Startup Series: SustainCERT
Today's guest is Marion Verles, Co-Founder & CEO of SustainCERT.
SustainCERT is the leading global carbon emissions accounting and verification platform for carbon markets and corporate value chains. Using technology to simplify processes, SustainCERT helps project developers and corporates quantify and verify carbon emissions accurately. The company also certifies carbon credits and corporate claims, confirming they align with leading international frameworks such as Gold Standard for the Global Goals, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Before founding SustainCERT, Marion served as CEO of the Gold Standard Foundation. During her tenure at Gold Standard, she led the development of a groundbreaking climate + sustainable development impact standard: Gold Standard for the Global Goals. Earlier in her career, Marion was a founding team member of the Climate Ledger Initiative, founded and helmed Nexus for development, and served as a civil society observer to the Climate Investment Fund managed by the World Bank.
I was eager to sit down with Marion because standardizing, verifying, and certifying carbon offsets is vital when thinking about decarbonizing our world. We dive into SustainCERT's focus areas, the Gold Standard certification process, and Marion's motivations for founding the startup. Marion also explains downstream versus upstream paths for carbon credits, the existing carbon market, and why certifying offsets is complex. We cover many essential topics in this episode, and Marion is an excellent guest.
Enjoy the show!
You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded December 14th, 2021
In Today's episode, we cover:
Overview of the role sustainCERT plays and the importance of world sustainability & climate security
What Gold Standard is, why SustainCERT was founded, and Marion's time at the Gold Standard Foundation
Marion's concern about inequalities and environmental protection from a young age
What led Marion to focus her career on climate
The existing carbon market landscape, what works, and where they need improvements
In Today's market, how certifications are performed and who carries them out
The wide array of offsets that SunstainCERT focuses on, the future of streamlining the process, and the future of standardization
What makes carbon accounting and verification complex, why there is a lack of trust, and how to create standards for the future
The carbon credit protocols and how to ensure credibility
Why the early-stage for-profit tech side was the best path forward for SustainCERT
Downstream versus upstream carbon credit paths and where blockchain fits in
SustainCERT's funding to date and key milestones over the next 12 months
The role of a voluntary market regarding offsets
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
SustainCERT: https://www.sustain-cert.com/
SustainCERT is hiring! Check out open positions here: https://www.sustain-cert.com/about/
Gold Standard Foundation: https://www.goldstandard.org/
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Hello, everyone. This is Jason Jacobs, and welcome to My Climate Journey. This show follows my journey to interview a wide range of guests, to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change, and try to figure out how people like you and I can help. Today's guest is Marion Verles, CEO of SustainCERT. Marion recently spent four and a half years at the helm of the Gold standard Foundation. And she left to co-found SustainCERT, which spun out of Gold Standard, to drive the adoption of credible impact measurement across environmental markers, corporate sustainability reporting, and sustainable finance. Marion was part of the founding team of the Climate Ledger Initiative, dedicated to leveraging the potential of emerging technologies for climate action. I was excited for this one because, carbon markets are a topic that come up so much, and offsets are a frequent topic as well. And people talk about the state of the offset market, and the incentives, and the additionality, and the quality, and the consistency, and how the existing market has lots of issues.
And people also talk about better ways, and there's much debate about the role of offsets and also what needs to happen to fix them. Well, Gold Standard is an organization that is largely responsible for certifying offsets. And SustainCERT spun out of Gold Standard to help make that process more efficient so that certifying offsets is more widely adopted. Now, we dug deep in this one, into offset markets, into some of the existing problems, some of the lessons learned, the path forward, the origin story of SustainCERT. We also talked about why it's a for-profit instead of a nonprofit. And what was interesting for Marion, about jumping into the small high-growth venture-backed startup world, after so many years of nonprofit life. At any rate, fascinating discussion, important topic. I learned a lot, and I hope you do as well. Marion, welcome to the show.
Marion Verles: Hi, Jason. It's a pleasure to be here.
