Francisco Benedito Valentín on how ClimateTrade is advancing the sustainability agenda
After the Sustainable Innovation Forum 2021, Climate Action caught up with Francisco Benedito Valentín, CEO & Co-Founder at ClimateTrade, to discuss how the company is advancing the sustainability agenda.
After the Sustainable Innovation Forum 2021, Climate Action caught up with Francisco Benedito Valentín, CEO & Co-Founder at ClimateTrade, to discuss how the company is advancing the sustainability agenda.
Can you tell us a bit more about what ClimateTrade does and how it is advancing the sustainability agenda?
ClimateTrade is a Spanish fintech whose main objective is to help companies achieve their sustainability goals by offsetting CO2 emissions and financing projects against climate change.
Pioneer in the development of its marketplace based on Blockchain, Climatetrade has launched a digital solution, an API, that allows and promotes the acquisition of carbon neutral products and services by customers and suppliers of different companies.
Our main objective is to design strategies that allow the best and most positive impact on the environment and the communities that live on Earth. By supporting and promoting sustainable projects around the world, we provide better living conditions for the local communities involved and generate a direct impact on the environment that helps to restore balance to the planet and mitigates climate change.
We are focused on addressing climate change by promoting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. We analyse the impact of the projects that are listed on our marketplace not only as per results in terms of verifiable GHG emission reductions or removals, but also in terms of their contribution to the SDGs.
What is blockchain technology and how does ClimateTrade use this to help their clients offset their carbon footprint?
Blockchains are distributed ledgers which replicate the data across the different nodes involved in the network.That is, instead of being centralized on a single server, the information is decentralized on different computers, each saving its own copy. This prevents any record from being changed or deleted, since it only allows adding new data, thus preventing data from being altered or manipulated.
The information on a public blockchain is accessible to everyone and visible on any block explorer, facilitating the traceability and transparency of canceled carbon credits. Neither ClimateTrade, nor the creators of the blockchain itself could alter the information since all nodes have replicas of the data and are required to follow the consensus algorithm, which ensures the immutability of the data stored in them.
If you had to choose between carbon capture and storage and nature-based solutions, which would you choose and why?
Nature-based solutions, which also involve carbon capture and storage, for example, wetlands ecosystems capture CO2 from the air and sequester it, and they also provide a wide range of other important benefits, such as cleaner air and water, economic benefits, and increased biodiversity.
NBSs can achieve short-term carbon removal at a lower cost than technology solutions. Since our birth, we have been adding mitigation projects and carbon credits based on the conservation of ecosystems. At ClimateTrade marketplace we promote NbS projects of this type, including others that we consider very relevant for health in cities, such as BioUrban, which due to its bioalgae reactor, we must also consider it a NbS.
In addition, our decentralized platform solves the barriers that prevent reaching the potential of NbS, its potential for scale due to various conceptual and technical obstacles such as the lack of consensus on how to treat the ownership of sequestered carbon, provide clarity on the rules and the certification under an international body of commonly accepted standards, overcoming the lack of confidence after years of excess supply of carbon credits but at very low prices that did not help communities to survive.
How did you incorporate sustainability into your career path, and why does this topic hold meaning to you personally?
I decided to bet on sustainability and launch the climate platform, ClimateTrade, implementing the use of blockchain technology to generate a solution against climate change.
I did it for two reasons: the first is that we believe that technology is one of the solutions to climate change and the second reason was my wife's pregnancy, since I want to leave a better planet for my daughter.
In addition, there is an increasingly clear and urgent need to act and remedy the climate change situation. A broader awareness is growing in all social and economic sectors and it is essential to promote sustainability. The time is now if we want to preserve the balance of the planet and, therefore, ensure the future of all living beings.
ClimateTrade are speaking at the Sustainable Innovation Forum 2021, to join them register here now.
