In an industry shrouded in red tape and opacity, data can deliver a breakthrough path forward.
The carbon market is one of the most important tools we have for fighting climate change. It can act as a climate and social justice miracle, channelling urgently needed funds to poorer countries, providing them with real financial incentives to restore biodiversity hotspots, forests and carbon sinks. As a form of tax on large carbon emitters it offers genuine hope for the future – but as one of the most complex climate solutions it’s also the most likely to fall prey to greenwashing.
CEEZER founder, Magnus Drewelies, fell in love with the possibilities of nature regeneration as a student during a field trip to a mangrove restoration project in Madagascar, but he was struck with the lack of interest from carbon market buyers despite the project’s incredible impact: “It was crazy that so much good work was happening on the ground with so little buyer interest, and I realised I needed to look more on the buyer’s side.”
After graduating he dove into the buyer side, working with corporations on their climate strategies. He spotted a common challenge facing companies that want to offset emissions: “Understanding what they invest in – it’s an investment, we need the right data to make an investment decision.
“It’s very abstract, right? It’s non-regulated, it’s very unusual for companies to invest in a space like this, where the impact happens on another part of the earth.”
Benedict Probst, a Senior Researcher and Lecturer in the Group for Sustainability and Technology at the Department of Management, Technology and Economics of ETH Zurich, explains the CO2 dilemma facing businesses: “The current market for climate compensations is full of questionable credits, while high-quality CO2 credits remain expensive and limited in availability. This underscores the need for companies to prioritise emissions reduction first and simultaneously develop a long-term strategy for purchasing high-quality CO2 removal credits.”
The urgent need to provide buyers with a reliable data and decision-making toolkit inspired Drewelies to build CEEZER – a marketplace platform that brings harmony, data, and transparency to both buyers and sellers in the carbon market: “My genuine concern was that if we continue as we have done over the past 20 years, a lot of money will be invested in the wrong things. Because it’s so easy to not invest in the best possible technology or invest in credits that have had a lower impact,” says Drewelies.
He built CEEZER on the premise that “both science and business can come together for change.” The platform cuts through confusion by simplifying buying decisions for carbon buyers. It uses a scientific, data and AI driven, peer reviewed process to clearly showcase the carbon offset project’s underlying activity, the scientifically proven risk, and the impact it can have.
“The data we provide is an objective market view. We’re not tied to any credit or seller but can explain and materialise across all standards. We can give a harmonised idea of what it is you’re buying, we work closely with an advisory board and use peer-reviewed data,” explains Drewelies. “We were always careful not to rate ourselves to avoid a conflict of interest. That’s a problem this market has had for a long time.”
Although third party certifiers for carbon credits exist, they do little to deliver clarity for the average carbon market buyer who is left struggling to understand how one certificate differs from another and how the quality of projects compare. The result is that many well-meaning buyers get their fingers burnt.
“In contrast to compliance markets, voluntary carbon markets lack uniform standards,” explains Probst. “Several hundred methodologies are used to develop compensation projects, with a huge range in the stringency of the underlying standards. Several studies across forestry, cookstoves, and renewable energy document that offset projects often do not deliver what they promise. Ascertaining quality is critical as the demand for climate compensations could increase 15-fold by 2030.”
In a recent study in the journal Science, millions of forest carbon credits approved by the world’s leading certifier, Verra, were found to be largely ineffective, and if used for offsetting, could make global warming worse.
CEEZER is the first marketplace platform that brings together projects from all major certifiers to address the lack of unified standards: “We analyse and harmonise all their specific methodologies and make them comparable. We leverage data – we have over 3.5 million data points and work with seven big registries,” Drewelies explains.
In early 2022, when Drewelies started building CEEZER along with fellow co-founders Dr. Carla Woydt and Hannes Nützmann, market pull was so strong that they were onboarding large customers within just a few months. Many listed companies were using CEEZER exclusively. “That was a good validation point,” says Drewelies, “because these companies can work with anyone – there’s no reason for them to go with an early startup.”
“When you login to CEEZER, it changes your view of the market, because you move away from getting a small fraction of the market to comparing it globally to make the best decision. You can start looking at carbon credits from a content and impact perspective. As a buyer, if you want to do permanent removals, you can filter for that.”
Permanence has become a keyword for buyers in a market where the impact of so many credits has dissipated into thin air.
“Ultimately, it is critical to move away from avoidance-based offsets towards more durable, carbon removal solutions like biochar and Direct Air Capture and Storage,” explains Probst. “These technologies offer two advantages: the amount of captured CO2 is easy to measure, and the deep underground storage ensures long-term permanence.
“The carbon removal market grew by 5.6x in the first half of 2023 compared to 2022, but is still expensive at an average of USD 450 / tCO2.”
CEEZER collaborates closely with its clients to help them build portfolios for the best long-term climate impact: “we took a non-BS approach to the market and said, ‘Listen, we’re going to give you the data we have, and we’ll work with you to figure out the best solution.’ That went well,” says Drewelies. “Now, we’re scaling this up on both the sell and buy sides, we have a tremendous community of developers.”
The platform’s unifying, data-driven approach to the carbon market is giving buyers greater confidence in their sustainability initiatives. Hanna Weiland, Head of Sustainability at Zooplus, says she found CEEZER after searching for a highly transparent carbon market partner, “With CEEZER, we have the opportunity to access removal and offsetting projects and their developers directly. For example, we are able to support a carbon removal project in Puerto Rico, in which biochar is produced from waste material as long-term carbon storage.”
For most companies, achieving net-zero goals isn’t possible without some carbon offsetting, this means the carbon market is not an optional but an essential mechanism to combat climate change. A credible carbon market holds the potential to be among humanity’s last best hope for the future: according to the Environmental Defense Fund, this trading mechanism could almost double the reduction in global emissions – but its got to offer integrity.
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