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It costs $276 to offset the annual carbon footprint of the average AmericanĮstablishing a clear price for atmospheric carbon is central to Nori's mission. The average American's carbon footprint is 16 tonnes per year, meaning an individual can use Nori to neutralise their climate impact for an annual investment of $276 (including Nori's 15 per cent transaction fee). This is significantly cheaper than buying carbon credits – licences to emit carbon that act as a form of tax on polluters – on emissions trading markets, with the price of EU emissions permits hitting a record price of $50 per tonne last month.

Since its launch in 2017, the company has tried to demystify carbon removal, presenting the element as an exchangeable asset and allowing people to buy and sell it in an intuitive way.Ĭustomers buy Nori Carbon Removal Tonnes (NRTs), which guarantee the removal and storage of one metric tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) for a ten-year period. "That was really the germ of the idea that ended up becoming Nori." "So what we need is a financial incentive for pulling carbon out of the air," he said. Protecting and expanding them, then, appears to be a no-brainer."If we want people to do something they're not currently doing, the best way to get them to do it is by paying them," Nori CEO Paul Gambill told Dezeen. One study of 59 subtropical countries estimated that by dampening waves and providing natural barriers to storm surges, mangrove forests prevent more than $65bn in property damage each year, and help shelter more than 15 million people. They also serve as buffers for vulnerable shorelines, shielding them from storms that barrel in from the high seas. A report published in 2014 by the International Society for Mangrove Ecosystems showed that an intense post-war replanting programme was able to restore it within two decades.Īnd there is more to such ecosystems than simply acting as sponges for greenhouse gasses. During the Vietnam war, napalm and a cocktail of weaponised herbicides destroyed more than half of the mangroves in the Mekong delta.

Over the next three years field studies showed that uprooted plants were releasing their carbon back into the atmosphere.įortunately, an older, man-made ecological disaster suggests that restoring damaged blue-carbon ecosystems is possible. A marine heatwave in Australian waters in 20 damaged around one third of the world’s largest seagrass meadow, in Shark Bay.

In May 2020 cyclone Amphan destroyed 1,200 square kilometres of mangrove forest on the border between Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. Submerged forests may be impervious to fires, but they remain vulnerable to other sorts of disasters. These are better able to survive blazes, but they are also less effective at soaking up carbon than faster-growing species. In a study published on February 25th in Nature Ecology and Evolution, researchers at Stanford University found that repeated fires favour slow-growing tree species. And fires can impede a forest’s ability to capture carbon even after they have burned out. As forests burn, their carbon stocks are released back into the atmosphere. Climate change is intensifying wildfires around the world.

Unlike forests on land, blue-carbon ecosystems do not burn. They can also trap floating debris and organic matter, which settles on the sea floor and can double the amount of carbon stored away. One reason that blue-carbon ecosystems make such effective sinks is that submerged forests are denser than their land-based equivalents. The firm estimates the project could lock away around 1m tonnes of carbon. In 2018 Apple partnered with Conservation International, a charity, to protect 11,000 hectares of mangroves on the Colombian coast. All this is attracting interest in blue carbon from those keen to use natural processes, rather than human technologies such as direct-air capture, to suck greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.