Month: August 2022

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Make The World Better Magazine

Ecosystem Services Market Consortium: Improving Soil Health

When thinking about ecosystems, it can sometimes be easy to forget about the “systems” part. Plants, animals and humans are all connected, starting with soil. Soil health should be everyone’s first priority when it comes to agriculture. Luckily, there’s a movement that’s aiming to ensure that happens. 

Ecosystem Services Market Consortium is a non-profit that’s working to improve soil health across the US. We spoke with Thayer Tomlinson, Communications Director, about Ecosystem Services Market Consortium (ESMC), including why they started, their upcoming projects, and how you can get involved. 

Tell us about Ecosystem Services Market Consortium’s mission.

The Ecosystem Services Market Consortium’s mission is to advance ecosystem service markets that incentivize farmers and ranchers to improve soil health systems, which benefits society. More specifically, we are creating a program that pays agricultural producers for the measurable climate and water benefits resulting from practice changes in their agricultural operations.

What inspired your founders to start Ecosystem Services Market Consortium?

ESMC was officially formed in 2019 after two years of multi-stakeholder discussions on how to best create carbon markets tailored to agriculture, and their ability to scale beneficial soil health outcomes. Our work is driven by the potential we see in agriculture’s ability to improve soil health and combat climate change. Our approach creates a win-win-win for farmers and ranchers, consumers, and the environment. 

While we do not believe ecosystem services markets are a “silver bullet” climate solution, we do believe our market program can complement other global efforts and provide near-term opportunities to reduce greenhouse emissions at the lowest possible cost, while other, more costly tools and technologies are brought online. 

What were some of the challenges they encountered?

Building a market program that encompasses multiple crop types, production systems, and regions in the US is not easy. Ensuring that ESMC’s market program has the highest level of scientific rigor is even harder. Making our work even more complex is creating an ecosystem services market that includes credits for reduced greenhouse gases, soil carbon sequestration, improved water quality and quantity, and increased biodiversity. 

Many of the tools, technologies, and program design aspects for our program have had to be built while we are building our program. While this process has allowed us to create new types of credits for carbon markets as a whole, it also takes a lot of time, effort, thought, and financial support.

What do you consider Ecosystem Services Market Consortium’s biggest success?

To tackle the challenges of building this market, our wide and diverse membership is one of our greatest resources. Our 80+ membership represents the entire spectrum of the agricultural value chain, including agricultural producer groups and co-ops, major corporate food and beverage companies, agribusiness, conservation NGOs, agtech companies, land grant universities, and others. With our members, we are collectively investing in ESMC’s market program.

An example of this collaboration is our pilot projects around the country, which use nationwide member organizations and producers as pilot partners. Through our pilots, we work with an extensive network of partners and collaborators to test and refine our market program and other new technologies for every major farm commodity across the nation. These pilots are key to our success – the dedication and time our partners have put into the pilots is a full measure of our success to date.

What makes your organization unique?

Carbon market programs for agriculture are becoming more common, and farmers have lots of questions about why they should work with one program over another. ESMC is unique in that our organization is a not-for-profit organization operating a market program, while many of the other carbon market programs are for-profit organizations. 

We’ve created a member-led consortium that can maximize environmental impact and producer income by delivering as much of the value back to farmers and ranchers as possible. Producers who work with us have the flexibility to choose among the practices that can generate credits, so producers can manage their operations to work best for them.       

Additionally, our program pays producers for a suite of quantifiable impacts: carbon credits and water quality, water use conservation, and habitat and biodiversity enhancement and protection. So instead of focusing on just one type of environmental improvement, we “stack” multiple ecosystem services to go beyond simply improving soil carbon and reducing greenhouse gases. This approach to generating multiple environmental credits from the same land improves our producers’ return on investment per acre.

How do you feel Ecosystem Services Market Consortium makes the world better?

Ecosystem markets represent one of humanity’s best chances to mitigate the worst consequences of climate change. Our ecosystem market program rewards agricultural producers for measured environmental impacts based on practice changes. But these benefits to farmers and ranchers don’t stop with our payments. 

Regenerative and sustainable agricultural practices that increase soil organic carbon and reduce greenhouse gases have beneficial climate impacts, but they also improve overall soil health, structure, fertility, and productivity. This can create more resilient production systems that are less impacted by extreme weather. 

