Benjamin Alexandre Jeanroy
Carbon credits from hemp: 7 essential facts you need to know
7 things you need to know about the intersection of hemp and carbon credits by Augur Associates
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Carbon Credit
There's too much CO2 in the air, and we urgently need to reduce our emissions. Combined with carbon credits, hemp represents a powerful tool to fight climate change, restore biodiversity and create value.
Augur Associates supports certified projects that measurably cut global emissions while financing alternatives to the high-emissions products we have been relying on for decades.
Carbon contribution, often called "offsetting", is the act of buying Carbon Credits to mitigate one's emissions. It is the minor preferential action a company (or any emitter) can take on its pathway to net zero.
Other vital steps must be taken upstream of the carbon contribution, such as those described in this mitigation pyramid.
A carbon credit represents a ton of CO2 either not emitted (avoided emissions) or removed from the atmosphere (carbon capture).
Carbon credits usually fall into one of two categories:
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nature-based (that uses natural solutions to pull carbon out of the atmospheric pool)
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or tech-based (that uses human-bult technologies to pull carbon out of the atmospheric pool)
Carbon credits are key to scaling up the industrial hemp sector.
Carbon credits entitle players to reduce production costs and access green finance. This allows hemp-based products to finally become competitive with oil and chemical alternatives.
In this open-access deck, you will find everything one needs to know concerning the intersection between industrial hemp and carbon credits.
Carbon credit certification
PROJECT: An end-product life cycle analysis (LCA) must be finalised, together with a justification of its co-benefits and the absence of any negative impact on the environment.
CERTIFICATION: Credits are issued by Carbon Standards based on emission measurement methodologies. Each Standard has its corpus covering different types of carbon-negative endeavors or projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
AUDIT: The projects are then audited by a third party to check that all the data and calculations are accurate.
GENERATION: Once all the above stages have been completed, the credits are issued and made available on the voluntary carbon market (VCM).
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Pale green represents hemp growers and co-operatives adopting regeneration agriculture practices which can get the majority of the share of the soil carbon credits.
Darker green shows the hemp biomass being transformed (as biochar or insulation/construction material for ex.) which triggers above-ground credit generation; the latter going primarily to the manufacturers.
Blue is where end-users of manufactured hemp products may also finally claim avoidance credits (a promoter using hempcrete instead of cement or a farmer using biochar instead of synthetic fertilizers for ex.).
Carbon Standard Partnerships
The revival of industrial uses for hemp means that there are still few suitable and sufficiently robust methodologies for properly certifying carbon projects derived from this plant.
Augur is one of the world's pioneers in co-developing these tools with a small number of standards to support the development of the industrial hemp sector worldwide.
Riverse is a French standard specialising in the circular and sustainable economy. This partner certifies construction and biochar projects for Augur.
Puro is a world-renowned Finnish player in the certification standard for carbon emission reductions. Augur works with this established name for biochar projects worldwide.
Capturiant is based in the United States and specialises in regulated environmental asset trading. This standard partners with Augur to finance carbon sink projects and accelerate the deployment of its solutions on the American continents.
Services For The Industrial Hemp Sector
Augur Associates’ sustainable division, Augur Hemp, specialises in supporting the hemp sector by generating carbon credits for long-term CO2 sequestration hemp-derived products.
Augur Associates can help hemp projects adopt regenerative agricultural practices to reduce their impact on the climate, or to structure a decarbonised production chain. Once a project is ready, we offer a comparison of the available standards and make it possible to obtain certification as well as to sell the generated carbon credits.
Augur provides a complete carbon credit project management service for industrial hemp:
Life Cycle Assessments and EPD registrations, which are often needed for certification.
Management of project certification (which usually takes up to 4 months, third-party audit included). After this, credits are issued and can be sold on the voluntary market.
Support reaching carbon credit buyers and negotiating resale and offtake agreements.
Strategic end-product production planning.
Fundraising, strategic and logistical support for starting or scaling up projects.
Service For Carbon Credit Buyers
Augur Associates researches, screens, builds and helps high-integrity carbon projects for buyers looking for robust credits that bring forward many environmental and social co-benefits:
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● High permanence (100+ years for the vast majority).
● High reliability (no risk of carbon capture reversal unlike REDD+ and ARR credits).
● A reasonable price compared to other tech-based solution that provides the same safety (DACCs credits are routinely sold at 1,000 € and beyond on the market today).
● High scalability (the local market is the limit, exponential hemp uses...).
● High number of co-benefits.
Julien COMPAIN
Hemp Distribution Manager
Vieille Matériaux
"Thank you to Augur for the support and follow-up. The team was able to guide us, with patience and understanding, through the complex procedures involved in obtaining certification for our credits. We have high hopes for this collaboration."
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