Gevo Inc (NASDAQ:GEVO) said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Farmers Edge Inc, a global leader in digital agriculture, to work together to deliver a one-of-a-kind carbon inset management program.
The collaboration will focus on extracting value from carbon insets, which represent the actions taken by an organization to fight climate change within its own value chain, as opposed to offsets, which are typically paying for a project to capture atmospheric carbon dioxide somewhere else.
The companies plan to launch a program with US growers to measure and track carbon intensity scores for corn and soy in the production of sustainable aviation fuel and other low-carbon hydrocarbon fuels.
Dr Paul Bloom, Gevo’s Chief Carbon and Innovation Officer, said the “pioneering collaboration with Farmers Edge is an industry first to scale-up carbon accounting for climate-smart agricultural practices across the full carbon life cycle from farm to food, fuels and sustainable products”.
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“We look forward to bringing the data-driven capabilities and technology of both organizations to help our value chain partners and customers prove their carbon footprint reductions on our collective journey to net-zero and beyond,” Dr Bloom added in a statement.
Gevo said that as businesses strive to deliver on the evolving needs of the enviro-cautious end-consumer, the collaboration is expected to "create a unique opportunity for the transportation industry to reduce its carbon footprint, meet its sustainability goals, and increase transparency with customers".
“Companies around the world are looking for ways to reduce the amount of pollution they produce, and in transportation, fuels derived from crops are a major tool to make that happen,” Wade Barnes, Farmers Edge CEO and founder said.
“Our comprehensive digital platform, in conjunction with Gevo's advanced validation tools, should provide reliable and verifiable ways for carriers around the world to not only reduce their carbon footprint, but to be able to prove it, positively impacting their relationships with the end-consumer,” he added.
David George, Gevo’s senior vice president of Verity Tracking said: “The goal of Verity Tracking is to increase market validation and liquidity for carbon-based digital assets, return this value in multiple forms back down to the farming level, and provide scientifically modeled, verifiable carbon impact scoring through Argonne GREET to the farmers.”
“This technology will allow farmers to track their feedstock-related CI score that can then be quantified through the value chain into biofuels like SAF, food products, energy, or consumer products. Verity Tracking’s capabilities, coupled with Farmers Edge innovative technology and analytics, should form the basis to make this a market reality,” he added.
Gevo's mission is to transform renewable energy and carbon into energy-dense liquid hydrocarbons that can be used for drop-in transportation fuels such as gasoline, jet fuel and diesel fuel, that when burned have potential to yield net-zero greenhouse gas emissions when measured across the full life cycle of the products.
The company is in the advanced state of developing renewable electricity and renewable natural gas for use in production processes, which will result in low-carbon fuels with substantially reduced carbon intensity.
Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com