Revalue’s Mission: Making Carbon Credits Truly Count

0:00Welcome back to The Serial Entrepreneur, I'm your host Anna Wood. In today's episode, I'm joined by Stuart Rowland, the CEO and founder of Revalue. We discuss what a carbon credit is and what makes a good one, the work that Revalue is doing to create radically better carbon credits, and the real world impact that the company wants to demonstrate to the world. Let's dig in. How are you doing? I'm doing really well. Pleasure to be here. How are you? Yeah, I'm very good. Thank you. It's wonderful having you on the podcast today. So we begin every episode with our signature icebreaker question, which is what's your favorite breakfast cereal and why?

0:40Okay, good question. So this means a battle. By taste, a granola. Quite boring. But my secret, my guilty pleasure is Copepops. And that's because my... Okay, I have a coach for an India. I like learning. So if I had like a gym coach and I have a jiu-jitsu coach, I had a language teacher. And at some point, my... I have a gym coach. said to me that Coco Pops are actually really healthy, low sugar, clean carbs. Well, actually, no, he didn't say they're healthy. That was my takeaway, though. So he said they're actually not too bad, low sugar, clean carbs, all the rest of it. And in my head, as you see, I translated that to Coco Pops are a good thing and healthy, and I should eat more of them.

1:20So that's become my guilty pleasure. Well, now I've learned something that they're healthy, so now I don't have to feel bad when I'm eating. That's the message we're getting out to the world, right? Coco Pops. Exactly. Yeah, they're super chocolatey, but you know what? They're not too bad, so that basically means they're okay. So to begin, would you be able to introduce yourself and tell me a bit about your background? Yeah, of course. So I'm Stuart Rowland. I'm the founder of Revalue, which we'll get into. By background, though, I'm a physicist by studies, I guess. I'm a physics nerd. I'm actually quite a romantic physicist by background.

2:03I love it as a subject. I went from physics to startup number one 14 years ago now, something like that. Back when it was, was it Silicon Roundabout in London? That was the earliest of startup systems there. And I was part of Entrepreneur First's second cohort. Didn't exit a company for hundreds of millions. Otherwise, I wouldn't have joined McKinsey, which is where I went to next. and worked with McKinsey across Europe and North America on basically everything apart from sustainability, edtech, healthcare, finance, defense, telecom, you name it. And learned a lot, got to tackle some big, interesting problems, but it was never the thing for me.

2:47And off the back of a New Year's Eve party, funny enough, I ended up going from living in London to living in Indonesia three weeks later working in climate and tropical forests in nature and that was nearly a decade ago now that was about eight years ago and i'm still here so i'm based in indonesia i i live in the tropics i work in in in climate change and and yeah a few years ago founded revalued so i guess that's the yeah the shortish version wow going from it going to indonesia from london is a is a huge change it's a huge change i still remember the i still remember the flight coming into to jakarta yeah it's a it's a different universe but it's home for me now yeah amazing so what is revaluable and what is your core mission at the company yeah okay so what is revalued so at its core revalued focused on radically better carbon credits right so we focus on radically better carbon credits that value nature and where we're avoiding more nature loss we're avoiding more emissions going into the atmosphere we're reforesting we're regenerating nature and we're bringing emissions out of the atmosphere and we're storing them right we don't want we want carbon durably stored we don't want it going up so at a very very high level basically we value focus on how can we have scientifically rigorous radically better carbon credits that if you buy it or a corporate buys it you know this is at least one ton of real world impact that you can be super comfortable that's the case um so at the highest level that's what we that's what we do and that's what our core mission centers on great so what inspired you to start the company yeah so this this crept up on me over a number of years So as I say, eight years ago now, I moved to Indonesia to work in tropical forests.

