Very few techniques can guarantee long-term carbon removal from the atmosphere. The many natural removal solutions are of course paramount to deploy, but they carry a significant risk of reveral - wildfires, deforestation, etc.

Biochar is one of the handful long-term solutions, allowing for hundreds of years of guaranteed carbon removal once put in the soil. As of today, it is also the most mature solution to be brought at scale, with already-available technology and very strong scientific backing.

Several carbon standards have developed specific methodologies to quantify the carbon-removal effect of biochar. These methodologies build on the experience of thousands of scientific publications, among which the recent work of the IPCC in 2019.

NetZero's carbon credits will be certified with the most stringent methodology, currently the one by the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), also known as Verra, whose final version will be published in early Q1 2022.

We will go beyond certification requirements for almost all steps: from feedstock selection to farmers' training, and from production standards to product's tracability.

Our model is designed to maximise environmental and social co-benefits beyond carbon removal. This is what makes our carbon credits so unique.

First, since we operate in tropical developing countries, our projects have a very positive social impact on local communities. In particular, they bring:

• qualified, well-paid industrial jobs in rural areas;
• an affordable soil amendment which significantly improves farmers' income, together with training and support to use the biochar;
• 24/7 stable electric power produced from a renewable source of energy.

Second, biochar can help reduce emissions from agriculture in two main ways:

• because biochar can significantly reduce the use of synthetic fertilisers, it reduces by the same amount emissions from their production, transport, and use;
• because of its interactions with organic matter in the soil, biochar can greatly reduce N₂O emissions from the soil.

Carbon credits have too long been associated to greenwashing. We want to make sure that priority is always given to reducing emissions at the source, and that carbon credits are only used to neutralise hard-to-abate, unavoidable emissions.

Therefore, our policy is to sell carbon credits only to companies with very credible net-zero roadmaps.