Where there’s mud there’s copper, as they’ve been saying in England for hundreds of years. It is a saying that the young British start-up Cana Earth interprets it quite literally: the founders believe they can make money for investors and landowners alike while also helping the UK meet its climate change goals – all through soil, peat and other natural resources.
Kana bills itself as “the birthplace of UK nature carbon”. His role will ultimately be to play matchmaker between landowners with land that can be used to absorb carbon emissions and investors with the capital to help them get such projects off the ground. If successful, the projects will generate carbon credits that companies can buy to offset their carbon emissions, creating a market and the potential for returns. “This is how we will reach net zero in the UK,” said Andy Creak, Kana’s founder and CEO.
It’s an ambitious idea, but one that the UK desperately needs in meeting its climate change commitments. Modest progress is being made – the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions in 2021 were 43.7% lower than in 1990, but the country still produced net carbon emissions totaling 341.5 million tonnes; that was actually 6.5% from the pandemic-hit year last year.
The UK has enshrined in law its commitment to be net zero by 2050. But a legal requirement does not guarantee compliance; the UK will need to cut its emissions significantly over the next two and a half decades, but also focus on carbon sequestration to capture the emissions it can’t get rid of. Only then can the country keep its promises.
The good news from a financial perspective is that this presents an economic opportunity for those willing to explore what is possible. In 2020, the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) estimated that the UK’s natural environment has the potential to offset 57 million units of carbon per year by 2050 – but only if an investment of £1.4 billion per year can be made until then. are being found.
That total comes from various sources. New forestry, as well as trees, hedges and other plantings can certainly provide a large part of the required commitment. Peat soil, soil and projects such as naturalizing and restoring salt marshes and sea grass also contribute.
The question, however, is how to achieve this. At the moment, efforts to make the UK more of a carbon sink are patchy to say the least. While schemes exist — and investors are beginning to show interest — they are small-scale. And no authority seems to follow them.
Nature-based solutions to climate change, such as peat soil, require significant investment
“The key is ensuring that investments can be deployed at scale,” Creak argues. “We need to make sure investment decision makers can access this market without having to put on their rain boots.”
Kana believes it can build the infrastructure needed to turn a trickle of projects into a stream. It has already built a directory of the nature-based carbon projects already operating in the UK, providing a single source so offset companies and investors can explore what’s available and start thinking about grouping projects together so they can scale to participate. The next phase is to build out the infrastructure needed to connect interested parties and ultimately facilitate investment.
It’s a project that could have a huge impact – both on the UK’s success in fighting climate change and on its physical environment. “When we are successful, you see the impact of our work everywhere,” adds Creak. “In 20 years we will have changed the landscape of the UK – or we will have failed.”
