CUR8

🛫 Today, CUR8 is delighted to announce a landmark deal with British Airways to buy and manage a $11 million portfolio of 33,000 high quality carbon removal credits. The deal represents the largest purchase of durable carbon removal by any UK business, and makes British Airways the largest purchaser among global airlines. It also signifies one of the largest multi-year commitments by any business to purchase from a balanced portfolio of carbon removal projects. This initiative recognises the pivotal role that carbon removals will play in decarbonising aviation and similarly hard-to-abate sectors. BA anticipates that one-third of its net-zero pathway to 2050 will be delivered through carbon removals, with the rest coming from aircraft, operational efficiencies and sustainable aviation fuels. CUR8 will manage a portfolio of six innovative global projects, each designed to overcome barriers in carbon removal and support BA's net-zero goals. Through this initiative, British Airways is not only preparing for future regulatory requirements but also positioning itself as an industry leader in the transition to net-zero aviation. Read our press release here: https://lnkd.in/eSGmHZtN Carrie Harris, Tom Byrne, Sean Doyle

🌏 Global decarbonisation not happening quick enough, but we can fix that! 🛠 📊 The well recognised IPCC pathway to net zero emissions depicts an annual decrease of global emissions over time to get to a 90% reduction by 2050 in order to limit global average temperature increases to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. This will cause some additional negative externalities and tipping points to be crossed but has been globally accepted as the path we must follow. ⚖ This decarbonisation over time has allowed us to develop the concept of The Carbon Budget (currently this stands at 200 billion tonnes for a 50% chance of success). In 2020, our remaining carbon budget was 500 billion tonnes, so how have we used 60% in 4 years and how do we make sure we don't use the remaining 40% in the next 4 years? Surely, governments read this science and will sort it out? As you will have noticed, governmental timelines will not help us out here, we are accustomed to watching COPs come and go with little to no immediate course correction. So, It falls on the shoulders of the private sector. In general, voluntary decarbonisation for Net Zero is failing. In their 2023 Destination Net Zero report, Accenture declared that only 18% of the top 2000 businesses by revenue are decarbonising their scope 1 and 2 emissions fast enough. This needs to change fast otherwise we are creating excess emissions which have not been accounted for in global or corporate carbon budgets (e.g. Science Based Targets initiative validated targets). 🌳 💰 ⏳ The sooner we prevent excess emissions the sooner we start extending our budget, adding much needed time into the climates wallet. Time that allows nature based solutions to grow and engineered carbon removals to scale, the essential currency in further topping up our climate bank account and ultimately reversing average global temperatures, back to pre-industrial levels. 🚀 Now is the time to take our learnings of the past 10 or so years and innovate new ways to integrate climate into business models more effectively. 💡 Take inspiration from Success stories; 🔶 The EU ETS - perhaps unsurprisingly, decarbonisation actually works in a compliance regime, reach your targets or face the penalties, continue to fail = financial ruin (your business was not compatible with a net zero world) 🔶 Internal Carbon Pricing implementation - The Carbon Disclosure Project data of 500 U.S. publicly listed firms confirms that ICP reduces carbon emissions per employee and carbon emissions per revenue by 13.5% and 15.7%, respectively. 🔶 Electrification - Innovations have so far scaled renewable energy (enabling the UK to close all coal fired power stations)and electrification of vehicles. ❓ What innovative strategies do you think businesses can adopt to enhance their decarbonisation efforts? Share your thoughts below! #Decarbonisation #ClimateAction #NetZero #Sustainability

Thrilled to have attended the Climate Leaders Forum at the UK House of Lords with 100+ sustainability professionals, led by Sammy Fry and David Over - huge thanks and congrats for the excellent event. Loved the discussions and walked away with a few insights: - we need to integrate sustainability into business models and increasingly view the sustainability function as an innovation function in corporates (or even CSOs as Chief Economists, where carbon balance sheets are as important as financial balance sheets) - there's a risk of reporting being the tail that wags the dog, with CSOs overburdened by reporting as opposed to being able to focus on delivering impact (as noted by the incredible Hannah Jones from The Earthshot Prize) - there's a critical role for board directors to play in keeping corporates accountable for their sustainability plans - the role of carbon removal and the importance of it being invested in early, to drive innovation and scale Was great to catch up with friends and clients, old and new Carrie Harris Richard Andrews Elena Avesani Carolyn Ball 🌍🍴💚 Ben Cooke Eoghan Griffin Rishi Madlani Ivanka Mamic Lucy Ronan Tony Greenham sarah schaefer Maureen McDonagh Elizabeth Corse Pru Ashby #ClimateLeadership #SustainabilityInnovation

⏰ WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM 🐘 🔥 🚒 Why are we not decarbonising our economy quick enough?   There are many positive signs that policymakers are working hard on publishing new regulations and dialling up existing frameworks in response to the increasingly threatening state of the climate. But no matter how expedited some of these processes can be, we can't expect any actual policies to be put into practice before 2027. However, given we are currently using up 2% of our global carbon budget each month, which gives us only 4 years left of our 1.5 degree carbon budget (according to Kevin Anderson, Tyndall Center for Climate, link in comments), how do we place appropriate value/focus on our current failures to reduce emissions fast enough? 📈 📉 - Should this be the responsibility of businesses, whose voluntary carbon reduction targets (SBTi or otherwise) are being missed year-on-year?* - Should this be the responsibility of Science Based Targets initiative, ISO - International Organization for Standardization and others who are working hard to publish new updates to their net zero guidelines but don't expect to finish their drafting til Q4 2025?** ❓ What levers do we have left to limit this overshoot? I would love to hear from you all on ideas that could work on a practical level for businesses to address these excess emissions (emissions over and above their self-imposed carbon budget)? ❓ ❓ Bonus question: What is the best universal language for these emissions which are over and above an organisation's decarbonisation targets? A. Overshoot Emissions B. Off-Track Emissions C. Excess Emissions *REFERENCE: Accenture last Global Stocktake on Net Zero stated that only 18% of the worlds largest 2000 companies are on-track with their decarbonisation targets **NOTE: This consultation period for SBTi is explicitly aimed at defining residual emissions neutralisation and interim neutralisation targets (different from tackling near term overshoot).

