Welcome to Earthshot Labs. We’re an open-source community of passionate climate activists, environmentalists, nature lovers… you name it, we’re here!
From our newsletter, The Earthshot Labs Elixir, you can expect to see:
Weekly welcome call event information
Updates from our team
Articles about current climate-related events
Events and seminars we’re hosting
Upcoming Events
New Here?
We’d love to hear about your journey and share more about ours with you! We host weekly welcome calls. Join our next welcome call on Thursday, February 25th at 3 pm EST / 12 pm PST / 10 am HST.
Mini Demo Day
Our teams will demo progress on their current work and recently-produced results. Some updates you can expect to see: a new biomass map by our forest team, and the water team's work on restoration potential.
Tune in to our mini demo day on Friday, February 26th at 3 pm EST / 12 pm PST / 10 am HST. RSVP to the meeting on Eventbrite, then join the Zoom call.
Weekly Article
11 Theses for the Climate Decade
Our Prediction for a Climate-Conscious Future
Article Contributors: Troy Carter, Patrick Leung, Nicole Felts, Tim Tensen, Sarah Falloon, Peter Olivier, Connor Richards and influenced by the entire Earthshot open-source community.
Climate and ecological action are having a moment. We are witnessing unprecedented weather events and climate-driven human and biodiversity crises, and at the same time, the momentum for dramatic intervention by individuals, corporations, and governments is stronger than ever.
At Earthshot Labs, we are a team of futurists designing systems to incentivize comprehensive planetary regeneration. We have strong beliefs, albeit loosely held, about how holistic climate and ecological solutions will evolve over the next decade. Here are a few:
AI Mapping: There is an increasing wealth of remote sensing data — satellite imagery, LiDAR, and ground truth data — that will provide ever greater clarity into all major ecological systems. This will include data on water, soil, and forest carbon, as well as biodiversity, pollution, and risk mitigation. Increasing computational power, return interval frequency, spatial resolution, and global imagery coverage will enable machine learning models with unprecedented predictive accuracy.
Remote Verification: The typical cost of carbon project development and verification will decrease 100x — from $100,000+ to less than $1,000 — through remote sensing and a statistical portfolio approach to verification of soil and biomass carbon. This will unlock 100-1000x more credit supply as smaller landholders and less-developed global participants enter the market. Existing voluntary, regulatory, and region-specific verification methodologies will be replaced by globally standardized models with localized training sets provided by landowner self-verification, soil carbon testing, and metrics provided by LiDAR from drones.
Securitization: Carbon markets will evolve to securitize ecosystem restoration, which will allow pledge compliance and regulatory buyers to scale investment in climate mitigation. Transactions for mitigating storage risk (e.g. fire, demolition, land-use) and standardizing carbon methodologies and co-benefits currently occur within a project-based approach. In the future, transactions will move to an aggregated project portfolio approach. Carbon futures and offtake agreements can inspire donors to contribute to the financing of nature-based solutions that sequester CO2 over time.
Price & Time Value of Carbon: The price of carbon, as represented by the removal and storage project credits transacted in regulatory and voluntary markets, will increase toward the marginal value of the avoided impact, which we believe is at least $50, potentially as high as $200 per tonne of CO2e. Carbon sequestered now is more valuable for mitigating climate change than carbon sequestered in the future. Options-type pricing models will become mature for the social time value of carbon sequestration and storage. Units of storage will use CO2e tonne/year or similar.
Holistic Solutions: Carbon is not the only metric for climate mitigation. We are in a parallel ecological crisis of species and biodiversity collapse driven by economic inequality and externalization of environmental impact. In the future, ecosystem service markets will place a higher value on nature-based solutions, with quantifiable biodiversity and environmental justice impacts, over conventional commodity carbon offsets.
Ecological Monetary Systems: Blockchain-based currency backed by ecosystem securities will replace conventional currencies by de-risking and standardizing natural resources. This ecological monetary system will provide stability in an investment market that is vulnerable to the impacts of a changing climate. These ecosystem securities will be based on ecosystem services rendered by water, soil, and biodiversity resources and will be tranched in asset classes that are standardized based on units of measure appropriate to each ecosystem service class. Securitization of regenerative projects will be accelerated through crypto token issuance enabling direct agreements between project developers/landowners and investors.
Regenerative Land Use: Restoration projects in rural regions and developing countries will expand dramatically as their low land cost makes reforestation and rewilding profitable. Fast-growing tropical biomass (e.g. bamboo) will become preferred strategies due to high initial sequestration rates that take advantage of the higher value of near-term sequestration. Diversified agroforestry that combines carbon sequestration, food, and cash crops will dramatically expand as new technology simplifies management and sales complexity. Marginal and arid land will dramatically rise in value as large-scale intensive grazing, soil and water restoration, and revegetation contribute to strong land arbitrage opportunities.
Climate Conscious Culture: People increasingly care about climate action and self-identify as climate-conscious in their lifestyle choices and purchasing preferences. Gen Z and eco-activism movements will be faster moving and more impactful using social media and other online platforms, gaining critical mass thus becoming powerful global forces for change.
Ecological Consumer Finance: Banking, investing, and spending will become high leverage points for individuals to choose climate-conscious alternatives. For example, banks and investment services will offer consumers the opportunity to invest in eco-conscious funds and initiatives that demonstrably help the planet and help people neutralize their carbon footprint.
Environmental/Social/Governance (ESG): Investment funds are under pressure from their stakeholders to make environmentally conscious investment choices and to operate portfolio companies in eco-conscious ways. Risk assessment and regulation will direct the flow of institutional capital toward sustainable investment.
Teal Teamwork: Ecological and mission-driven businesses and organizations that achieve emergent, collaborative, creative, and sovereign team cultures will thrive in a post-COVID remote work environment, capturing top talent and accelerating new climate initiatives.
Bonus: Regenerative Urbanism: New building and urban typologies, green materials, electric everything, global satellite internet access, and autonomous shared transportation will marry the social and economic opportunity of cities with natural ecosystems. We’ll also have the most awesome company headquarters. :)
Earthshot is taking a leading role in bringing about these changes in order to accelerate humanity’s progress in reversing climate change. If our cause and ideas resonate with you, here’s how you can get involved: