What’s Holding Carbon Markets Back? (ft. Allister Furey - CEO and Co-founder of Sylvera)

On today's episode of the Climate Insiders podcast, we’re sitting down with Allister Furey, CEO and Co-founder of Sylvera. Sylvera is a carbon data provider that helps organizations ensure they're making the most effective investments toward net zero. We build software that independently and accurately automates the evaluation of carbon projects that capture, remove, or avoid emissions.

With Sylvera's data and tools, the world’s largest businesses and governments can confidently invest in, benchmark, deliver, and report real climate impact.

Allister Furey has an MBA from London Business School, and a PhD in computational neuroscience and robotics from University of Sussex, where he focused on optimizing control of wind energy systems. He has worked as a consultant for Bain & Company, as CTO of a leading UK wind energy technology company, and venture partner at Entrepreneur First.

Allister and his co-founder Sam Gill observed that carbon markets needed a revolution in data quality to reliably deliver climate benefits, and to achieve the necessary scale to have a meaningful impact. Together they founded Sylvera in 2020 to bring transparency and, ultimately, trust to carbon markets.

This episode delves into:

- The Importance of Accurate Carbon Data

- Challenges of Carbon Markets

- Role of Sylvera

- Emerging Carbon Removal Technologies

- Future of Carbon Markets

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(00:00) - Intro

(00:13) - How Can We Incentivize Investment in Real Climate Action?

(00:51) - How does Sylvera defer organizations like Vera or B0?

(01:27) - Why are Carbon Markets Important?

(07:40) - How Does Sylvera’s Rating System Drive Smarter Climate Tech Investments?

(10:10) - How Easy Can the Rating System Recognize mistakes?

(13:30) - What is a Triple B in The Ranking System?

(15:18) - What Factors Matter the Most When Rating Direct Air Capture Projects?

(21:43) - What Emerging Carbon Capture Technologies should Investors Keep an Eye on?

(24:40) - What Will Carbon Markets Look like In 10 Years?

(29:54) - Is the Carbon Market going to Be Regionally Fragmented?

(30:47) - Outro