Low-cost MRV for rice

Rice farming accounts for 1.5% of global anthropogenic emissions, through methane emissions (gas 86xmore potent than CO2).

The technology to mitigate these emissions by 50% are already available and are relatively simple.

Measuring CO2e emissions in a field by field level is labor intense, expensive and as a consequence, not widely adopted. 

Currently, specialized scientists go physically to the fields to collect samples manually, extract gases with a syringe and they take it to a lab to work with a chromatographer, analyze the data and issue a report.

This makes that carbon credits developed through sustainable rice projects are not reliable (because impact can’t be measured in a big scale) and have low market value (<2USD/ton CO2e). Therefore, the incentives to implement sustainable rice projects are low and not a fraction of the production implements it.

Rice covers 11% of the world's arable land and is responsible for 10.1% of total agricultural emissions and approximately 1.3%–1.8% of global anthropogenic GHG emissions (FAO, 2021; Meijide et al., 2016). These GHG emissions are mainly caused by methane emissions from rice cultivation (EPA., 2006). Global annual methane emissions from rice fields were estimated to be between 25 and 100 Tg (Teragram or million tons), contributing 48% of total GHG emissions in global croplands (Carlson et al., 2017; Crutzen, 1991). GHG emissions (non-CO2) are greater in rice production systems than in other cereal cropping systems 

Ecovision's systems allow to measure CO2e emissions in paddy fields, in a remote, simple and economic way, enabling big rice corporations to monetize their carbon mitigation strategies.

We provide the hardware (automatic chambers equipped with CO2 and CH4 sensors) and the data pipeline through IoT to present the data in a clear way to our clients or third party institutions.

Data pipeline is attached below:Overview of RICE Monitoring Dashboard.mp4

In the future, we will add a layer of satelite information to our existing system.

Our hardware, initially designed for rice plantation harsh conditions, can be deployed on landfills, hydro power plants or other methane/CO2 polluters.

Ecovision monitors GHG emissions in rice plantations, enabling big rice corporations to attest their carbon mitigation strategies. This allows them to reduce their scope 3 emissions, sell at prime, improve market access and align the business with evolving consumer and regulatory expectations.

For international organizations developing carbon mitigation projects, Ecovision’s system allows them to verify the results of sustainable rice projects in a reliable way with concrete measurements and computations from the field, unlocking additional funding for their projects.

Our solution will provide incentives to mitigate rice emissions in a fast way, benefiting the entire world.

In addition to that, rice farmers (currently living under harsh conditions) will increase their revenue and quality of living, by benefiting for higher prices of carbon credits. 

Franco, CEO, second time entrepreneur, always within sustainability. Former Country Manager of a multinational company managing 120 employees and a turnover of 10mUSD/year and regional Business Development Director. Resident in Brazil.

James, CTO, second time entrepreneur. Mechanical and Automation System Engineer. Chamption of 5º IMechE Greater China Design Competition and participant in Agrifuture, group of research focusing in Agtech solutions. Resident in Hong Kong

Matias Benedetto, CIO, data scientist. Civil Engineer, Mathematician and Post-Doc in Numerical Analysis from Queensland University. Resident in Barcelona.

Mara Grohs, R&D Advisor, Agricultural Engineer with masters in rice plantations and PhD on soils and sustainable rice. Currently working as a technician in the Rio Grande Rice Institute (Brazil)

The multicultural team complements each other in the areas of expertise to move forward with the project. 

We have design our automatic chamber and tested it with all the sensors in it (water level, CO2, CH4, Pressure, Humidity, Weather station and communication).

Please see presentation:

Ecovision Commercial Presentation 20240319.pdf

We have a Letter of Intent (LOI) with the second biggest rice producer in the world to deploy our first pilot project in Thailand in August 2024.

We understand that rice emissions need to be mitigated through joint-action of several stakeholders.

Environmentalists need to inform consumers of the impact of rice production in climate change (not a commonly discussed issue) and consumers need to push for demand of sustainable rice production, to reduce emissions and to improve the conditions of millions of farmers.

Ecovision teams need to connect deeply with all stakeholders of the ecosystem, including verification entities (Verra, Gold Standard, etc) and being related to an MIT program will give us the right credentials.

Plus we want to be fully connected to sustainability experts, in order to expand our solution to different regions all around the world.

It's the first low cost & automatic MRV system for rice. A wide adoption of our solution will redefine the standards of carbon projects in the rice industry, creating a possitive impact on the credibility of carbon projects in rice and increasing the carbon credit price in this industry.

First of all, we intend to instruct the public about the current problems in rice production and the heavy impact in climate change (~1.5%). 

Secondly, the wide adoption of Ecovision's systems will guarantee the quality of the carbon mitigation projects in rice, redifining the standards (Verra is currently reviewing their protocol for rice). 

Our pilot project has defined KPI's, mainly linked to user experience, functionality and human intervention of the system. 

Company indicators are linked to number of sustainable rice projects impacted and the tons of CO2e mitigated from them, appropriating a part of it to our enabling technology.

IoT, Automation, Data Science, Cloud Services, Digitalization of the field and smart design. All this, powered by relatively low-cost non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) sensors. In the future, we will incorporate machine learning for radar satellite info processing.

Measurement of emissions in rice has been done since the 80’s in a relatively old fashioned-way:

Scientists are going in person to the field (sometimes 100km away from the universities and research institutes), they install a chamber that isolates the emissions of the plant, they insert a syringe, extract the gases and send the sample to a laboratory (expensive equipment). Our system does all this, automatically, on the field directly, with no human intervention. This allows lower cost, scalability and more measurements (since it’s not labor intense).

We've tested in our facility in HONG KONG, get the readings in order and before 5th May we will have it deployed in the field.

We are integrating existing sensors from the industry, which we calibrated in a lab.

2 full time entrepreneurs (CEO and CTO)

1 part time entrepreneur (CIO, working 4hs/day+weekends)

1 advisor, working 100% on sustainable rice and partially in the company.

Less than 1 year. 

It all started in July 2023, where a big rice corporation issued a challange-competition for this purpose. We created the company around it, with the best team for it.

And we are progressing fast, having a grant commited from Enterprise Singapore and a LOI for the paid pilot deployment on site with the second biggest rice trader in the world.

Our team is global, with team members in China, Brazil and Spain, from 3 nationalities (China, Argentina and Brazil).

Team has very different cultural backgrounds and expertises, making a great mixture for the global challange that rice industry is.

B2B, direct sales + monthly fee.

Revenue model: We currently sell the hardware with margins of 40% and charge a monthly fee for the data analysis and access to the information.

The pricing of our system is done via a “cost plus” analysis. Today we are selling 1 chamber at 10% of the current market price of similar systems.

Our current business model, delivering hardware, allow us to access to immediate revenue. First year of operation expected to be in 80kUSD with 40% gross margin and LOI for 30kUSD in hands. 

This model also allow us to gather data from the field (bottleneck of the industry nowadays).

We have a grant commited from Enterprise Singapore for aprox 30kUSD.

We had the opportunity to raise 100kUSD from CARBON13 (ASA/SAFE), but we rejected it because it was a requirement to have the HQ in the UK (we preferred Singapore, which is closer to our main market). 

Currently boostrapping with founders funds.