Jason Jacobs: That was my best attempt at a French pronunciation, but I don't think I did it very well. But I'm so happy to have you, gosh! Carbon markets are such an important topic, and Gold Standard is, is such a, an important and relevant organization in that area, and of course, SustainCERT was kinda hatched within Gold Standard and is now out as an independent company, but both based on the importance for climate. And also just some of the recent episodes we've been digging into with, with [Tukan 00:04:19] and, and others. This is just such a timely, important discussion, I'm so grateful that you were willing to come on the show.
Marion Verles: Thanks, Jason, and it's a real pleasure to be there. The work you do with My Climate series is really important to spread the word, and raise awareness on climate as an issue, but also on the solutions that are being developed out there.
Jason Jacobs: Oh, thanks. Well, taking things from the top, so what is SustainCERT, and how did it come about?
Marion Verles: Sure, to make it simple, Jason, our job at SustainCERT is to contribute to making the world sustainable and climate-secure. So we want to make a meaningful contribution towards the goals of the Paris Agreement, and of the Agenda 2030 for sustainable development. And we're convinced that we can do that if we collectively redefined value. So if we agree collectively on a new definition of value, on a new definition of what it means to be successful. So we need to move away from a definition of success as being only driven by profits and financial performance, to a definition of success that also includes environmental and social performance. And so in order to do that, it's kind of rethinking the operating system of our economy, right? And creating a new system that would fit within planetary boundaries, whilst allowing us collectively to strive.
And in this context, to redefine our economic system and redefine value, we believe that impact verification is the foundation on which we can do that, right? It's the necessary foundation to place environmental performance at the same level as financial performance. And so that's where SustainCERT plays a role. So we're a leading global software platform that allows our clients, so corporates, big and small, NGOs, big and small, to measure, report, and verify their carbon emissions. So we leverage technology to completely transform and drastically improve the process, to verify carbon offsets, under Gold Standard as you mentioned before, but also to verify corporate value chain emissions also called the Scope 3 emissions. So that's what we do in a nutshell.
Jason Jacobs: And can you talk a bit about the work of Gold Standard, and also the origin story for SustainCERT, and when and how and why the company came about?
Marion Verles: Yeah. So Gold Standard is a leading carbon offset standards, and it's considered by many including myself as the premium brands in the market. I had the privilege of being the CEO of the Gold Standard Foundation for five years, and at the time, we launched a new standard called Gold Standard for the Global Goals, which had this objective of bringing the same level of rigor and credibility to sustainable development impacts, as we had with climate emissions. And really provide a platform to measure climate and sustainable development impacts in a critical way. What we realized very quickly is that the new standard wouldn't have any impact, it wouldn't drive change, if no one was using it. It's a bit like developing the best electric car ever in the market, if no one is buying it, if no one is driving it, you're not actually reducing emissions, right?
So we face the same issue is the standards, it was really cutting-edge and great, but really, really complex, and that created significant barriers to entry for users to adopt. And we decided to create SustainCERT as a for-profit, mission-driven company, with the goal to invest in technology to bring down barriers to using best practice impact verification for climate and sustainable development. So starting with Gold Standard, but not limited to Gold Standard, because we're independent, and we believe that we need to support best practices wherever they are. So our primary mandate is obviously to bring technology to Gold Standard users, and so we manage the Gold Standard portfolio from a verification perspective. But we'll expand and go beyond Gold Standards with the goal of, of leveraging our technology and software platform, to make it easier, simple and affordable, uh, for users to go through the Gold Standards verification process or through other standards processes as required.
Jason Jacobs: And in terms of your personal journey, what is it that first turned you onto doing climate work in the first place? Or even before you even got to doing climate work, what made you care about the problem? Where did that come from?
Marion Verles: It's an interesting question, Jason. I've always been concerned, since really young about inequalities and environmental protection. I remember writing to the French president when I was a teenager, at the time asking him what he was doing to protect French forests. And I was happy to receive pretty detailed answer at the time. So it started really young, but I think the real starting point of my professional journey was back in 2005. I took a Gap year during my studies, to travel a- across the world for nine months with a friend of mine, and studied triple bottom line business models. So we had the privilege of meeting social entrepreneurs across the world, and discovering business models that were good for the planet, for people, whilst also returning a profit.
