While companies are pouring billions of dollars into developing technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, a local nonprofit thinks nature should play a larger role in the carbon-reduction process.
Houston-based BCarbon certifies measurable removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that has positive environmental and social impacts. The organization's models focus on efforts like soil regeneration, flood mitigation and more. The 501(c)(3) organization was formed in 2021 from a stakeholder group at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.
On June 15, BCarbon announced it received a grant from San Antonio-based Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE: VLO), which will fund the design and carbon credit model for a 1,000-mile living shoreline on the Texas coast. Valero gave BCarbon $280,000 in grant funding, said Jim Blackburn, CEO of BCarbon.
Blackburn is an environmental attorney and a professor of environmental law at Rice. He's also co-director of Rice's Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters (SSPEED) Center. After Hurricane Ike, the SSPEED Center received grant funding from Houston Endowment to study how to better protect the Houston region from environmental disasters, like flooding.
It was during that process that Blackburn realized how much potential there was to do good with land management. Not only could supporting natural lands like coastal wetlands and prairies help with flood mitigation, these areas could store a lot of carbon with proper land management, he said.
"All of these ecosystems take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere," Blackburn said. "And if you manage them correctly, they can do a lot more."
A working group of around 40 stakeholders was formed to explore ways to sequester carbon with nature-based solutions while also supporting Texas farmers and ranchers with a different kind of income. Eventually, hundreds joined the working group to help develop a soil carbon standard. But when the group approached established certification registries with the model, they weren't interested, Blackburn said.
"Our stakeholder group said, 'Why don't you form your own nonprofit and just start a credit issuance process of your own?'" Blackburn said.
BCarbon was formed and became a 501(c)(3) organization in August 2021. The nonprofit issued its first carbon credits in November 2021 and currently has around 300,000 tons of soil credits in the queue today. BCarbon is also looking at credit models supporting forests and, now, coastlines.
The living shoreline model will include oyster reefs that will act as breakwater systems to mitigate coastal marsh erosion. BCarbon said that each acre of coastal wetlands represents around 400 tons of carbon dioxide currently stored in the soil. Aside from protecting carbon-sequestering natural ecosystems, BCarbon believes its living shoreline model could increase oyster populations along the Texas coast.
In its first issuance last year, BCarbon issued 34,600 tons of credits to San Antonio-based Grassroots Carbon, which sold credits to big-name clients like Houston-based Marathon Oil Corp. (NYSE: MRO) and Canada-based Shopify Inc. (NYSE: SHOP).
With the recent grant funding from Valero, BCarbon expects the development of the coastline carbon credits model to be completed the end of this summer. The organization expects to receive the first applications for the projects this fall.
