Today, Renoster is launching its first product, the Mercury Rubric to evaluate the quality of forest carbon credits. Our mission is to protect the world’s endangered species and landscapes, while advancing climate action at scale. I feel very fortunate to have been able to pour myself into this mission, to do something that truly advances climate action, and am so grateful for every team member who felt the same inspiration to build Renoster into what it is today.
The seed for Renoster was planted at the beginning of my career. At my first job, I was an environmental strategist for a mid-size British insurance broker trying to make emissions reductions across all 60 offices. I was responsible for calculating the firm’s global carbon footprint–and what we couldn’t reduce, we offset with credits.
What stuck with me was that our teams around the world embraced sustainability when it was presented as an upgrade to their existing processes. My colleagues responded to solutions, not judgment.
This fundamental concept informs our practice at Renoster. We want to offer solutions for companies that see offsets as a key part of their net-zero strategy, and want assurance that the credits they purchase demonstrably contribute to real carbon removals.
In the past few years we’ve been rocked by news that diminished trust in carbon credits. Projects that claim significant carbon removals have been found to not remove carbon. Other projects take place on already-conserved land (and therefore be non-additional), and face quality risks that are not revealed to the end consumer. Despite these legitimate problems, offsets are, and will continue to be, an important part of corporate sustainability strategies.
At Renoster, we set out to solve these problems by assessing forest carbon project quality using remote sensing and peer-reviewed science. I have teamed up with Elias Ayrey, joining us as Chief Science Officers and co-founder, formerly of Pachama.
We believe that democratic access to project quality assessment is important and will incentivise higher quality projects. We are excited to work with corporates in guiding their sustainability offsets to Net Zero with truly additional carbon credits.
Read about how we rate projects here, or more about Elias here.
Saif Bhatti
CEO, Founder @ Renoster.