And that's when I discovered the work of this French NGO back in Cambodia, they were producing and selling improved cookstoves for Cambodian households, that were using less wood and emitting less smoke. And that project was funded with a grant from the European Union, but unfortunately, that grant was coming to an end, and they were desperate for alternative sources of funds, and that's when they turned to carbon markets. And when I met them in 2005, they were in the process of registering this cookstove project under the Voluntary Carbon Standards, at the time. And that project became, I think, the most successful cookstove projects in the carbon markets. They managed to sell more than 2 million cookstoves in Cambodia, which is a relatively small country, and reduced hundreds of thousands of tons of CO2 emissions, really leveraging the power of markets, to finance for, for sort of low carbon development solutions.
Jason Jacobs: And when you think about the carbon markets, where are we today in terms of the role of carbon markets? What's going well with them, and, and maybe where they're in need of improvement or reform?
Marion Verles: That's an interesting question because when I reflect since 2005, right? Up until now, I had the chance of being involved on the project development side when I started my first company, we were helping project developers in Cambodia and Asia access carbon markets. Then I had the privilege of leading the Gold Standards, and I'm now with SustainCERT, which is a verification body. So I've looked at the market from those three different perspectives. And whilst a lot has improved, I think some of the key issues remain, and I think the two key issues that the market face right now are, on one hand, the complexity of the process, the data that you need to produce an offset in many cases is really hard to get hold of. So if we're looking at a cookstove project, you need to assess how many hours per day the stove is being used, how much wood is being burnt, what is the efficiency of this stove.
And manual data collection solutions are really prone to errors, and so it's a, it's a complex process that's highly inaccurate. And that's where we see a huge potential for technology to disrupt that and use sort of sensors, and other solutions to significantly improve the quality of the data, and therefore the quality of the outputs. So this is a challenge that can be solved by technology, and it's great to see a lot of progress there. The other challenge that the market faces, I think is really around credibility. It's still highly criticized, and I can understand why civil society and media criticize carbon offsets. Because it's one tool in the toolbox, and you shouldn't be able to emit as much as you can, and then find a way out by purchasing offsets.
Reductions need to come first. But still offsets have a role to play. If well used, they can channel much needed finance to high quality programs. But given the issues with some projects that weren't great, that faced issues, environmental integrity issues, or human rights issues, because of that, the entire sort of market is heavily criticized, which I think somehow is good, because it's pushing us to get better, but to some extent, it can also be counterproductive. I think we're past the stage where we can say that some solutions shouldn't be on the table. I think given the urgency, all solutions need to be on the table, and offsetting is one of them.
Jason Jacobs: And when it comes to the existing landscape, so how does the certification get done today, and by whom?
Marion Verles: So, typically, the project developer, let's say, the Cambodian NGO that produces and distributes cookstoves, so typically what they do is, once a year, so they would collect their data on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. They would basically collect sales records, and the results from their tests to measure the efficiency of the stores and other data points. And then once a year, they would basically appoint an auditor to come on site, and go to the countryside in Cambodia and visit the households, and make sure that the data that is in the monitoring report matches whatever the auditor sees on the ground. That auditor would then submit verification report to SustainCERT, who would review it, stamp it, and send a signal to Gold Standard to issue carbon credits. So that's the old world model. In the new world, in the digital age, what we are currently developing with our partners is a solution where the NGO in Cambodia would collect sales data directly on smartphones, and then a sample of the stoves that are sold would have a heat sensor. So each time the stove is being used, the sensor turns on, and sends to the SustainCERT platform, basically information about usage rates.
And rather than collect the data manually and audit it manually, the data will be sent directly to the system's platform, and, uh, validated and verified using algorithm, plausibility checks, and outlier sort of identification algorithm. So that's the new world that we're, that we're working on, to move the complexity away from the companies and NGOs that are driving change on the ground, make sure they focus on, on doing their work, which is to develop and sell climate solutions on the ground, and take the complexity away from them, and have this extensive platform manage the complexity for them. And that way, we believe we can significantly reduce costs associated with mon- monitoring, reporting and verification, whilst at the same time, significantly increase the accuracy of the process.