Better soil health, in turn, means reduced soil erosion from wind and water, keeping valuable soil in the field. Improved soil water holding capacity can reduce nutrient losses and lower irrigation requirements. Improved practices can also positively impact biodiversity and habitat. 

Tell us about your organization’s goals.

While ESMC has many goals, one key goal is to enable the success of the agricultural value chain to enroll tens of millions of acres in our market program. This work will help reduce the agricultural sector’s supply chain emissions to align with public commitments and science-based targets.

Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?

Starting soon, our program will be operating in all 12 US agricultural regions, allowing producers across the country to enroll with ESMC and begin generating saleable ecosystem service credits. In May 2022, our market program will launch, which allows those producers currently enrolled in ESMC pilot projects to participate in our full market program.

As the market continues to scale and demand for ecosystem services increases, the value/price of credits will continue to rise, further incentivizing producers to adopt more regenerative practices, which will produce additional beneficial environmental outcomes and provide additional revenue to producers.

What do you most want people to know about Ecosystem Services Market Consortium?

As we expand our market program, it is important for the producers who create credits, the buyers of those credits, and the wider public to understand how much science and verification underpins these credits. We base our work on science, widely accepted standards, and outcomes. 

Our market protocols have the strongest possible scientific basis to provide confidence and trust to sellers and buyers, as well as the public. Our protocols, projects, and ecosystem service assets are verified and certified by global certification bodies, Gold Standard and SustainCERT, so buyers of our credits have confidence that their investment is truly having an impact.  

How can people help or contribute to Ecosystem Services Market Consortium’s mission?

One way people can help ESMC’s mission is to learn more about where their food comes from and how it is produced. Farmers, ranchers, and the agricultural sector can play a key role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing soil carbon, and be part of the solution to climate change. Supporting agricultural producers as they transition to more regenerative practices is part of that solution. 

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Moment Energy: Harnessing the Power of Clean Energy Storage

Electric vehicles offer a more sustainable alternative to gas-powered cars. However, the lithium required to power their batteries are often mined in a way that’s not socially or environmentally conscious. And once these batteries aren’t needed anymore, they can sit unused, but with a lot of energy left in them. Moment Energy is harnessing the potential of these batteries. 

Moment Energy is an impact-driven energy storage company, which participated in Spring Activator’s National Impact Investor Challenge. We spoke with Edward Chiang, Co-Founder & CEO, about why Moment Energy got started and the exciting projects they’re working on.

Team members: Gabe Soares, Eddy Chiang, Sumreen Rattan, Gurnesh Sidhu

Tell us about Moment Energy’s mission. 

Our mission is to ensure that all electric vehicle batteries are responsibly disposed of. The reason why this is a problem is because lithium recycling isn’t profitable, costing taxpayers thousands of dollars to get rid of a single electric vehicle once the driver is done with it. With that being said, unfortunately, only about 5% of all electric vehicle batteries are being recycled responsibly, with most of them ending up on shelves or in landfills.  

However, we found out there’s an average of 80% life left in these batteries, so instead of prematurely recycling these batteries, they can be taken out of the vehicle and repurposed and reformatted into something that’s usable for the home or for commercial buildings. This helps people reduce their diesel consumption, lower their utility bills, and decrease their environmental footprint. 

We also aim to ensure no new lithium is required to be mined for stationary storage applications because we try to reduce the negative environmental and social impacts happening across the world with lithium mining.

What inspired you to start Moment Energy? 

For myself, while living for four months in a small town called Deep River (just north of Ottawa), doing some nuclear energy research for the Canadian government, I realized how even being two hours north of a big city, a lot of Canadians don’t have access to reliable energy. Ottawa was hit with a tornado, and out of power for four hours, while Deep River was out for 24 hours – something I was told was normal for them; they often lacked power for a week at a time, if not longer. 

As we dug deeper, we found that Canadians – Indigenous communities, especially – are very diesel-dependent. The government spends tens of millions dollars on shipping fuel just to keep lights on, but a lot of remote communities don’t want diesel. They want to wean off diesel, but solar and wind power are too intermittent. That’s why energy storage is needed to decrease their fuel usage, and hopefully, even replace the diesel generators one day. 

