SavePlanetEarth launches Planetary Carbon Standard: “We are the pioneers in this side of the carbon credit industry”

Cryptocurrency, NFTs, blockchain, conflicts of interest, a fake baseline, and millions of fake carbon credits

A company called SavePlanetEarth has launched the Planetary Carbon Standard, which it describes as “a tech-driven initiative for credible carbon credits, addressing climate with innovation, integrity, and impact”.

In its press release, SavePlanetEarth acknowledges some of the problems with voluntary carbon markets but claims that the new Standard will address them:

“Despite its potential, the carbon credit market faces significant challenges that undermine its effectiveness and credibility. Greenwashing, quality and integrity of credits, double counting, and complexity and accessibility are critical issues that SavePlanetEarth’s Planetary Carbon Standard aims to address.”

Wait, haven’t we run into SavePlanetEarth before?

REDD-Monitor wrote about SavePlanetEarth two years ago. In November 2021, the company sold a “Certified Carbon Credit Smart NFT” for US$67,240.86.

Where did the carbon credits come from before they were tokenised on the blockchain, or whatever it was that SavePlanetEarth did?

From the Rimba Raya REDD project in Indonesia. As Climate Change News reported,

At the time, millions of credits from the same project were trading on the market for less than $20 each. In the first half of 2021, the price of a forest carbon offset averaged just $4.73/t. Why would anyone pay such a huge premium?

Why indeed.

Isn’t SavePlanetEarth the company whose registered office is a disused cinema in Bradford?

The very same. Actually there were two companies: Save Planet Earth Limited and Save Planet Earth UK Limited. Both shared the same director, Imran Ali.

On 11 May 2022, Save Planet Earth’s registered office moved to a residential address in Bradford. And on 13 September 2022, the company was dissolved via compulsory strike-off.

Also on 11 May 2022, Save Planet Earth UK’s registered office moved to the same residential address. On 27 December 2022, that company was dissolved via compulsory strike-off.

Neither company ever filed any accounts.

Did Imran Ali register Save Planet Earth anywhere else?

Not as far as I can tell. According to OpenCorporates there are nine companies with Save Planet Earth in their name (including Imran Ali’s two ex-companies). There is a Save Planet Earth that was incorporated in Nevada in June 2020, but that’s a different company altogether.

So, it’s “So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye” to SavePlanetEarth?

Apparently not. Who needs a registered company when you’ve got the blockchain and AI? “SPE passionately pursues carbon sequestration and emission reduction through the lens of blockchain and AI technology, ensuring unparalleled transparency,” SavePlanetEarth tells us on its website.

Didn’t Tony Hawk recommend SavePlanetEarth?

You mean Tony Hawk, one of the most influential skateboarders of all time? He said that he thought SavePlanetEarth is “a great crypto project”.

Is he still saying that?

Apparently not. While he did buy some SavePlanetEarth tokens, he’s been very quiet about them ever since. And he’s removed his recommendation from YouTube:

So how’s the price of the SavePlanetEarth token, $SPE, doing? Gone to the moon?

Er, no. Here’s the price since the launch:

Oh dear, oh dear!

Apparently, the low price is a source of optimism for SavePlanetEarth.

“I do not care in the least about what the price is right now,” Robert Green, SavePlanetEarth’s co-founder, CTO and CFO, wrote on the company’s Discord channel in April 2013. “The more the price drops, is more Xs we will get in the future, which corresponds to more momentum and more new eyes on the project.”

So the lower the price goes, the better?

In the upside down world of crypto, that does seem to be the case.

Since December 2021, according to Green, $SPE “has been relatively quiet, as the decision was made that marketing and releasing news would not be effective and would waste ‘ammo’, so to speak”.

Green is hoping that “the next bull cycle” on crypto will “begin towards the end of 2024 and to continue through 2025”. Green adds that, “Right now, we are working quietly in the background because we want to save juice for when it matters.”

Is there a company behind Planetary Carbon Standard?

There are two. On 21 April 2023, Planetary Carbon Standard Pte Ltd was incorporated in Singapore.

And on 19 May 2023, Imran Ali incorporated a company in the UK called Planetary Carbon Standard Ltd. Imran Ali is the only director.

This new company is registered in 124-128 City Road, London.

Wow, that’s a big improvement over a disused cinema in Bradford.

True, but Planetary Carbon Standard shares that address with 167 other companies. A company called Your Company Formations Ltd will set up a company with this address for the bargain price of £27.48.

And a company called Capital Office Ltd provides a virtual office address service at this address.

Meanwhile, Planetary Carbon Standard doesn’t have to file any accounts with Companies House until 19 February 2025.

So what is this newly launched Planetary Carbon Standard?

Back in 2022, SavePlanetEarth announced on its website that,

SPE is developing the first-ever Gold Standard certified carbon credit NFTs, a green blockchain entirely powered by renewable energy, and a carbon credit exchange that will use $SPE as the exclusive currency.

