Top 5 Carbon Crypto Companies to Watch in 2024

Currently, climate change has become one of the most critical issues facing the world. It affects everyone on this planet and could have serious, long-lasting consequences for all of humanity if left untreated. This is why carbon credits are on the radar of all sectors – not just the obvious ones like energy, Agriculture and forestry. And one of these industries is blockchain technology.

The strengths of blockchain technology, such as its transparency, secure record-keeping and decentralization, constitute advantages for carbon credits.

This is why many carbon crypto companies are already in the works. There is a huge opportunity here for two of today’s biggest investment trends to develop their synergies.

With that said, let’s take a look at what some of the most promising carbon crypto companies for 2024 are.

1. ClimateDAO

At the top of our list is one of the first big players in the crypto-carbon space: ClimateDAO, also known by their play KLIMA. Its goal is to accelerate the rate at which the price of carbon emissions increases. And this by purchasing and withdrawing carbon offsets.

How do they do that ?

First, carbon offset credits are purchased from Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard registry, which guarantees their quality. These credits are withdrawn, then issued as tokens via the Toucan protocol (more on this later). These tokens are known as basic carbon tons (BCT).

• Each BCT represents a ton of carbon removed from the atmosphere.

Every KLIMA piece is backed by at least one ton of base carbon. KLIMA coin owners are incentivized to increase their share of the coin by bonding more BCT or staking their holdings to earn a yield.

There’s a lot to unpack when it comes to KlimaDAO, but the impact it’s had so far is undeniable. Last year, KlimaDAO bought 2% from the whole voluntary carbon market. And at the time of writing this article, KlimaDAO has retired 17.3 million tonnes of carbon compensation:

This is as much as a small country like Croatia emits each year.

Even if KlimaDAO sets a floor price for voluntary carbon markets, its success will not depend on the performance of voluntary carbon markets. As with all crypto projects, the most important factor is whether people actually want to adopt it or not.

KlimaDAO is still in a growth phase, so to speak, as it looks to expand its treasury and provide a more robust supply. The coin’s developers do not expect a stable price to be reached until mid-century.

However, KLIMA has been deployed for over a year and has already caused a stir in the carbon markets. Many other carbon crypto projects are still stuck in the development phase. KlimaDAO may have an ambitious goal, but they have shown that their business model has some foundation to build on.

2. Toucan Protocol

As mentioned in our discussion on KlimaDAO earlier, the Toucan Protocol is not a coin in itself. Rather, it is the infrastructure that helps crypto-carbon projects like KlimaDAO exist.

Simply put, Toucan is a transition protocol that transforms real life carbon credits into tokens that can actually be used on a blockchain. These tokens, called Tokenized CO2 or TCO2, represent carbon offsets withdrawn but not yet claimed.

They have been removed from their source register to avoid double counting, but have not yet been declared for emissions. And so that always represents a specific amount of verified carbon offsets.

• TCO2s are semi-fungible – they are not all the same, because the information about the origin of each credit is directly encoded on-chain. However, similar credits can be split and grouped into carbon pools, where they can be traded.

The largest and most well-known carbon pool using the Toucan protocol would be the Base Carbon Ton (BCT) used by KlimaDAO.

The bulk of the carbon credits filled by Toucan went to the BCT pool composed of Ethereum Request for Comment 20 (ERC-20) tokens.

These ERC-20 tokens can be directly integrated into other DeFi applications.

Toucan was the first platform to allow tokenization of carbon credits, and they have several partners in addition to KlimaDAO. They have a first mover advantage in this space and have created their own internal token, Nature Carbon Tonne (NCT) for buyers of carbon credits.

With a number of other major carbon crypto companies choosing to build on Toucan’s infrastructure instead of developing their own, there is great potential for future growth here.

3. Foam

Similar to Toucan, Mousse it’s all about the tokenization of real carbon assets.

Moss, a Brazilian company, has its own token, the MCO2 token, which is created by tokenizing verified carbon credits from sources like Verra. Each MCO2 token represents a ton of carbon offset, with a particular focus on credits generated by forest preservation projects in the the Amazon forest.

