Anew Climate releases Epoch Evaluation Platform, initiating a new era in the development of carbon credits; Epoch uses satellite monitoring, AI, ground-level data collection for nature-based forest carbon projects to significantly enhance credit integrity

Satellite monitoring, AI, and ground-level data collection redefine carbon credits to offer highest-level of rigor for nature-based climate solutions

Anew Climate, LLC, a global leader of diverse climate solutions, announced today the release of its Epoch Evaluation Platform™, initiating a new era in the development of carbon credits. Utilizing data and technologies initially developed by the military, aerospace programs, and academic institutions, Epoch provides an advanced level of data transparency and analytical rigor for nature-based forest carbon projects to significantly enhance credit integrity at a critical market juncture. A market first, Epoch leverages a novel combination of the latest advancements in machine learning and cloud computing to deliver unprecedented accuracy and substantiation in carbon credit quantification.

“Anew’s Epoch Evaluation Platform enables the execution of reliable and scalable projects to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations using the best available science, technology and data analytics,” said Angela Schwarz, CEO of Anew Climate.  “For the past several months, Anew has collaborated with scientists, academics, and industry thought leaders from the industrial, tech, agricultural, and financial sectors. Through these conversations, ideation, and data exchanges, we have reaffirmed the integral role of carbon credits  in these sectors’ comprehensive climate action plans. Nature-based projects represent the biggest opportunity in the here and now to start to bend the curve on GHG pollution.”

Driving market assurance and confidence

In addition to machine learning and cloud computing, Epoch uses high-frequency satellite monitoring, AI, ground-level data collection, and on-going economic evaluation to establish truly dynamic baseline models which ensure credits meet the highest standards of additionality and durability. Epoch’s dynamic baselining mirrors the reality of the constantly changing world by tracking different key drivers of forest management in and around a property over a project’s lifetime. These variables are measured and monitored at regular intervals to ensure that credit generation is always underpinned by real-world conditions.

“Today marks the beginning of a new standard in carbon credits,” said Schwarz. “While the voluntary carbon market has a 20-year history, we are entering into an era where the markets must evolve and provide buyers with even more confidence that carbon projects are making a difference. We named our evaluation platform Epoch to represent the transformational shift that we are helping to drive.”

“Anew Climate's Epoch Evaluation Platform is a welcomed advancement in nature-based carbon credits,” said Clayton Munnings, Ph.D., Co-founder and CEO of Elevate Climate. “I especially invite the implementation of annual dynamic baselining, which should represent a substantial improvement over long-lived static baselines.”

Anew is applying Epoch on carbon projects spanning more than six million acres of forest properties, further enhancing the validity and transparency of credits generated from the company’s voluntary market projects. A longtime leader in the voluntary carbon market, Anew has developed more than 25 percent of the carbon credits issued in the U.S. over the last five years.

“Boosting integrity in carbon markets is essential to make sure carbon credits deliver on their climate benefits. New technologies and processes that drive innovation and integrity in the VCM can play an important role,” said Angela Churie Kallhauge, Executive Vice President for Impact, Environmental Defense Fund.

Market-based solutions work

Rising global temperatures demand immediate and bold climate action. One of the best near-term scalable solutions available to combat climate change is conserving and sustainably managing forest properties, which have been proven effective in both the avoidance of carbon emissions as well as the removal of carbon from the atmosphere.

It is estimated that $4 trillion in annual finance will be needed to stabilize global warming by 2050.  Nature-based solutions such as improved forest management and afforestation have the potential to provide about one-third of the climate mitigation activities needed to meet climate goals.[1] Additionally, the effectiveness of carbon markets has been demonstrated by forest conservation in the United States. Over ten million acres have been conserved over the past decade through market-based incentives, which is twice the rate of conservation through traditional easements since the formation of modern-day land trusts approximately 60 years ago.

Despite these facts, capital deployment into voluntary nature-based carbon projects has slowed over the past year due to concerns about project and credit integrity. Epoch addresses these concerns head-on through the utilization of the best available technologies to ensure that the carbon credits generated by these projects are real, quantifiable, additional, and durable.

“The financial motivation for landowners to participate in market-based solutions is changing land management faster than any other historical conservation effort,” said Schwarz. “With Epoch, the market will have unprecedented transparency and data confirming the effectiveness in reducing emissions and facilitating carbon removal across the North American forest landscape.”

Epoch Evaluated Platform credits will be identified as Epoch Evaluated in Anew’s marketing materials and noted accordingly in their respective public Registry. The projects are or will be newly registered with ACR. The Epoch Platform can be readily integrated with the recently published draft version (2.1) of ACR’s methodology for Improved Forest Management on Non-Federal U.S. Forestlands and can also be applied to earlier versions of the methodology.