Jason Jacobs: And if you look at the different offset areas, there's so wide ranging, and I would imagine that the different projects have very different inputs that need to be collected, and different processes for verification. How do you think about that at SustainCERT? Are you trying to play this role of streamlining across every type of offset project? Are there certain ones that you focus on? Do you think that there'll be, from a market standpoint, will there be players that focus in each area and specialize, or, or is the answer to have one entity try to do it all?
Marion Verles: Yeah, it's a great question, Jason. So our role in the ecosystem is to really focus on verification, and our partners cover other, other parts of the value chain. So there are sort of new technology companies that are developing new sensors, for example, for cookstoves that we're working with. There are companies out there that specialize in forestry projects, and that focus on remote sensing, and computer-based models to assess carbon that is sequestered in forest, based on forest sort of gross models and satellite images. So all of them are partners in the ecosystem. They provide the data that can be loaded on the sensor platform and verified by us, before a carbon credit is issued. And so we work with a number of data collection and monitoring partners that cover those different project categories.
So clearly, the low hanging fruits, I would say, from a digitization perspective, are really energy related projects. Any energy production, whether it's large scale or s- small scale would be easier to monitor because usually they would have meters or sensors or other data-capture solutions that can really simplify the, the process. More complex project types would be anything that is [inaudible 00:18:42] related, so agriculture or forestry would be much more complex from a data collection and monitoring and quantification perspective, but we still believe that those can be tackled, and that we can derive significant cost savings and accuracy improvements, but those are more complex to tackle. Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: And if I am hearing right, when we were talking before about the problems that exist in the carbon market today, you talked about complexity, you, you talked about credibility. If you sit at this point looking backwards, why did we get into a position that we did, where things were so complex, and where there was a lack of trust? And what should be different going forwards, to ensure that the carbon markets function in a way that can be more widely adopted, and fulfill the promise of what they're intended to do?
Marion Verles: That's a big question, but, but a really interesting one, and, and I can share my perspective on some of those issues that you raised, Jason, but I, I won't be, uh, sort of exhaustive. I think the carbon markets were the target of so much criticism for a number of reasons, but I think primarily, there was always significant skepticism from the civil society in the capability of market mechanisms to solve problems that were created by markets in the first place. So if we are in this climate crisis and climate emergency right now, it's because somehow, our markets weren't properly regulated. It's because markets don't price environmental integrities and aren't functioning as they should function, right? And so there's this ideological skepticism that markets can solve a problem that they created in the first place. And so this concern around using markets to solve environmental challenges is quite far reaching in, in civil society and even with the wider public. So I think that's one sort of ideological barrier.
The other, I think challenge, comes from the fact that in the days of the Kyoto Protocol and the clean development mechanism, because those policies were developed by politicians and UN negotiation processes, often decisions that were made were the outcome of the lowest common denominator. So negotiators made decisions based on consensus, that was the minimum that everyone was ready to meet to, and that meant very often, in some cases, bad decisions. So the fact that some industrial gaseous projects from China, for example, were allowed into the mechanism created a huge backlash, and huge criticism. There were also some human rights issues associated with forestry projects in Africa. So those controversial project types, gave to skeptics really good reasons to be even more skeptic, and openly criticize those markets. So I think that's part of the story.
Going forward, I think the market can grow and overcome those integrity issues, and credibility issues, if regulators be they voluntary regulators like Gold Standard, or Verra, or regulators from the international policy side, from the UN process, really commit to high bar of requirements, and make sure that any controversial project types would be excluded from the market. So that's really important. There also needs to be strong requirements around civil society and stakeholder consultation and grievance mechanisms. So Gold Standard has been leading the way there. Others have followed, and I was happy to see that in the Article 6 outcome from Glasgow from COP26 we have some strong language around stakeholder consultation, sustainable development, reporting, grievance mechanisms. So that is happening, and it's a good thing.
