The Challenge

A major mechanism needed to reach the EU’s goal of being an economy with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions will be carbon capture technologies. These technologies capture carbon either from the air (direct air capture) or via the transformation of solid (wet or dry) biomass (through pyrolysis, for instance) into solid products rich in carbon (for example, biochar). This stabilized carbon is then often confined in storage facilities, “locking” the captured carbon away. The locking away of solid carbon makes the whole process carbon net-negative.

The production chain of solidified carbon has a complex supply chain behind it, where many different actors are involved. For example, in the case of generating biochar out of biomass, first, a producer collects biomass (for example, a farmer collecting their dung). The biomass is then transported through a transport company to a chemical plant that transforms the biomass through a series of operations into biochar. The biochar is then distributed to different transport companies that bring it to their confinement locations. Additionally, there are analysis labs and sequesters that issue attestations about the quality of the generated biochar and oversee the carbon credit process.

This complex inter-organizational process is similar for all carbon capture value chains and, like all multi-participant supply chains, is highly susceptible to breaches of integrity. Today, regulation authorities already face large challenges verifying the correct execution of the processes.

The Solution

The innovative approach behind our experiment is not relying on a central authority to safeguard and “inject” trust in carbon certificates, but to use a decentralized approach where a set of independent actors can create attestation and in that way safeguard the process.

In contrast to existing solutions, CAST is focusing not on the certificate itself, but on the process that leads to the creation of the certificate. We store a hash of all context information associated with that digital town of objects process on the blockchain to ensure integrity. The data exchange itself is carried out using the FIWARE Context Broker and iSHARE.

Our approach for the validation and experiment itself is a high-fidelity end-to-end lab experiment that is a small-scale version of the real processes of such value chains. The different parties in the consortium take over the roles they would also have in the real world. This gives us instant validation of where the weak spots of the system are and lets us work very close to the real world and real processes.

Business Projections – Scalability

In order to market CO2 offset certificates, you need our platform, because otherwise, the incentivisation won’t work. Moreover, no one will transport biowaste over long distances (CO2 emissions). It is essential therefore that this concept of carbon production and storage functions decentrally and globally so that everyone can use it as a producer or buyer. Only in that way will the whole concept be scalable to a scale that is mandatory for our survival on the planet (meeting climate targets) – and that is 10Gt of carbon dioxide equivalents per year (equivalent to approx. 4 Gt of carbon/year) have to be sequestered.