Zopeful.com Carbon Removal Portfolio Partners Announcement | March 2023

Adam Oskwarek
4 min readMar 30, 2023

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Zopeful Climate — Carbon Removal Portfolio-1

Two pieces of huge news this month. We’re excited to show you all our progress. Full transparency. First a quick recap.

Zopeful Climate builds ready-made, high-quality portfolios of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to make researching, purchasing and managing durable carbon removal more accessible for consumers and companies.

It’s something we wished existed but couldn’t find. So we made it.

We did it! We’re proud to announce both our initial partners and the incredible work they’re doing, and also our first batch of as-permanent-as-possible-for-the-$ carbon removal purchases.

Our first group of partners in our Carbon Removal Portfolio-1 represent leaders and emerging CDR project providers across Direct Air Capture, Enhanced Rock Weathering, Bio-oil, Biochar, Ocean/Blue Carbon and Nature-based Removals. They’re doing inspiring work that holds a tonne — pun intended — of promise.

Carbon Removal Portfolio | Zopeful Climate

It is important to us that it’s available to as many people as possible. Everyone is welcome to join our existing members from the US, UK, Australia, France, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Spain in investing in durable carbon removal.

Our goal is to widen access at an accessible price per tonne to different types of permanent carbon removal solutions, as this is crucial to scale alongside global decarbonization efforts.

Whether it’s a few tonnes, or a tonne of tonnes, it all counts in combating the impacts of climate change.

We can now allocate both individual and company CDR purchases of whatever size with our portfolio approach to our curated fund of carbon removal.

With our custom methodology we’re aiming for higher permanence and additionality than traditional carbon credits, with the majority of our Carbon Removal Portfolio-1 aiming to be durable storage of 500 years or more. This is in-line with what the latest science says we need to do more of, and also means the carbon is locked away for centuries to millennia, so it can’t contribute to the continued heating of the planet.

Why do we need this?

There is no silver bullet to solving the Climate Crisis. The latest IPCC Report, published in March 2023, highlights that Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) is needed to stay within the 1.5 to 2 degree celsius (2–2.7F) safer levels of global temperature increases due to human-caused climate change.

While CDR is not a replacement for deep decarbonization and reducing emissions, it is an essential tool for the world to reach Net Zero (and beyond). To be at the size we need — about 5 to 10 billion tonnes per year — the CDR industry needs to grow at 40% or more per year until 2050. We’ve a long way to go and no time left to waste.

Currently, about 95% of the voluntary carbon credits available are avoidance — often used as offsets to justify continued emissions. While some of these projects have a value and may be good to do due to the co-benefits, it may not be justifiable to measure that benefit in tonnes of carbon. Many don’t directly remove or reduce carbon emissions.

Pretty much the vast majority of carbon credits or offsets consumers can easily buy fit into this bucket. We don’t want to cast shade on genuine efforts, nor do we throw cries of greenwashing light-heartedly. But, well, sometimes it is justfied for what’s out there right now. Knowing the difference is still way too hard.

In addition, only 16 very large companies purchased over 1000 tonnes of durable, permanent and additional CDR in 2022 (cdr.fyi, 2023).

These ratios needs to change.

The science-backed path to solving climate change is reducing emissions as much as we can and removing everything we can’t. No single emissions reduction or removal solution is enough on its own to do this. We need all of them to grow, and more.

Expanding the volume and type of buyers for CDR — as well as making the cost more accessible — while increasing the proportion of removal in the voluntary carbon market is critical to scaling this crucial new industry and making a dent in tackling the Climate Crisis.

Ways to get involved

Carbon Removal Portfolio-1 is designed so anyone can join — whether a business or an individual. We’re doing the due diligence so you can invest with confidence, whether big or more modest amounts, in solutions that actively remove carbon directly from the atmosphere.

We’ve a flexible range of different options for a variety of use cases and budgets. Drop by our site to see how you can get involved in Zopeful Climate’s Carbon Removal Portfolio.

Have hope, make progress 💚

Adam & Team Zopeful

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Adam Oskwarek

I help build and grow things on the internet. Product + People + Growth. Together we can go further. “chief climate officer” @ Zopeful.com