Spirals partners with CarbonPath, enabling instant carbon drawdown
We are excited to announce a partnership between CarbonPath and Spirals to accelerate climate regeneration!
The CarbonPath team bring a deep background in the energy space and have developed a unique and scalable approach to combating Greenhouse Gases contributing to climate change: a permanent decommissioning of marginally producing oil and natural gas wells by providing a financial incentive. This stops the majority of the fugitive methane emissions problem as well as sequesters carbon in the ground permanently.
The verifiable proof of decommission is represented as a token, containing information regarding the state or federal permit, the audited calculations and surface location so you have certainly the the work was completed and the quantities are verified.
Collaboration roadmap:
- Carbon Path stakes with Spirals through $CELO staking
- Carbon Path is added for review to the Climate Council
- If approved, Carbon Path will immediately be eligible for funding!
Why CarbonPath?
We believe CarbonPath’s approach is not only unique but immediately effective.
Many solutions to climate change have challenges scaling or take significant time to have an impact: growing trees is slow, direct air capture is expensive. Shutting down wells has immediate benefits. With CarbonPath’s domain expertise they know exactly which wells are no longer worth operating at all where the smallest financial incentive makes the largest climate impact. These are called “orphaned” or “abandoned” wells.
Orphaned wells are a huge problem!
CarbonPath is dedicated to solving the fugitive methane emissions problem. They are former industry experts in engineering and finance, understanding that the majority of emissions come from under-maintained end of life wells. These wells are owned by smaller independent operators with very little financial capability to complete proper maintenance, so the wells have failures that are mostly undetected and at worst ignored that provide the pathways to emit methane into our air and water supplies.
Because the wells produce very little, they generate very little cash flow and are not worth much money. Operators continue to produce them even at break even cash costs in order to avoid the $50,000 to $100,000 it takes to properly plug and abandon the wells according to state and federal regulations.
CarbonPath is providing a credit to incentivize operators to properly plug and abandon the wells and eliminate these leaks. There are over 4mm wells in the US, with under 1mm producing anything. Out of those, 80% produce under 15 barrels of oil equivalent per day and are thus marginal.
We could shut down 80% of the wells still producing, and only reduce oil supply by 5%. This would eliminate the majority of methane emissions from the industry.
This can all be done at $20–30/tonne, making it a reasonably priced, scalable alternative to forestry credits. We believe that this is a permanent solution, as oil prices would need to be sold at over $1,000 a barrel in order to make a return accessing the oil remaining after CarbonPath plugs the well.
Learn more about CarbonPath here.
What is Spirals?
Spirals redirects funds into climate impact.
In practice, this involves (1) building regenerative economic tools that redirect yield to what we hold sacred — the environment — and (2) better distribution of capital to high impact projects.
Regenerative Economic Tools
Spirals is building regenerative infrastructure for any proof-of-stake blockchain, starting with Celo. For example:
- We work directly with validators to do a revenue share with impact causes of their choice at a programatic L1 level
- We work with grant programs to stake locked funds (ie promised to a grant recipient but not yet released based on milestones); unlocking capital early and accelerating impact.
- We empower retail investors to contribute to the highest quality climate projects by staking $CELO or $cUSD
Any contributions towards climate impact are rewarded by $SPRL — the Spirals governance token representing both influence in impact decisions and eligibility for yield on climate investments.
Climate Council for Project Selection
Spirals is building open governance around high impact project selection, combining both an expert climate committee for reviewing quality and maximizing impact, with community input on funding allocation. Impact Funds are directed into a smart contract governed by all contributors.
Join the ReFi movement!
In the current economic system, with more use, more resources are extracted. Doing the climate-positive thing often costs more, making little sense as a for-profit entity. In a regenerative system, with more use, more of nature is regenerated. ReFi, or Regenerative Finance, is a movement towards building regenerative economies which, finally aligning ecological outcomes with financial outcomes.
Check out what we’re working on at Spirals.so and CarbonPath.io or follow us on twitter @spiralsprotocol and @CarbonPath_io.