4:43And it was with a fantastic company called Systemic. And one of the big things that the big central challenge we were working on was basically how on earth do you stop deforestation, especially across the tropics? And how do you then regenerate forests at scale? Like that was the central question. Because it's one of the saddest. the thing is when you talk about climate change and deforestation all the rest of it it gets very abstract it's just okay another five to ten gigatons of emissions have gone into the atmosphere from lots of it's very abstract but when you see it like when you fly over the island of borneo in indonesia or you fly into tanzania and then you see just this forest edge disappear more and more every year right you see this yeah it's destruction you see orangutans literally hanging out on the on the edge of the forest and then it's just palm oil for as far as i can see yeah it's not only the rational thing to to be focused on but it just it's hard not to it's not hard to feel about it so that was the question okay how on earth do you prevent this deforestation how do you regenerate forest and the it's that kind of simple problem it's like the problem's kind of simple in some ways why is forest being lost it's being lost because it's not valuable people want to make money why the governments allow big conversion of forests is to make money why do individuals why do communities and villages take down forest it's because they need cash they their daughter's wedding or their son has a hospital bill or whatever it may be they need money it's a it's a really simple problem very few people want to to to to take down forest so then the question becomes well how do you create value for nature that's the question and so basically i was focused on um i looked at i was directing an incubator what we had about 120 million of capital we were investing in all these different nature ventures so businesses that at their core they were looking to make forest valuable right and we looked at maybe 40 different business models all sorts of weird and wonderful things that we can go into but the one model the one model that had the chance to protect and regenerate forest and to do it at a scale that mattered for the planet was a carbon credit was the carbon credit market and i can go into um maybe that's one of the areas we'll go into what is a carbon credit what is this market what is this odd thing but it became clear this was the big opportunity it became clear that this thing was going to grow significantly and it's a massive opportunity but then the sad reality was when i looked at early carbon credits they weren't good enough it's the short version and when i say weren't good enough they were pioneering they did some things that have never been done before they made some big breakthroughs but if you to go into physicist headspace for a second if the homework question is is this carbon credit equivalent to one ton of real world impact i.e this carbon credit represents one ton of emissions that otherwise wouldn't be in the atmosphere were they living up to that no no they weren't and was it being recognized by those organizations that they weren't hitting the bar no did they have any plans to turn it around no and so this is where i realized that my old journey meant i was actually well suited to found a company to take this and not just do a little bit better not just not cheat or you know improve a little bit how do you create a whole new generation of credits that are radically better and we can trust right and the planet can trust so yeah that's the short version of the of the why yeah great so you kind of mentioned about wanting to talk about so what is a carbon credit and then what makes a good carbon credit too yeah okay so the highest level the highest level that the the the idea of a carbon credit in carbon market is actually kind of simple and it let me focus on nature for a second there's different times so let's focus on nature so the idea is this let's say you as an individual or you as an organization you want to you want to support emissions reductions you want to you want a way of reducing emissions from the atmosphere that you can't do yourself directly the idea is you by a carbon credit and a carbon credit equates to say one ton of emissions that haven't gone into the atmosphere has been removed from the atmosphere so okay the simplest example in the world is this let's say you've got an area that's totally degraded land there's there's completely degraded nothing's growing it's been like that for 15 years or more this thing is just it's just degraded right one way to produce a carbon credit is that you come in and a carbon developer will actively start reforesting that area so reforest and they'll regenerate nature and as nature grows it does this beautiful thing where it sequesters carbon from the atmosphere and it stores it.

9:44And then a carbon credit is the quantification of that real world impact. That's really what a carbon credit is at its core. It's a quantification of that real world impact. So let's say it's removed 100 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. Then that's 100 credits to slightly oversimplifying because that's basically how it works. So that's what a carbon credit is and then, well, who might want that? Well, let's say a corporate wants to has a net zero target so they want to get to the stage where their net emissions are zero and they're doing everything they can to reduce their emissions they're reducing all the emissions they can and there's some emissions that they can't they just can't reduce they're i don't know like um if you're an airline it's pretty hard to get to no emissions because it's kind of the nature of what you're doing so you reduce you reduce and there's some we call them residuals there's some emissions you can't reduce and so that's where you would buy carbon credits for example so that's the basics of it it's carbon credit is more than one ton at least a ton of co2 that's otherwise not in the atmosphere you can produce that from nature nature is beautiful at what it does and then you have buyers it can be individuals can be corporates they want to buy it and then the market is the market for it's people buying and trading these things and and yeah that's the does that make sense i'm so deep in the world that sometimes i forget what's obvious and what's not so if i say anything that's not like that's not obvious please just ask yeah no i think that was a good description of of a carbon credit so what do you think makes a good carbon credit okay okay so at its core it's actually very simple again what's a good carbon credit one that it is at least one ton of real equates to at least one ton of real world emissions impact that's the fundamental claim that's the claim on the tin if it's less than one ton it is not a good carbon credit that's just an objective bar it's at least one ton of real world emissions impact number two the other side of this is that you're not causing harm net harm so i think people would argue that it's probably not a good carbon credit but even if it's at least a ton of real world emissions that's good it's accurate but what you've done is you've gone and i don't know stolen land from communities and push them off it to make it happen it's probably not what you want behind your carbon credit right like any any supply chain you you know you might buy a great product but if you realize that you know people have been harmed in the making of the products you're probably not looking too favorably towards that product so that's in a nutshell what makes a good car well that's the in terms of claim that's what that's what that's what you want the carbon credit the how is a is an interesting question yeah great so how does revalue work what exactly are you doing at the company okay so we so we we do the following so revalue let's be really clear so revalue is not doing the reforestation or the protection of forests on the ground that's not what we do we work with the very best project operates on the ground across the world and we're very lucky with our partners carbon tanzania and tanzania they're just you couldn't wish for a better partner on the ground they're exceptional our partners in indonesia are also world-class a great track so we work with the very best on the ground they do what they do best that real world impact we value then does three things so one we quantify and catch that real world impact so really at the core of what we're doing is how do you get the most accurate quantification of that real world impact that's scientifically rigorous and capture that in a set of carbon credits?