In terms of the founding members of Moment Energy, we’re a group of four best friends who met each other in our engineering program at Simon Fraser University. Here, we worked on a variety of projects, including building and designing an electric race car from scratch. From there, we started a mental health company, trying to commercialize neurostimulation devices, and soon pivoted to Moment Energy because we realized the skillset and passion for electric vehicles and renewable energy was something we all had in common. That’s how we got started in January 2020. 

What were some of the challenges you encountered? 

The first challenge we faced was the COVID-19 pandemic hitting when we were only a company for three months. We were new, but it was lucky that we were new because we weren’t in the middle of manufacturing a lot. During this time, there were some markets that were closed off and we decided to pivot away from, such as Vancouver’s film industry and outdoor events that use diesel generators that can be loud, a pollutant, and unsafe. 

Over the past year, we addressed the off-grid residential market, which is still diesel dependent, but now they’re off-grid and they own their own energy. Now, we’re going to the off-grid and on-grid commercial markets as well. 

The second challenge we’ve recently faced is supply chain issues. Everywhere in the world experiences it. The Suez Canal incident was one thing, but essentially for anything hardware-related, the prices have just gone up, mainly because of the whole supply chain shortage. For us as a hardware company that develops batteries, it presents delays. 

However, it was a good learning curve for us – we definitely know how to better position ourselves on the supply end and better prepare for any delays that are going to be there in the future.   

What do you consider Moment Energy’s biggest success? 

Our biggest success is our three projects that we’ve deployed over the past year. These three projects are off-grid residential applications, but not just a cabin or a home. Some of them are mansions in the middle of the woods or on an island, so they use a lot of energy. The three projects were in Winnipeg, Quadra Island in British Columbia, and Edmonton. 

It was really fulfilling to live on some of these sites for a couple days during installation to see everything get powered by our batteries: lights, TV, the fridge, etc. We were really happy about those successes and proud of Moment Energy.

Overall, we’ve grown incredibly quickly. Six months ago, we were still in one of our co-founder’s garage. Then, we moved into a small, warehouse sharing type model, and now we have our own facility. It all happened in six months. Recently, we also closed our seed round for $3.5 million. 

What makes your organization unique? 

We’re significantly more affordable, thereby allowing greater access to high quality, lithium-based energy storage to a lot of these markets that need it. As well, we have higher discharging capabilities with our batteries compared to traditional lithium.  

Another thing that makes us unique is our environmental impact. New lithium is not required to be mined for our batteries which helps circumvent the negative social and environmental issues of mining. And then we do have a core technology overall. The core technology, in terms of why we win against any second life company, is the development of our battery match system.

How do you feel Moment Energy makes the world better?

We feel we make the world better because our method of energy storage offers a more environmentally positive solution than traditional energy storage. It’s also a safer option for our clients, as lead acid batteries, in addition to being negative for the environment, can be dangerous if you get the acid on you when topping up the batteries. 

As well, our energy storage solution is a reliable alternative to renewable energy. Those who have installed solar panels or use wind energy often face sunlight or wind shortages which makes energy storage unreliable. Unfortunately, many end up having to turn to diesel generators as a back-up. So we see us fitting into the picture as sort of a hybrid approach; we install our battery, and combined with the diesel generator, we still reduce diesel consumption significantly. 

Tell us about your organization’s goals. 

Right now, we’re partnered with four auto manufacturers, with about three more we’re in talks with, so we’re essentially leaders in terms of partnerships for auto manufacturers. In terms of our batteries, we have developed and deployed five kilowatt hours, which is a very small application. One residential home is 14 kilowatt hours, to put in perspective. We’ve also been deploying 20 kilowatt hours for off-grid, residential homes. 

Now, what we’ve just built and sent out is 100 kilowatt hours, which is about five off-grid homes or about eight on-grid residential homes. With that, we’re really addressing the more commercial-type applications, such as in the aquaculture or mining industries, where they use diesel generators and require more energy. 

Another application we’re focusing on is small to medium manufacturing buildings. In provinces like Ontario and Nova Scotia and several states in the United States, they face demand charges where if you draw too much power from the grid, you will get fined hundreds of thousands of dollars. Our batteries can provide necessary juice for when they hit those peaks. We’re working to be the first commercial, second-life battery certification. 