SavePlanetEarth’s Green writes that,

As is already publicly known, we have connections in governments on every continent on Earth, tree planting initiatives in several countries worldwide, and millions of new trees are growing because of us and our nurseries. SPE is a registered company in several nation-states and continues to expand. The PCS [Planetary Carbon Standard] is entirely under SPE and will soon grow to become the most important aspect.

Green explains that the basic concept is that selling of carbon credits from the trees planted by SavePlanetEarth would be reinvested into $SPE.

With the Planetary Carbon Standard, Green writes,

“the carbon markets will be more accessible than ever before to the world. SPE is also developing the carbon credit marketplace, and all PCS credits will be available on our marketplace.

“The $SPE token will be the utility token of the CC marketplace. For each carbon credit onboarded, an amount of $SPE will be required for each carbon credit.”

In other words, SavePlanetEarth is generating the carbon credits by planting trees and conserving forests. The carbon credits will be certified under SavePlanetEarth’s Planetary Carbon Standard. The carbon credits are registered on the Planetary Carbon Standard registry. And the carbon credits will be bought and sold using SavePlanetEarth’s $SPE tokens. Isn’t there a conflict of interest somewhere here?

You missed another one though. The Planetary Carbon Standard is a “strategic partnership” with the Sri Lanka Climate Fund, which also acts as a certification body under the new scheme. Projects are registered under the Sri Lanka Carbon Crediting Scheme and the carbon credits on the Planetary Carbon Standard registry are Sri Lankan Certified Emission Reductions.

Right. So how’s the Planetary Carbon Standard going? How many carbon credits are available for sale on the registry?

1,720,672.

And how many have been retired?

0.

What’s the story behind these carbon credits?

So far, one project has generated carbon credits under the Planetary Carbon Standard. It’s a project called Tokenize Amazon Project. According to the company’s website,

In a world grappling with escalating environmental challenges, the Tokenize Amazon Project stands as a beacon of hope and innovation.

That’s nice. Are there any project documents on the Planetary Carbon Standard registry to back up this statement?

There are documents on the registry, but they are not reassuring.

The “Carbon Management Assessment” was prepared by Sanzio Coelho Maciel. He’s the managing partner of the company Floresta Token Conservação de Floresta Nativa do Bioma Amazonico Spe Ltda, which runs the project.

In the “Carbon Management Assessment” he describes himself as follows:

Entrepreneur, father of two beautiful children, lives throughout his entire life in cities within the Amazon region, vast knowledge of the area and the effects of deforestation and climate change. Fight so that the next generation can have the pleasure of seeing the Amazonia alive and not only in the history books.

Perfect qualifications for producing a technical forest carbon trading report.

Hmmm. The document explains that Maciel has bought an area of 1,001.4 hectares of forest near to the municipality of Presidente Figueiredo in the State of Amazonas, Brazil.

Starting on 28 October 2021, this area of 1,001.4 hectares will generate 774,302 carbon credits per year. That’s allowing 86,034 carbon credits for a “buffer pool allocation”. Over the ten year project period, the project is anticipated to generate 7,743,025 carbon credits.

In its first year, then, according to the “Carbon Management Assessment” report, the Tokenize Amazon Project avoided the emission of 860,336 tons of CO₂. That’s 859 tons of CO₂ per hectare, or 234 tons of carbon per hectare.¹

Although Maciel provides no details at all about how he comes up with that number, it isn’t such an unreasonable figure for the amount of carbon stored in one hectare of Amazon rainforest.

I can feel a “but” coming on.

Yes. And it’s a humongous “but”.

Tokenize Amazon Project is assuming that in the absence of the project the entire 1,001.4 hectares would be cleared in the first year. This would then be repeated the next year, and so on until the project ends in October 2031.

By that time, the project will have generated 10 times as many carbon credits as the amount of CO₂ stored in the forest in the project area before the project started.

Can you compare this with another REDD project in Brazil?

As it happens, I can. And the reason for choosing this particular project will become clear shortly.

The Project Description Document for the Suruí REDD project explains that,

The objective of the PCFS [Suruí Forest Carbon Project] is to prevent 13,575.3 hectares of tropical forests from being cleared in the TISS [Sete de Setembro Indigenous Territory] by 2038, to avoid the emission of 7,423,806.2 tCO₂e in the atmosphere . . .

So, by avoiding more than 13 times as much deforestation, the Suruí REDD project anticipated generating about 320,000 fewer carbon credits than the Tokenize Amazon Project. And that’s over a project period of 30 years - three times as long as the Tokenize Amazon Project period.

It’s pretty much irrelevant at this point, but what does the baseline look like?

You mean the counterfactual piece of fiction made up by the project developers about what would have happened without the project? Here it is in full:

The reference area includes the BR-174 federal highway which runs from Manaus to Pacaraima on the border with Venezuela. The reference area is drawn around the area of highest deforestation. The project area is approximately 10 kilometres away from the BR-174.

While the project area is no doubt under some level of threat, it is extremely unlikely to be entirely clearcut in one year. Yet that’s the amount of avoided CO₂ emissions that the project developers are claiming as carbon credits. Every year. For 10 years.

