Sylvera

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Sylvera claims to be "the leading carbon credit ratings company."[1] It was founded by a machine learning entrepreneur and claims to use proprietary machine learning algorithms along with satellite surveillance as the basis of its carbon credit rating system, which is not publicly accessible.

Customers

Sylvera's customers include Cargill, Delta Airlines[2], Shell Oil[3], Equinor, and Chevron.

Athough Sylvera claims to have no conflicts of interest because it doesn't sell credits[4], its major customers are top polluters who ARE highly invested in Sylvera's ratings of their credits' legitimacy, which (where favorable) can be used to deny greenwashing charges.

Along with these major polluters, Sylvera is a member of the IETA. It was first part of the IETA hub panel discussion at COP26 with Verra, Delta Airlines, Mercuria, and Cargill [5] At COP27, Sylvera hosted its own panel as part of the IETA Business Hub (main sponsors that year included Chevron, Verra, Total Energies,, Bain & Company, and the US Chamber of Commerce).[6]

Sylvera has worked closely with the World Bank and World Economic Forum[7], and is a member of the WEF's Natural Climate Solutions Alliance along with the IETA, Verra, The Nature Conservancy, and Sylvera petro-customers such as Shell Oil and Equinor.

In November of 2021, Sylvera was selected as "a top innovator in the @WEFUpLink World Economic Forum Carbon Market challenge", leading to a "year-long programme of engagement" with the WEF.[8] One year later, they proclaimed together that "new technology" such as Sylvera's meant that most of the concerns with carbon offsetting "have now been addressed." [9]

That same month, Sylvera began publishing reports minimizing accusations of carbon credit fraud[10] and led an industry-wide effort to refute mounting evidence of widespread greenwashing in early 2023 with the publication of an open letter endorsed by (among many others) the IETA, REDD+ Business Initiative, and Toucan Protocol.[11]

Investors

Sylvera has a particularly close partnership with Bain & Company, as both a major investor and close collaborator.[12]

Salesforce is also a major investor in Sylvera, and its upcoming "net zero marketplace" for carbon credits was announced to use Sylvera's ratings system.[13]

Case Studies

The Katingan Peatlands Project

Received a "AA" rating, the sole example published in what Sylvera calls its "in-depth analysis of >85% of REDD+ credits on the market."[14]

Major purchasers of these credits include Sylvera customers such as Shell Oil (the main buyer) and Delta Airlines. Other major polluters driving demand include TotalEnergies, Bentley Motors, Volkswagen, Singapore Airlines, PetroChina International Company, and CNOOC Gas & Power Group. [15][16]

Sylvera's rating & analysis ignored numerous issues including:

  • Wildfire Deforestation: "In 2015, more than 9,000 hectares of the Katingan project area burned down."
  • Land Theft: "The combination of new conservation laws and the presence of the Katingan Project has cut people off from what they consider to be their land."[17]
  • Community Deterioration: Three out of four villages in the area surveyed rated expected community well-being improvement as "very negative." After 5 years, "the household total income in the control villages was also higher than the total income of household in the REDD+ villages."

Many factors indicate that the project operators’ assumptions regarding additionality are clearly exaggerated. It is highly probable that the forest would have stored comparable amounts of CO2 even without the project. The project has merely shifted deforestation to other places in the region. Destruction of forest cover that may have been prevented in the project area is taking place elsewhere. Moreover, the permanence of CO2 storage is not guaranteed. While buyers of the carbon credits continue to release CO2 into the atmosphere, where it will impact our climate for about 100 years, it is far from certain whether the forest will still be standing in 20 or 50 years.[18]

The Florestal Santa Maria Project

For Sylvera's glowing review: [19]

For the issues they ignored: Verra#Colonialism

Sources

  1. ↑ https://www.ieta.org/resources/COP27/COP27%20IETA%20BusinessHUB%20Program%20Guide_F.pdf
  2. ↑ https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/25/sylvera-series-a/
  3. ↑ https://www.axios.com/2022/01/26/sylvera-carbon-offsets-index-ventures-insight-partners
  4. ↑ https://www.sylvera.com/blog/series-a-announcement
  5. ↑ https://verra.org/verra-at-cop26-in-glasgow-scotland/
  6. ↑ https://www.ieta.org/resources/COP27/COP27%20IETA%20BusinessHUB%20Program%20Guide_F.pdf
  7. ↑ https://pitch.com/presentations/Sylvera-Pitch-Deck-5pN1bC3nzvUj5ZVeRU0Qgyz3?slide=c2a6587c-3ae2-4a3a-8205-ffebc8da5663
  8. ↑ https://twitter.com/SylveraCarbon/status/1455560081060384777
  9. ↑ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/11/carbon-offsetting-rainforest-sylvera/
  10. ↑ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-03/carbon-credit-fraud-assumptions-are-challenged-in-new-study
  11. ↑ https://reddplusbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/VCM_Stakeholder_Open_Letter_Final-2.pdf
  12. ↑ https://www.bain.com/about/media-center/press-releases/2022/bain--company-joins-forces-with-sylvera-to-accelerate-growth-of-the-voluntary-carbon-market-and-provide-unparalleled-transparency-on-carbon-credit-quality-to-businesses-and-investors/
  13. ↑ https://www.southpole.com/de/news/salesforce-announces-first-of-its-kind-carbon-credit-marketplace
  14. ↑ The State of Carbon Credits 2022, p. 31
  15. ↑ https://redd-monitor.org/2022/02/24/the-katingan-redd-project-how-offsetting-enables-the-fossil-fuel-sociopaths-to-destroy-the-planet/
  16. ↑ https://redd-monitor.org/2020/11/19/worse-than-doing-nothing-shells-redd-offsets-in-indonesia-and-peru/
  17. ↑ https://redd-monitor.org/2019/12/12/indonesias-katingan-redd-project-sells-carbon-credits-to-shell-but-that-doesnt-mean-the-forest-is-protected-its-threatened-by-land-conflicts-fires-and-a-palm-oil-plantation/ - see also re: Permian Global and JP Morgan Chase
  18. ↑ https://redd-monitor.org/2020/11/08/new-greenpeace-report-exposes-vws-redd-carbon-offset-sham/
  19. ↑ https://www.sylvera.com/blog/guardian-offsets-response
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