Likvidi announces the launch of Veriforest, a new voluntary carbon registry for forest-based projects, powered by Albo Climate’s satellite-powered technology.
Helsinki, Thursday 16th June 2022: Likvidi, a sustainable finance company, has made a strategic investment in and partnered with Albo Climate, to create Veriforest, a new registry for forest-based projects which will enable small and medium sized projects to participate in the voluntary carbon markets. By combining blockchain with Albo’s satellite and AI capabilities, Veriforest can accurately monitor the carbon sequestration/production of forestland which will make carbon credits more tangible than ever before.
Existing methods estimating the amount of carbon stored in a given ecosystem are often prohibitively expensive or inaccurate, which can lead to projects overlapping and being double-accounted. Moreover forestry projects can be affected by illegal logging, forest fires, or project disintegration which degrade the value of associated credits over time.
Israeli startup Albo Climate has created a revolutionary technology for the estimation of carbon stocks and sequestration. Its AI technology applies proprietary Deep Learning algorithms to analyse satellite imagery and validate carbon credits for forestry projects anywhere in the world. Satellite-mounted sensors are able to scan vegetation and pick up information not visible to the naked eye.
Albo Climate CEO Dr. Jacques Amselem said: “It’s a pleasure to work with our fellow passionate technologists at Likvidi and to be able to bring our satellite imagery analysis products to enhance the Veriforest solution that Likvidi is building. We look forward to years of partnership ahead.”
By using AI in conjunction with ground truth datasets, Albo’s technology can produce an in-depth profile of carbon storage over a huge area. The analysis has applications for both small and large scale projects, as it produces data down to a 10m x 10m scale.
Veriforest will form an end-to-end solution, issuing tokenized carbon credits for offset to individuals and companies.
The new partnership means that forested areas can now be quickly and accurately assessed for carbon storage and credit issuance and logged in the Veriforest registry. The Veriforest solution can scale to meet the massive demand for measurements of carbon-related data and can bring carbon credits to market faster than existing lead times, by up to two years.
Likvidi CEO Ransu Salovaara commented: “Veriforest takes us closer to the end-to-end solution our customers are demanding. By partnering with Albo, we can accurately calculate the carbon sequestered by the areas of forestry at the token supply end, allowing companies to be confident in the amount of carbon they are offsetting via our tokens. For land stewards and carbon entrepreneurs, this platform is a true game changer as we will also be by bringing in a very innovative financing model for these projects based on our learnings from financial markets, crypto and crowdfunding.”
ENDS
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About Likvidi
Likvidi is a decentralised sustainable finance ecosystem for entrepreneurs, growth companies, experts and investors who are looking to address climate change through participation in the voluntary carbon markets. Its objective is to provide a green finance platform for the trade and management of defi-compatible tokenized credits.
About Albo Climate:
Albo Climate, established in 2019, is an Israel-based startup applying AI to satellite imagery to map, measure, and monitor carbon sequestration and scale-up carbon removal. Combining geospatial monitoring and deep learning expertise, Albo Climate is developing remote sensing solutions for carbon credit verification for various ecosystems, including forestry and agriculture.
About the Likvidi Directors
Ransu Salovaara is the CEO and a co-founder of Likvidi. Ransu also co-founded TokenMarket, a European based blockchain advisory company that has assisted over 30 startups raising a total of 300M USD via token offerings. He launched Europe’s first exchange traded instrument, BitcoinETI, that was listed on the Gibraltar Stock Exchange and Frankfurt Xetra Exchange. Previously, Ransu worked in financial markets as the Head of European Trading for Urram Investments in London, which focused on high-yield corporate bonds.
Tuomas Siltala, a founding partner of Likvidi, was a VP at Finn Fleet Maritime. He was also the Director at Pareto Securities, a Scandinavian investment bank. Tuomas co-founded an FSA regulated investment private bank – Privanet Securities Oy and worked as a vice president of Nasdaq/OMX Helsinki Exchanges.
[1] McKinsey “A blueprint for scaling voluntary carbon markets to meet the climate challenge” 29 2021 https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/our-insights/a-blueprint-for-scaling-voluntary-carbon-markets-to-meet-the-climate-challenge