With its token, Moss aims to provide a platform for businesses and individuals wishing to offset their carbon emissions to purchase high-quality and fully transparent carbon credits.

• Moss also has a side project Amazon Forest NFT.

Moss first purchased several plots of land in the Amazon rainforest, divided them into one-hectare lots, and then sold them as NFTs.

Funds from each NFT sale were contributed to a 30-year preservation fund that will cover the costs of activities such as patrols and satellite imagery to protect the area.

The ultimate goal of this project would be to create a “green wall” around part of the Amazon rainforest to block deforestation efforts. Moss has sold three rounds of these NFTs, and more releases are on the way.

With several Brazilian carbon credit contracts locked in for the supply of MCO2 tokens in addition to their sold-out NFT series, Moss is another of the few carbon-related crypto companies that has actually deployed a successful solution to the markets.

4. Nori

A carbon removal market that focuses on coordinating transactions between small agricultural suppliers and buyers of carbon credits, Nori has not yet launched its token. Instead, Nori naturally chose to start by making sure its business model was solid and launched a pilot program.

By partnering with U.S. farmers practicing regenerative agriculture, Nori has secured a number of domestic providers of high-quality carbon credits. Some of these providers are shown below:

The top layer of soil is actually one of Mother Nature’s largest natural carbon sinks, containing three times more carbon than the entire atmosphere.

However, human agriculture has caused carbon to be released from the soil much faster than the rate at which it is replaced.

This loss of carbon in the soil is what Nori is targeting, focusing on regenerative agriculture projects. The final objective of each project is a form of carbon sequestration known as soil carbon storage, which produces carbon credits.

• These carbon credits constitute Nori’s main asset, the Nori Carbon Removal Tonne (NRT).

Each NRT represents one tonne of CO2 removed, stored for at least ten years and is independently verified and audited to ensure that each NRT truly represents one tonne of carbon properly sequestered.

In the future, Nori not only plans to expand its supply partnerships to international farms, but also intends to transform its NRTs into NORI tokens.

These NORI tokens will be deployed on the sustainable Polygon network. This creates an accessible secondary market for Nori’s NRTs with all the associated benefits of being on a blockchain.

Polygon is a leading layer 2 Ethereum solution and is currently the 10th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Polygon partnered with KlimaDAO early last year to go carbon negative by purchasing – these names may be familiar to you – BCT and MCO2 tokens.

Building on its business model proven through its pilot program, Nori partnered with Bayer AG. It is one of the largest pharmaceutical and agricultural companies in the world, which wants to increase its supply of NRT.

• The initial tranche of their deal, valued at $14.4 million, covers 400,000 acres of farmland.

Nori plans to roll out its token later this year. This launch, coupled with their partnership with Bayer, has made 2023 a very exciting year for Nori.

5. DevvStream

Rounding out our list of crypto-carbon companies to watch is one that is a little less heavily crypto-focused.

DevvStreamat first glance, is a carbon streaming company that provides capital for carbon credit projects in exchange for a share of subsequent production.

However, cryptocurrency comes into play through DevvStream’s relationship with its parent company, Devvio.

Devvio has a proprietary blockchain-based system ESG platform that DevvStream uses to chain the carbon credits it gets from its streaming deals.

• Once on the platform, DevvStream carbon credits benefit from many of the benefits that other carbon token projects enjoy.

In addition, DevvStream benefits from priority access to Devvio’s commercial customers who already use the latter’s ESG platform. If any of these customers are looking for carbon credits, DevvStream’s will be the first they check.

In addition to this, DevvStream has also partnered with the largest voluntary organization carbon exchange worldwide, Xpansiv. The objective is to provide additional liquidity for its carbon credits.

With its access to the ESG blockchain platform and Devvio clients, as well as The Xpansiv carbon credit exchangeDevvStream is uniquely positioned among leading carbon crypto companies to make the most of the carbon credits it puts on the blockchain.

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