In the face of climate change and biodiversity loss there is an ever increasing need for private sector participation in environmental management and monitoring. National and international efforts have supported the early developments of markets for carbon credits, allowing emitters to offset emissions by investment in projects which demonstrate the ability to sequester carbon. Additionally there is increasing pressure from investors for companies to consider the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors of decisions at board level.

Where it is not possible to reduce emissions or environmental impacts organisations may look to voluntary offsetting to reduce their overall footprint. In the UK this generally includes improvement to natural assets such as peatlands, or creation of new woodland. There is however some ambiguity on what constitutes a sound investment, given the many trade-offs inherent in decision making, and current low levels of regulation. For example large plantations of non-indigenous tree species are a good way to sequester carbon, but can be terrible for biodiversity and indigenous ecological systems.

EOLAS Insight are developing tools which support land managers in making decision to best optimise the revenue creating potential of their natural assets. By following Natural Capital approaches, which assign a monetary value to nature, we can better understand and make trade-offs around sustainable growth. Artificial Intelligence, satellite based imagery and ground based data collection are currently used to measure and classify natural assets, and to look for sites for restoration.

By extending the current portfolio of tools at EOLAS this project will create a new and highly innovative service for organisations looking to reduce the emissions and impacts of their supply chain decisions. The tool will allow the user to geospatially assess changes to the environment based on decisions such as new facilities or resource extraction, and provide estimates on the carbon impacts. If required, the user will then be linked to existing projects which could offset some of the impacts of the decision such as peatland restoration, or new native woodland schemes.

By providing more insight to decision makers the project will allow carbon to be considered fully during the planning phase of new projects. This will allow for environmental planning alongside early project financial planning, and environmental mitigation methods to be defined up front. As such the tool will support the decarbonisation of supply chains and facilitate organisational Net Zero transitions based on sound, standardised and transparent environmental principles.