I think the second thing that needs to happen is consensus within market players on what can and cannot be said, when you're buying an offset. So if you're a corporate buying an offset, can you say that you're carbon neutral? What requirements do you need to meet in order to claim that you're carbon neutral? What does it mean to be net zero? Can you be net zero if you don't have science-based targets, only by purchasing offsets? So all those rooms around claims and communications by the corporate sector when using offsets, need to be regulated so that consumers know that when a product is labeled carbon neutral, or when a company is calling itself net zero, on a journey towards net zero, that this has a meaning that is credible, and basically independently verified. So if we can create that sort of accountability around claims, and consensus around the meaning of those claims, I think we'll go a long way in, in enhancing credibility and trust in carbon markets.
Jason Jacobs: What about the carbon credit protocols themselves? How should they evolve to ensure that collectively things are done right?
Marion Verles: It's critical that the protocols, or the standards, depending on how you name them, [inaudible 00:24:29] about their continuous improvement processes. Because the reality is that we're in a fast moving world, so if there Verra or Gold Standard issues today methodology to quantify soil organic carbon, this can be the state of the art quantification approach for soil organic carbon today, but clearly, in two to three years from now, that methodology will be outdated because technology and science will have made significant progress. So it's important for them to acknowledge that continuous improvement is part of the process, and that therefore methodologies need to be continuously updated, to stay in line with current best practices.
And so we have seen, I think, with all standards across the board, a lack of updating and maintenance of methodologies, which means that projects and new projects today are using methodologies that were written many years ago, and that no longer considered best practice, and haven't been updated. So I think a great contribution that we can expect from standards, and that I hope we will see more and more going forward, is really making sure that their methodologies are keeping with science, and continuously enhanced to reflect the latest developments. It would also be great to see convergence between standards on aligning their requirements with the Paris Agreement, specifically around this issue of double counting. But I think I expect this is gonna be the case because the Glasgow decision on Article 6 was pretty clear on that front.
Jason Jacobs: And coming back around to your personal journey, so, I mean, emission has been clearly so important in your work for so long, I'm interested in the transition to essentially becoming a technology entrepreneur. What led you to believe that the early stage for-profit technology side would be the biggest lever for change? And also what led you to believe that Gold Standard was the best hatching point to fulfill that, versus partnering with, with an upstart that maybe came from a more traditional technology background?
Marion Verles: That's a great question, and it's true that I'm not a technology person, I would see myself as a climate and sustainability entrepreneur. And the reason why I wanted to start this journey with sust- with SustainCERT with a focus on technology is because before founding SustainCERT, I've seen so many technology companies, or technology solutions, looking for a problem to solve. [laughs] And that I was like, "Okay, I know exactly what problem needs to be solved. [laughs] So why don't I take the lead in, in developing the technology solution for that problem?"
I think it was the case back in 2017/2018, when there was this hype around blockchain and DLT solutions for climate action. And all those startup or technology solutions were great technology platforms, but it wasn't really clear what problem they were trying to solve. And very often, talking to those entrepreneurs, I felt that they were great technology people, but they had no idea how carbon markets operate, and what were the real problems that need to be solved. And so that's how I felt that I could contribute this to the ecosystem, and really bring that climate and carbon markets expertise, and use that to basically drive and shape technology solutions.
Jason Jacobs: And you, you mentioned blockchain. When you look at some of the more recent projects that are talking about decentralizing carbon markets and maybe having certification processes without gatekeepers, for example, what, what's your reaction to that? Is that a good thing? Are you skeptical? I guess it's two different questions. One, should it happen, and two, practically like, would it ever happen?
Marion Verles: If I simplify the carbon market value chain, I do usually talk about the upstream path, and the downstream path. And the upstream path is everything that happens before a carbon credit is issued. And the downstream path is everything that happens from the point when the carbon credit is issued, up until the point when it's retired, um, used, and can no longer be transferred. So I do see a lot of potential for blockchain or distributed, decentralized solutions in the downstream path. So issuing offsets and enabling transfers, trading, tokenization, micro-transactions, unlocking smart contracts that can be triggered through certain performance milestones being reached. So all of that makes a lot of sense, and I think there are strong use cases and even solutions that are developing on that end of the value chain, so the downstream path.
The upstream paths are everything that needs to happen before the carbon credit is issued, is where SustainCERT focuses, and it's really about data collection, greenhouse gas quantification, algorithm and verification. And here, I wouldn't consider blockchain or DLT as, as the low hanging fruit technology. I think there are other technology solutions, low hanging fruits that we can use before we turn to blockchain. So that's how I see it right now.