Our big, hairy, audacious goal is to ensure all electric vehicle batteries are repurposed by 2030 and that we would have a part in all that. And really, we want to make clean, reliable and affordable energy for all. 

Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share? 

Right now, a lot of our projects are in the works in the short term. For example, we’re sending our battery pack to Dalhousie to do testing. We’re working with the Verschuren Centre right now to lock down an off-grid site to deploy our battery pack there, as well as working in Nova Scotia to work on on-grid projects with other companies too. Other BC-related projects are focused on the springtime.

What do you most want people to know about Moment Energy?

First and foremost, Moment Energy is a company that puts people first. Without our strong and passionate team, we would not be able to make meaningful environmental and social change for others. 

We’re a cleantech company with a mission to change the way people view sustainable businesses. We’re providing an energy storage solution that is not only reliable, but environmentally sustainable. This speaks to how all products should be designed. 

How can people help or contribute to Moment Energy’s mission?

Spread the word about us! We are always looking for project opportunities and new talent to join our team. The best way to contribute is to talk about what we’re doing (battery repurposing) and recommending our solution (energy storage).

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ReFeed Canada: Securing Sustainable Food Systems

As the world continues to experience unprecedented times, one thing that’s certain is humanity’s need for secure food systems. Unfortunately, many people remain food insecure, while the amount of food waste in developed countries like Canada continues to be high. 

ReFeed Canada is challenging this reality by ensuring future generations have access to sustainable food systems. We chatted with Stuart Lilley, CEO & CVO, about ReFeed Canada’s efforts to repurpose food waste, their worm farm, and their exciting partnership on an eNFT project.

ReFeed Canada staff sorting useable produce to be redirect to local partners like the Greater Vancouver Food Bank.

Tell us about ReFeed Canada’s mission.

“For the Love of Food, People and Planet.”

ReFeed is on a mission to create sustainable food systems for future generations. At a time when over 58% of the food in Canada is wasted, with one third of that food still suitable for human consumption, 1 in 8 people in Canada remain food insecure. At the same time, the agriculture industry accounts for 10% of the greenhouse gas emissions produced globally.

The food system is broken, and we believe we can help fix it through circular systems that recover nutrients from agri-food waste, and produce surplus to produce nutrition for people, livestock, and soil. 

What inspired you to start ReFeed Canada?

For the past 12 years, I have witnessed first-hand the industrial amount of pre-consumer food waste that occurs daily in our food industry. During that time, I worked with numerous companies in the food industry, including an insect technology start-up, supplying them with food waste to produce sustainable protein. I struggled endlessly with supplying food that could’ve been recovered for organizations that address food insecurity if priorities were aligned with society, rather than the company that controlled the waste stream.

I felt that a better system would be to have a facility that could receive and rescue industrial amounts of produce for people first, and what’s left could then be used as feed for livestock and insects to create sustainable protein and organic soil amendment and fertilizer products, all from agri-food waste. These products could then be sold to produce more food and the revenues could be used to support the social enterprise part of the business, Circular Nutrition™, with a sustainable business model. 

I didn’t understand why all interests: societal, environmental, and financial, could not be aligned in one facility.

What were some of the challenges you encountered?   

As a start-up, you encounter a multitude of challenges on a daily basis. ReFeed is a very ambitious project with multiple modular pieces that work together to create the circular system. Right out of the gate, we were handling industrial amounts of produce waste.   

We officially took over the facility on March 1, 2021. Shortly after, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and all of the plans and investors we had lined up fizzled. We had to go into survival mode, and that meant becoming scrappy in how we generated revenue while we figured out how we were going to build our vertical worm farm with no money and very little help.

Being underfunded was definitely one of the bigger challenges. If it wasn’t for my waste consulting company and the ability for ReFeed to immediately generate revenue by rescuing and processing produce waste, I don’t think we would’ve made it. 

More recently, supply chain issues have severely delayed the buildout of the worm farm. But I have learned to be philosophical about every challenge, delay – it’s all part of the journey. I am confident we can get through anything as long as I keep waking up in the morning and showing up for work. This is all part of a bigger plan.

