Texas-based carbon infrastructure company Verified Carbon has filed a US provisional patent for CarbonIQ, an AI-driven platform designed to verify and rate geologic carbon storage projects using a standardized scoring system similar to traditional credit ratings.
The platform aims to bring greater transparency and comparability to the carbon storage market by assigning projects ratings ranging from AAA to D – a model commonly used in financial markets for bonds and other traded assets.
According to Verified Carbon, the lack of standardized ratings has become a major barrier to scaling carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects. While investment in carbon removal and storage continues to grow, project verification remains slow, fragmented and difficult for financial institutions to assess.
Bringing Financial Infrastructure to Carbon Markets
Today, technical due diligence for carbon storage projects can take months or even years, with each project evaluated individually using different methodologies. The company argues this limits participation from banks, insurers and commodities traders that rely on comparable risk metrics.
CarbonIQ is designed to automate much of this process using AI, reservoir modelling, statistical scoring and cryptographic audit trails. Verified Carbon says the system could reduce verification timelines from years to hours while creating a transparent and reproducible framework for evaluating storage reliability and containment risk.
The provisional patent, titled “CarbonIQ: A System and Method for Quantitative Verification and Rating of Subsurface Geosystem Performance for Listing on Market Exchanges,” includes 59 claims covering the platform’s methodology and architecture.
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“Subsurface storage verification has historically been a non-unique problem,” said Dr. Tip Meckel, Research Professor at the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin. “CarbonIQ introduces a quantitative and reproducible framework for ranking storage performance, uncertainty, and geologic reliability across projects.”
Verified Carbon believes standardized ratings could help transform carbon storage into a financeable and tradable asset class.
The company says comparable project ratings would allow banks to underwrite storage projects more easily, enable insurers to assess containment risk across portfolios, and support the development of carbon-linked trading and derivatives markets.
Beyond voluntary carbon markets, the platform could also support regulatory compliance requirements tied to carbon storage projects, including US 45Q tax credits and EPA Class VI permitting frameworks.
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