Jason Jacobs: And coming back around to SustainCERT specific, so you recently raised a big amount of, of funding, congrats for that. Maybe talk a bit about where you are in terms of the stage, what the key milestones are for this big war chests that you just took in, and, and how you're thinking about scaling to fulfill your vision?
Marion Verles: Thanks, Jason, and thanks for them, for the kind words, we're super happy to have closed our 10 million equity raise a couple of months ago, and, and it's great to be backed by leading impact and technology investors, including the Microsoft Climate Investment Fund. So we're super happy with that. This round really was also the opportunity to normalize the relationship with the Gold Standards, have them as a strategic partner, but no longer as the majority shareholder. And the goal with this transaction, and the next stage in our journey, is to position SustainCERT as a multi-standard verification platform for carbon markets, and corporate Scope 3 reporting.
So the key milestones for us over the next 12 months is to complete the transition to a software as a service company, and really achieve commercial market launch for our digital monitoring, reporting, and verification solution for carbon markets across multiple standards by the third quarter of next year, and release a commercial sort of scope three emission factor verification solution for agriculture value chains, also by late next year, with an intermediary milestone of mid next year, we sort of pre-commercial launch with our early adopters, sort of commercial partners. And we have the privilege of being working with leading corporates in the climate space from an agricultural perspective, and so we're co-developing the solution with them, and we'll reach a sort of pre-commercial launch of this co- this software by mid next year.
Jason Jacobs: In a semi-related question, one thing we've not talked about so far, is the types of offsets and how far you think the voluntary market can take us, versus, you know, mandates or, or policy and, and then if we want more, you know, to move beyond voluntary, what's the best vehicle, or lever, or initiative would be to bring that about faster?
Marion Verles: I do expect that with COP26 outcome on Article 6, which is the article that shapes carbon markets under the Paris Agreement, so we now have a solid foundation on which to build the new generation of compliance markets. And the beauty of Article 6, the way it's written, is that it creates an opportunity for governments that are signatories of the Paris Agreement, so pretty much all the governments on the planet, it creates an opportunity for them to somehow regulate credits that will be issued from their countries, into voluntary carbon market. And so I think it's great, because if we give governments the opportunity to shape the way voluntary carbon markets contributing to their national targets, it will give them an incentive to grow those markets, because they will directly benefit from finance that the voluntary carbon market can drive to their countries.
And so my expectation is that we'll see basically a growth and the significant acceleration in compliance markets of government-led Paris Agreement regulating markets, as well as, uh, increased oversight from host countries, over voluntary carbon markets regulations in their respective countries. And hopefully, that will drive, I hope, quality in the type of projects that are being authorized, and more transparency in the transactions that take place, because those will need to be recorded in national inventories, and taken into account in the Paris Agreement, sort of transparency and reporting process.
Jason Jacobs: And as it relates to the corporates that you do work with, where do the carbon accounting players like Watershed or Sinai or, I mean, there's many of them at this point, where do they sit relative to SustainCERT, are they partners, are they competitors? How much overlap is there? And also just, what kind of adoption are you seeing? I mean, do most big companies have a good handle on, on their carbon footprints at this point, or are many still flying blind, despite their big, audacious, net zero commitments?
Marion Verles: Yeah. It's great to see the, the momentum in the carbon accounting space. We've seen a number of very big rounds closed this year, I think Persefoni is one of them, in first sweep, just closed at 20, 22 million Series A round. So there's a lot of momentum in that space, and I think it's great. I think it's exciting because companies are really, really far from having their carbon accounting under control. To be completely honest, I think the level of accuracy is still very low, and most of them, I wouldn't name them, but some of our clients, the sustainability head of a leading consumer goods company that we work with was telling me, "Marion, do you realize that we're managing 20,000 emission factors, and we're doing that on Excel?" Right, [laughing] so that's clearly suboptimal.
