Verity Carbon Solutions provides end-to-end carbon accounting services through our proprietary digital MRV (Measure, Report, Verify) platform. Powered by distributed ledger technology, our compliance-first technology products ensure accurate, transparent, and secure carbon accounting to maximize the value of environment-friendly choices you make throughout your value chain.
Verity’s mission is to track environmental attributes across the supply chain, from feedstock (e.g., corn, used cooking oil, tallow) to end products (e.g., biofuels, renewable diesel, sustainable aviation fuel). Our platform not only runs full traceability and accounting, but also enables compliance and sustainability reporting. Sustainability consulting services include regulatory analysis and strategy development, life cycle analysis, compliance management, and audit readiness. Verity Tracking provides digital measurement, reporting, and verification, carbon accounting, minting and tokenization, and upstream and downstream supply chain. Marketing services include utilization and retirement services, Scope 1, 2, and 3 trading and marketing, and voluntary compliance and tax.
Verity also provides traceability from fields to fuels with easy-to-use technologies and the creation of high-quality environmental products, insets that represent real supply-chain carbon performance and reductions, and scope 1,2, and 3 reporting across the value chain.
Verity Makes the Most of Real Farm Data and More
Verity uses farm-specific data sources including OEM systems from farm equipment such as John Deere and New Holland Agriculture; GIS data aggregation tools, including FarmersEdge and Farmobile; financial planning tools such as AgriEdge and Granular, and other sources, such as agronomists’ tools. The data is then processed using proprietary data aggregation, transformation, and preparation tools, and FD-CIC inputs such as Argonne GREET, and others.
As the program grows in relation to GREET, the data continues to improve, as sensor data per operation, per field is incorporated in categories including field information, fertilizers and lime, energy inputs, nitrogen management, pesticides, and soil organic carbon.
By measuring, reporting, and verifying farm data, real field-level results and showing potential carbon-intensity reductions in SAF with precision ag, cover crops, conservation tillage, manure use, and more, through data inputs from farm-management software, EOM equipment programs, laboratories and supplier reports, Google Earth, and certifications,Carbon intensity is tracked at the field level and broken down by emissions used to grow the crop and soil organic carbon of the stored carbon within the soil. This allows growers to monitor CI performance at the farm and field level.
Verity allows growers to monitor their CI scores using a new interface that makes it easy to view soil organic carbon on a field level.
Using a field-by-field CI score and yields, the program can provide mass balanced attribute tracking for grain bin contents. The corn CI will be piped into an ethanol producer when available, and inventory and CI of batches will be tracked.
What Does Measuring CI Score Do for Growers?
The idea behind the USDA Climate-Smart Commodities Grant Program is to encourage use of agriculture methods that have positive impacts on soil health, including soil microbes and organic matter, increase carbon sequestration, reduce dependence on nitrogen fertilizer and reduce carbon intensity of operations, and collect and transfer data more efficiently and seamlessly to calculate and monitor carbon intensity. Keep in mind, premium payments for achieving Tier 1 & Tier 2 goals likely have a limited lifespan.
To that end the Tier 1 Premiums include using soil biological microbials, carbon soil amendments, soil genomics testing, and GIS data collection.
The Gevo Farm to Flight Program offers Tier 2 premiums that are designed to reward farmers based on a points system for employing ag techniques, including three points for planting cover crops, two points each for using soil microbials, reducing nutrient use efficiency for nitrogen to less than 1 pound per bushel, and implementing no-till, one point each for implementing strip tilling or reduced tilling, applying manure, or actively grazing livestock, a half-point is awarded for conducting soil health analysis and incorporating compost. Farmers that achieve five points can earn a premium of $0.08 per bushel, four points earns $0.06 per bushel, and three points earns $0.04 per bushel.
The program also has Tier 3 premiums based on a farm carbon intensity score, with premiums based on how they stack up with the Midwest Average. A carbon intensity reduction below the annual Midwest Average of more than zero to 5 CI would earn the farmer $0.08 per bushel, while a reduction of greater than 5 to 10 would earn the farmer $0.10 per bushel, and a reduction of greater than 10 CI would mean $0.12 per bushel.
Farm data is protected too: Verity only stores the bare minimum of PII data, and none of the payment information. All information stored in accordance with principles for information governance. Data within network boundaries is encrypted to industry standard (AES-256), and data at rest (stored) is kept in secure access-controlled locations and encrypted to industry standards (TLS >= 1.2). Access controls are periodically reviewed.
Verity unlocks value for clients along the entire value chain, helping to streamline regulatory compliance processes that are expected to increasingly rely on data measurement, reporting, and verification, unlocking stranded sustainability value through voluntary carbon markets, allowing monetization of GHG reduction efforts as part of tax programs and incentives, creating differentiated commodities and product pricing based on sustainability attributes, helping reduce GHG emissions in the supply chain through market dynamics and incentives, and initiating higher-level consumer-facing insetting solutions (scope 3 reduction) for corporations or individuals.
This carbon-inset model will lie at the core of a program designed to monetize of carbon reduction, and will allow Gevo to incentivize farmers for the production and delivery of low carbon intensity corn. With this feedstock, Gevo expects to produce low-carbon-intensity ethanol to create sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), which is expected to help decarbonize aviation, a segment of the transportation sector that cannot be easily abated through electrification or hydrogen.
IMPORTANT:
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, under agreement number NR233A750004G076.
Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In addition, any reference to specific brands or types of products or services does not constitute or imply an endorsement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for those products or services.
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For more information visit the USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities