality of carbon removal projects, especially afforestation and reforestation projects, are pushing the industry to be making bigger efforts to measure and deliver actual carbon removals.
If the CDR industry doesn’t make sure now its projects deliver the promised emissions reductions, it faces the threat of undermining climate change mitigation efforts and in times when the world is already on the verge of missing its Paris Agreement targets.
Who at Deloitte is qualified to evaluate the CDR potential of this project?? The National Academies agree that the science is far from settled and the infrastructure to evaluate simply does not yet exist. What utter, unscientific nonsense.