So, I personally feel really excited to see how much investments is currently flowing into that space, and I think it's an opportunity for us, because all those carbon accounting software, are taking a top down approach. They're looking at it from the top, from the corporate, and trying to use corporate data, sort of ERP data, or transaction data, to paint a picture of a corporate greenhouse gas inventory. Our approach is top down. So we look at corporate investments into their value chain and how those investments are driving down emissions, and we're providing corporates with the data they need to basically report a reduction in their value chain of Scope 3 emissions.
And so what we're looking to do is to basically integrate with those top-down sort of so- greenhouse gas accounting software, to make sure that the high accuracy data that we provide, basically coming from the field, from the ground up, is integrated into those corporate level greenhouse gas reporting, such that change is happening on the ground, especially reductions in emissions happening on the ground as a consequence of corporate decisions, i.e. investment decisions, or changing your suppliers, or changing your commodity, the type of community that you buy, that those decisions that are driving reductions in emissions are actually making it into the final inventory, and are being seen in inventory. Because the problem of the softwares is that the granularity of the data they use is pretty low, and therefore doesn't really grasp any changes happening on the ground. And so that's the problem we basically tackle.
Jason Jacobs: And as you think about the bigger picture, and how to accelerate carbon market adoption, if there's one thing that you could change outside of the scope of your control, to speed things up, what would you change, and how would you change it?
Marion Verles: That's a great question. If I could change one thing to accelerate adoption of carbon markets? There's a few that come to mind. I would say, really driving consensus, what it means to be carbon neutral, and what you can say when you buy an offset, I think is probably the, um, the big issue to crack. If you buy an offset that is also included in a country's inventory, and that is also contributing to the country achieving its Paris targets, can you claim that you're carbon neutral? And I think that debate is doing a lot of harm in the [inaudible 00:38:37] of the market, so I would basically create that consensus, and get companies to accept and recognize that making a financial contribution claim, claiming to be financially contributing to, for example, Cambodia, which needs Paris targets, is as good as claiming to be carbon neutral.
And if we could get rid of that willingness to claim to be carbon neutral, which is creating so much trouble and antagonism in the market, and convince corporates that basically what they're doing is financing decarbonisation in most countries, and that this is great to be a climate finance provider, I think that would basically overcome quite a few of the criticism, and help the market grow and strive, because it would overcome the criticism associated with credibility and, and the antagonism that carbon neutrality creates between civil society and market players on the other hand.
Jason Jacobs: And last question is just, where do you need help, or who do you wanna hear from, for anyone that's listening to the show, and inspired by your work?
Marion Verles: Yeah, so we're actively recruiting talents. So we're looking for a number of new positions to be filled. We're currently about 50, five, zero in the team, we'll be close to 100 in 12 months from now. So we're looking for talented software engineers, talented emission factor specialists, talented corporate climate reporting people, talented communications people. So if you're passionate about making a difference, and wanna join a fun, exciting, emission-driven company get in touch. We probably have something for you.
Jason Jacobs: And is there anything I didn't ask that I should have, or any parting words for listeners?
Marion Verles: I would say that climate action is, is not only a necessity, but it's also desirable, and, at least for me, it's a source of joy and fulfillment every day. It's making me feel good to see how much change is happening on the ground through carbon markets, all those people which lives have been significantly improved, thanks to projects that wouldn't have happened without carbon finance. Talking to people that are also committed to climate action is creating a lot of happiness in my life, and I think it can be a source of joy, fun and happiness for many people. So it's definitely worth the ride, I encourage you to explore, and engage, and see for yourself.
Jason Jacobs: Great. Well, that is a terrific point to end on. So Marion, thank you so much for coming on the show, and best of luck to you and the whole SustainCERT team.
Marion Verles: Thank you so much, Jason. Bye.
Jason Jacobs: Hey, everyone, Jason here. Thanks again for joining me on My Climate Journey. If you'd like to learn more about the journey, you can visit us at myclimatejourney.co. Note that is dot co, not dot com. Someday, we'll get the dot com, but right now, dot co. You can also find me on Twitter @JJacobs22, where I would encourage you to share your feedback on the episode, or suggestions for future guests you'd like to hear. And, before I let you go, if you enjoyed the show, please share an episode with a friend, or consider leaving a review on iTunes. The warriors maybe say that. Thank you.
