What is the name of your organization?
Solageo
What is the name of your solution?
Digitizing Climate Action
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
Digital Infrastructure for Carbon Avoidance and Carbon Removal Projects in Low-Resource Environments
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Hong Kong
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
Hong Kong SAR, China
What type of organization is your solution team?
Hybrid of for-profit and nonprofit
Film your elevator pitch.
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What specific problem are you solving?
In sub-Saharan Africa, a continent of over one billion people, as many as 90% of households in some places, still cook with highly polluting fuels such as charcoal and firewood. The CO2 emissions from polluting cookstoves globally is estimated to be as much as the entire airline industry plus those of fuel vehicles replaced by EVs. However, many of the places that are the source of carbon emissions are in low-resource environments with weak communications infrastructure making the transfer of carbon data a significant challenge and inhibiting the successful implementation of essential carbon management projects. Without the benefit of high quality carbon data, earning carbon credits that can lower the cost of carbon avoiding appliances like improved cookstoves and managing carbon projects would be difficult, if not impossible.
What is your solution?
Our solution provides the end-to-end digital infrastructure to implement and manage carbon avoidance or carbon removal projects in low-resource environments within developing regions of the world. Our solution enables effective carbon project management that can result in high-quality carbon credits that generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue which can lower the cost of carbon avoiding appliances for end-users, such as improved cookstoves, or lower the overall cost to implement carbon removal projects. Specifically, we have developed PCBs onto which all the essential IoT modules to remotely manage carbon projects can be integrated, including energy meters or sensors, as well as communication modules like 4G, but importantly LoRa transmitters and receivers to facilitate low-cost, long-range data transfer. The other component of the digital infrastructure is a unique Edge computing device developed in collaboration with our partner in Rwanda, ARED. Unlike most Edge devices that primarily facilitate data transfer, our Edge device has been enhanced with 1TB of solid-state storage, LoRa modules, 4G, and GPU plus NPU to integrate AI applications. Furthermore, utilizing a Linux-based Operating System, we can embed various applications to support carbon project management, including blockchain solutions to validate the carbon data.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
There are billions of people in developing regions of the world without access to electricity and who use polluting cookstoves or open fires to prepare their meals daily. These billions of people and the communities in which they reside could benefit from product solutions such as solar systems or improved cookstoves. Many of the potential beneficiaries, however, do not have the financial resources to acquire the solutions needed to improve their livelihoods. For stakeholders interested in supporting access to the solutions, accountability and traceability are important considerations. Our solution greatly lowers the cost to implement and manage carbon projects, significantly improves the quality of carbon and impact data collected thereby increasing the value of the carbon credits. By improving the monitoring, reporting and verification of the carbon data, all project stakeholders benefit. The beneficiaries would be the buyers of carbon credits, the managers of carbon exchanges, carbon project implementers and also the end-users of carbon avoiding or carbon capture solutions, as well as the communities in which they live.