PHOTO Credit: On the left is a screenshot from Google maps, with the project area marked, and on the right is the project developer’s map showing deforestation in the reference area.

Comparing the maps above illustrates that by colouring any area of deforestation or degradation in red, the project developer is exaggerating the actual level of deforestation.

The “Carbon Management Assessment” uses the Approved VCS Module VMD0007, Version 1.0 REDD Methodological Module. Verra has updated this methodology several times and it is currently at Version 3.3. Since 7 March 2012, Version 1.0 has no longer been valid under Verra’s certification system.

Anything else?

Well, there’s the team carrying out the monitoring activities. In addition to Sanzio Coelho Maciel and SavePlanetEarth (which will be doing “AI Technology”), the Tokenize Amazon Project team consists of the following four people:

Chief Almir Suruí, no less. Isn’t that a bit of a surprise?

Indeed. On 16 June 2021, Almir Suruí took part in “an organized stakeholder consultation” in the state of Mato Grosso “with the objective of gathering insights, feedbacks and reflections from the project stakeholders and beneficiaries”, according to the “Carbon Management Assessment” report.

Almir Suruí was behind the REDD project mentioned above, on the Paiter Suruí’s land - the Sete de Setembro Indigenous Land. In 2018, Verra suspended the REDD project indefinitely following illegal diamond and gold mining, as well as illegal logging, inside the 248,147 hectare territory of the Suruí.

Despite the fact that the Sete de Setembro Indigenous Land is about 1,600 kilometres from the Tokenize Amazon Project area, the “Carbon Management Assessment” report states that,

Honorable Chief Almir Surui will work as Special Adviser for the Tokenize Amazon Project, helping with the implementation of policies related to Indigenous Communities in general.

There’s an Indigenous person on Tokenize Amazon Project’s website. Who’s he?

Well spotted. Despite the fact that the photo is one of six under the heading “Our Rainforest”, it turns out that this is a stock-photo that Alamy is selling for a little over US$50 for use on a website.

It’s a photo of a Huaorani Indigenous person in the Yasuni National Park in Ecuador, so absolutely nothing to do with Tokenize Amazon Project’s 1001,4 hectares in the state of Amazonas:

PHOTO Credit: “Typical Huaorani Hunter Portrait Waorani Reserve Yasuni National Park Ecuador,” Alamy.

Is there more?

I’m afraid so. On 11 July 2023, Imran Ali gave a presentation at a WhiteBIT DemoDay event.

A what?

WhiteBIT is a cryptocurrency exchange, founded in Ukraine in 2018. DemoDay is a series of presentations of projects for potential investors.

Most of Ali’s presentation is pure crypto-gobbledegook. However, he claims that SavePlanetEarth has “presence in multiple countries” including USA and Brazil. According to Ali, the company is registered in Singapore, UK, and the United Arab Emirates.

He says, “We believe planting trees is the most effective way to reduce carbon dioxide and to limit climate change.” That’s a position that even Mr. Trillion Trees himself, Thomas Crowther, has (at least to some extent) walked back from.

On the Planetary Carbon Standard, Ali has the following to say:

“The Planetary Carbon Standard is created by a team of experts who designed the UNFCCC, the United Nations Framework Clean Development Mechanism. So they actually created this Planetary Carbon Standard for both renewable energy and nature-based projects.”

I don’t suppose he said who these UNFCCC experts were?

No, of course he didn’t.

He talks about the Tokenize Amazon Project and upcoming projects on the Planetary Carbon Standard:

“We’ve just managed to generate eight million carbon credits from the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. This is our inaugural carbon credit project using the Planetary Carbon Standard so this has been gone through the mill so to speak from verification, validation, monitoring, so the whole process has been complete. So we know that this process is working now, and we have another 20 million carbon credits under evaluation ranging from bamboo projects, biochar projects, for Dendro power plants, renewable energy such as solar, wind, hydro, and also methane reductions too.”

Later on he says that “we have another 25 plus million carbon credits under evaluation from the Brazilian Amazon rainforest” but doesn’t go into any details. And he says that,

“The PCS is built on the unique combination of blockchain technology, AI machine learning, to ensure the transparency, accuracy and, you know, to verify our work, which is something which will eliminate double counting so there won’t be any more dirty carbon credits out there. And linking that to our use case of SPE, I mean the potential is you know it’s absolutely endless.”

No more dirty carbon credits then?

Ali’s words, not mine.

Can we end on one last quotation from Ali?

Certainly. SavePlanetEarth are “pioneers”:

“We’ve just been developing our technology, as you saw the ENDVIs [Enhanced Normalised Difference Vegetation Index], the remote sensing technology, the AI tech for working out the carbon credits, and having 95% accuracy. So we use the AI tech from the onset so we have it from the onset and we can work the carbon credits just by remote sensing so that’s something which is relatively new.

“I’m proud to say that we are the Pioneers in this side of the carbon credit industry.”

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1. Here are the calculations:

Total CO₂ emissions divided by the project area gives CO₂ emissions avoided per hectare. Divide this figure by 3.67 to convert from tons of CO₂ to tons of carbon.