March 28, 2023
Chapel Hill, NC – Sky Harvest’s CEO, Will Clayton, led and moderated the Forestry Carbon Credits panel at the recent Cleantech Summit, hosted by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill on March 27th and 28th.
The Summit boasted a prolific speaker series this year including the CEOs of Dominion Energy, Nextracker, Electric Power Research Institute, and the Arizona Public Service Company, among others. Trending topics throughout this year’s summit included carbon markets, energy transition, green finance, regenerative agriculture, and supply chain decarbonization.
The Forestry Carbon Credits panelists included industry experts such as Josh Parrish from tech-enabled project developer Pachama and Rina Cerrato from carbon project financier Green Star Royalties. Keegan Dean a carbon credit trader at Amsterdam-based trader STX Group also served on the panel alongside Roy Aneed, a private equity fund manager and Sky Harvest customer.
The panelists spoke to the growing push for transparency and quality in forestry-based carbon credits broadly. Mr. Dean confirmed that quality, along with price, is a primary concern surfacing in daily customer conversations. Likewise, Mr. Aneed spoke to the importance of high-integrity credits and expressed frustration during his purchasing decision at the variety of carbon credits that underdeliver on the emissions his firm was seeking to offset.
At the same time, panelists highlighted many of technological breakthroughs, such as satellite-based monitoring of forests and improvements in carbon accounting, that firms like Sky Harvest and Pachama are using to bring greater integrity and transparency to carbon credits.
A major takeaway, however, is that not all carbon credits are equal, and in today’s still-maturing market, it is important for buyers and financiers to invest time to understand the underlying quality of the credits they are buying.
The 2023 Cleantech Summit occurred just “down the Hill” from the campus of the University of North Carolina at the Friday Conference Center. The Cleantech summit brings together industry leaders, policy makers, academics, and students focused on this year’s theme, Innovating A Clean Economy.
For more information on the UNC Cleantech Summit, please visit their website.
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