You may have seen that last week, Patrick Greenfield wrote in The Guardian about carbon sinks and whether they're failing. I jotted down a few thoughts ... Patrick rightly highlights the critical importance of natural carbon sinks, such as forests and oceans, in mitigating climate change. He’s also right to point out that the land’s natural ability to absorb carbon has shown alarming signs of weakening – a predictable eventuality that has kept me and many other scientists awake at night for many years. But while his article correctly also says that “reaching net zero is impossible without nature” the unfortunate headline ('Trees and land absorbed almost no CO2 last year. Is nature’s carbon sink failing?') risks suggesting that nature-based solutions to removing CO2 from the atmosphere are a lost cause. In fact, the opposite is true. Many of the failings documented in the article still come down to human actions – felling trees, burning peat and the like. And even in the cases where natural systems are failing through changes in climate, this only underscores the importance of human efforts to halt and reverse climate change. When done right, nature-based removals through planting trees, enhancing the ability of soils to take up carbon, and restoring peatlands, can and must be an essential part of neutralising excess emissions and buying us vital time. The evidence has consistently shown that without bold action, natural processes will continue to falter. To have any chance of reversing this, we urgently need to up the ante on reducing fossil emissions, maintaining natural carbon sinks and investing in all forms of carbon dioxide removal – from natural to technological – and at scale. I’d love to know what you all think about this. Please let me know in the comments. It’s a crucially important topic now in the removals – and climate – space. (Here's Patrick's article, for reference: https://lnkd.in/g2MzCZSE) Kaya Axelsson, Will Turner Johan Rockström, Christoph Beuttler Eli Mitchell-Larson, Delia Meth-Cohn

Fantastic to speak at #legalgeek today as part of their innovation agenda. A sobering anecdote for those working in #carbonremovals. I asked the group - c.300 legal professionals - to raise their hands if they understood the definition of net zero. Two people cautiously volunteered only to swiftly put their hands down when I asked about the role of carbon removals. Fast forward ten minutes - after a net zero and carbon removals education session - 95% of the audience understood the role removals played in the net zero transition. I was clearly in the right room. We have a net zero and carbon removal literacy gap of epic proportions. I'm keen to have conversations with a much broader church of innovators from a financial, legal and risk perspective, alongside sustainability pioneers, to support getting this industry onto the exponential growth path it needs to be. Please do reach out if you want to know more about CUR8's work helping leading companies to diligence, procure and manage carbon removals to de-risk their net zero strategy. #NetZero #CarbonRemovals #SustainableBusiness #ClimateAction

CUR8 was recently featured in the report "Powering Up the UK's Cleantech Advantage: Unlocking Investment for First-of-a-Kind Projects" by Cleantech for UK and Earth Set, which highlights our innovative financing solution developed in partnership with British Airways, Standard Chartered Bank, and UNDO. Our First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) financing structure addresses a critical challenge in the carbon removal industry: bridging the gap between early-stage funding and commercial debt. This approach demonstrates how cross-industry collaboration can scale promising cleantech solutions and accelerate the growth of the carbon removals market. We're grateful for the recognition and remain committed to developing financial solutions that drive the scaling of high-quality carbon removal projects. Thank you to Cleantech for UK and Earth Set for featuring our work, and to Octopus Electric Vehicles for hosting us at the report launch yesterday! Read the report here: https://lnkd.in/eEMwq474 Amy Rennison Sarah Mackintosh Fiona Howarth

🌍 I'll be speaking at the LegalGeek Conference this week delving into the evolving regulatory and rule-setting landscape for carbon removals. 🌍 🤝 Looking forward to chatting with many of you and sharing insights from our work at CUR8 - you can catch my presentation on Wed 16th @ 1:30. 🤝 #CarbonRemovals #NetZero #LegalGeek #LegalInnovation

Thanks to John St John, and STJ Advisors for the opportunity to give the opening keynote and then hold a fascinating fireside chat with Lord John Browne at yesterday’s Carbon Dioxide Investment Forum at London Stock Exchange. The topic was “establishing a multi trillion-dollar industry” and indeed it was great to see so many investors in the room and to witness LSEG taking this topic so seriously. During the event we heard from many experts on the drivers behind #carbonremovals becoming a trillion-dollar industry, a business case for buyers built around securing supply, how essential bankable offtakes are to spur #investments, and the role the UK government can play in inventively creating the incentives that will kickstart this market. #Carbon removals have come a long way, but the real work of getting capital more quickly into the hands of suppliers needs to start right now. https://lnkd.in/edqTqGW2 Emma Parry, Steve Smith, James Screen, Tom Spencer, Katharina Kort, Jeremiah Lim, CFA, Benjamin Schulz, Charlie Pool

Looking for your next step in the world of Climate tech to help build one of the most impactful industries of our generation? 🌍 If you're a mission-driven and commercial relationship builder, we want to hear from you. 🚀 Learn about the role and apply here: https://lnkd.in/epZKwscw Deadline for application: October 20th