UNDO’s Year in Review: Expansion, Evolution and Excellence

UNDO had a landmark year in 2023. Together with our farming communities, operational partners, contractor network and climate-conscious subscribers, we have made breakthroughs that built our team, boosted our science and made our organisation stand out.

We raised $12 million and renewed our contract with Stripe to the tune of $1 million. We signed commercial deals with Microsoft and McLaren. We partnered with British Airways to permanently remove over 4,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. We spread five times more silicate rock this year than in 2022, and in 2023 alone, our efforts will capture more than 37,500 tonnes of CO₂ and benefit 181 farms across three continents.

In 2023, we won multiple awards. We were featured in Times Square, on BBC Countryfile, CNN, Sky, ITV and more. We expanded into Australia and Canada and will scale those operations in 2024. We onboarded 13 new partner marketplaces. We bolstered our staff with 17 new talented individuals. And crucially, our Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) process evolved by leaps and bounds as we pursued the best available science.

This year has been dynamic, educational, and full of progress both for UNDO and the wider voluntary carbon market. Here is a deeper dive into a year of impact.

Setting the Standard for Excellence

We don’t want to just comply with market and industry standards. We actively seek to shape them, helping to set high bars and then lead by example. In September, we co-authored the Reykjavik Protocol alongside fellow nature-based carbon dioxide removal project developers, laying the groundwork for how suppliers should responsibly bring their carbon solutions to carbon credit markets.

In 2023, we have made great strides in all areas of the business.

We have spread more rock and captured more CO₂ than any of our ERW peers globally and provided co-benefits to 181 farms.

We have now spread more than 170,000 tonnes of silicate rock through an extensive network of hauliers and spreaders that are local to our feedstocks and the farms we work with. Through our partnership with Canadian Wollastonite, we have begun spreading Wollastonite, a fast-weathering mineral that will give us invaluable measurement data that we can use to improve our weathering model.

We have significantly grown our stakeholder community and centre them in our work.

Through events like Innovation Zero in London, the Royal Highland Show in Edinburgh, the Future Farming Show in Aberdeen, and Groundswell in Hertfordshire, we regularly met with those who participate in our process. Without their enthusiasm and support, our solution can not scale. We loved filming a short documentary highlighting our close partnership with farmers across Scotland, which featured interviews, a visit to our field trials and a look into our labs at the James Hutton Institute’s Climate Innovation Hub.

We became an award-winning and leading ERW brand.

In 2023, we were voted “Hottest Climate Tech Startup” by the EUROPAS awards. We were shortlisted for the Earthshot Prize. UNDO’S logo appeared in Times Square. We worked with CNN’s Call to Earth and BBC Countryfile to produce video segments discussing our solution. We received TV coverage on ITV while at the Royal Highland Show in June and also appeared in Reuters, Forbes, BBC, The Times, The Guardian, and more.

The technology that underpins our data management and operations is world-class.

NEWTON, UNDO’s data platform, collects project data in real-time across global operations and allows us to track all operational data from quarry to field. UNDO’s Inventory Management System (IMS) has now generated almost 10,000 carbon removal credits (pending verification), by integrating with NEWTON to accurately track all operational and scientific data. Our modelling has integrated 14x more weathering curves, 20 new minerals and more than 11,000 simulated years.

Our Science, Research and Innovation team worked tirelessly to align our MRV approach to the best available science.

From field trial installation to soil collection and sampling to testing a variety of measurement techniques, their work drives the UNDO engine. More on what they achieved in 2023 below.

Our Evolving Science

In September, UNDO facilitated and hosted the first-ever enhanced rock weathering conference at the University of Edinburgh. More than 100 scientists, thought leaders, academics and graduate students came together to collaborate and share their research to discuss how our sector of CDR can overcome existing scientific barriers. We have built out our academic network and are now partnered with 17 universities, including the University of Oxford, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and James Cook University.

2023 saw us continue to adapt our science to the most accurate and successful methods that can demonstrate weathering and how much CO₂ we are removing. We are reinforcing our ’‘measure and model’ approach by collecting more and more data points from our field trials.

We’ve set up field trials in Australia and Canada in partnership with local universities.
We’ve collected and processed thousands of soil samples. With a robust library of samples, we are constantly refining our geochemical models whilst proving the agronomic benefits of ERW.
Our measurement techniques have expanded to include not only the more established inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) but also the extraction of soil pore water.
We are creating models of peer-reviewed experiments, starting with monomineralic studies (e.g. Wollastonite, olivine), and evolving towards increasingly complex systems such as basalt. To date, we have collected input data from 113 experiments and published in 24 peer-reviewed papers. Our science and modelling team has released the newest version of our geochemical model, which has been run against all rock samples. It is now validated and can be used to generate carbon removal credits.

Excitingly, with guidance from the UNDO Science Team, our Carbon Team developed the world’s first ISO 14064-validated and the ICROA-backed Puro.earth Standard methodologies to verify the CO₂ we remove. We are working with independent verification bodies to be able to claim fully verified carbon credits in 2024.

Leading the Way into 2024

In 2023, we pioneered several firsts both for the company and for the sector as a whole.

We became Microsoft’s first ERW supplier, spreading more than 25,000 tonnes of basalt in the UK on their behalf.

The agreement marks the first ERW credits sold using the ICROA-endorsed Puro Standard methodology. We joined McLaren’s Climate Contribution Programme and are proud to be working with them as a first mover in the carbon removal space for the sports world. UNDO also partnered with British Airways, Standard Chartered and CUR8 to pilot a new financial paradigm that can scale the CDR industry and get capital-intensive startups access to debt finance off the back of advanced market commitments.

UNDO spoke at and attended more than 20 climate events, conferences and agricultural shows around the world. 10 UNDOers went on 15 different podcasts this year to talk about ERW and its role in mitigating climate change. We hosted our first webinar in partnership with high-permanence project developer, Planetary.

Leaning In and Looking Forward

In 2024, we look forward to sharing more milestone developments. We will host more webinars about our science and solution in the new year and also look forward to releasing our first peer-reviewed paper that will share the promising results of a field trial in partnership with Newcastle University. We will expand and scale our partnerships. We will strengthen our technology and agronomy teams with bigger datasets. And we will continue to grow our networks and communities of support.

Thank you for supporting our mission. Watch this space for more big news to come!

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