What do you consider ReFeed Canada’s biggest success?

I think our biggest success has been the team that we have assembled: our staff, advisors, and partners. We have been extremely lucky to find a great team that believe in the vision of ReFeed, the circularity of our model, and the impact we create, and are committed to bringing it to fruition

What makes your organization unique?

I haven’t heard of too many companies that are committed to impact in our community and our environment before profit, never mind the fact that we are bringing together food rescue to address food insecurity, produce waste recovery to feed livestock, and worm farming to produce sustainable protein and replace synthetic fertilizers all at one facility – and somehow make it all make sense from a business perspective.

How do you feel ReFeed Canada makes the world better?

It would be easy to say that ReFeed makes the world better because of the environmental and community impact that we create, but the reality is that aspect of our company is just a drop in the bucket of what needs to happen around this planet. I truly believe that the greatest impact we are having in the world is how we are inspiring others to think outside of the box, helping to motivate others to improve or start their own impactful company, and contributing to a growing community of people that want to see real action with urgency to fix our broken systems.

I’ve said from the beginning of this journey that ReFeed isn’t the answer to everything, but it is setting a new benchmark of what can be done, and hopefully, it will push and inspire others to elevate their game so that we can start accelerating innovation and solutions that will reverse our current trajectory on this planet.

Tell us about your organization’s goals.

Our primary focus is on building out our Langley facility into a centre of innovation, a commercial scale demonstration of the potential of circular systems in agriculture. We want to demonstrate the entire Circular Nutrition™ potential by utilizing agri-food waste as a resource to be food for people and livestock, or bio-converted into organic growing mediums that are then used to grow more food for the local market, dense in nutrition and carbon negative. 

As this comes together, we are planning the expansion of ReFeed Farms into other markets, leading with our modular vertical worm farm, while also developing further applications for worms at the farm level to address manure management issues, the reduction of synthetic fertilizers and mined minerals, and supporting farmers’ transition to regenerative farming practices.

Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?

One that we are very excited about is our partnership with a company out of Denmark that has created a platform for good called Coin4Planet. Founded by Morten Røngaard of Reality Gaming Group, the premise behind this platform is to create a blockchain-based investment platform which will raise funds by selling “Nature Coins.” The proceeds will be directed to real world projects that are making a significant impact, are transparent, and quantifiable for the planet, as well as society.

Coin4Planet provides a tool both for investors looking to contribute to green tech projects making a measurable difference, and those who are simply seeking annual returns with added stability from crypto assets which are tied to real-world projects. 

ReFeed Canada will be one of their genesis projects receiving direct investment to support the expansion of our operations, including a range of products and services to help farmers move off chemical fertilizers and onto our natural solutions. I believe this new model of funding has the potential to change the world.

What do you most want people to know about ReFeed Canada?

The most important thing that I want people to know about ReFeed Canada is that we are just a group of regular people who have seen that the food system has been broken for a long time and are not interested in more reports or committees to discuss what we need to do. We are just simply going to do what we believe needs to be done and are happy to do the heavy lifting to get the momentum needed to start changing the way things are done.

We can end hunger in this country because it’s not a food production issue, it’s a food redistribution issue – we already grow and make more than enough food to feed everyone. We can also eliminate synthetic fertilizer use by shifting to bio-based growing mediums and nutrient recovery from manure. We need to create systems that recover nutrients instead of wasting them, and nature is our guide. 

We’re doing this to help ensure that our children have a future and that their children have a future. We don’t have any more time to waste. 

How can people help or contribute to ReFeed Canada’s mission?

The first way people can help contribute to ReFeed Canada’s mission is to follow us on social media and to get the word out about the work that we are doing with your friends, your schools, local municipal, and provincial leaders. 

In 2022, we’ll be launching our worm castings fertilizer and soil remediation products for purchase, and partial proceeds from these sales will directly support our social enterprise that rescues industrial amounts of produce for redistribution to food banks and non-profits.

In the bigger picture, look around your day-to-day life and see what you can do to help reduce your environmental impact in your community. Big business is watching and listening to the consumers like never before. What we support as a community and what we decide to spend our money on makes a difference. It says a lot about where we want to go as a society.

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