13:21That's one. Two is then we go and secure financing for the project because these things are expensive. We're typically talking 5 million to 30 million of financing that's required to make these things a reality. It's not, you don't just turn up and start planting seeds. And then the third thing we do is we channel those credits to market. So those are the three big things that you do. Great. I saw on your website, but you have different models. Could you talk more about what they are? Yeah, very good. So, okay, so there's, I won't get into this first bit too much, but there's a bit of a debate in the world right now.

13:54And the debate in the carbon world goes as follows. Well, the narrative goes, avoidance credits are bad. So avoidance credits is avoiding deforestation. Removal's credits are good, so reforestation. And that's a false narrative. it comes because most of 99 % of the early carbon credits were all avoidance and as we said they were they were the first of their kind i don't know like the first car first car was a it was pioneering it was a breakthrough no one had done it before it was a marvel but at the same time the brakes were bad it had no airbags and kept crashing and breaking down and if it crashed you weren't in a good shape so they were pioneering but they weren't yet the first of their kind they weren't yet good enough the problem is that's become conflated with 99 % of the early carbon credits or avoidance they weren't good enough so avoidance is bad and removals is good okay so first thing revalue fundamentally believes is that is an incorrect narrative we should avoid and remove and then durably store carbon so we should do all three and our models we have one model for avoid we call that model r one model for remove we call that model v and one model for durably storing we call that n rvn it's how it comes together because we can do the all in one landscape rvn is a simple inside thing because we used to be called revalue nature and we shortened it to rvn so you bring these things together rvn so that's that's that's where our models come from how do you avoid remove and durably store and just to make it clear how because it might not be obvious the sad thing that's happening in the world right now is that because there's a misconception avoidance credits are bad but i and i don't know how if you saw the guardian headlines and these sorts of things no so what are the big no it's okay so it's really interesting right because I basically get two, there's always two reactions when it comes to talking about carbon credits.

15:38One reaction is, that's amazing. Obviously, we should be protecting and regenerating nature to produce these things and have it valued. The other reaction is, I read the Guardian headlines and aren't all carbon credits fraudulent and, you know, they're all hot air and all the rest of it. Right. And that's been actually really damaging in the market. Because people have said, well, let's stop buying these avoidance credits. But what we're saying, again, let's take it from the abstract and make it real. What we're saying is, let's let deforestation continue. So don't do the intervention on deforestation.

16:15We'll only focus on reforestation. But to give you an idea of how, let's make that real, how mad that is. It's like, yeah, imagine just this beautiful tropical forest. And then what you do is you can lose a huge area in a month. You just burn it down. Right, it just gets lost. it takes you 30 to 40 years to regenerate that same area again it would have cost you maybe ten dollars to protect it and it costs you six thousand dollars to regenerate it so it's like it's a classic like um short when if you just look at removals and you don't look at avoidance you're you're not resolving the um the cause right it'd be like a you're in a sinking ship and you've got water gushing in the big hole in the bottom you just hit an iceberg and you're on the ship and you're you're just with a bucket trying to get the water out that's what it looks like if you do removals only yeah so well let's first let's avoid more water coming in and let's remove it that's what we need to do with atmosphere so three models avoid remove and durably store and to start with the avoidance this is where we value said the following okay the world is historically avoidance credits weren't good enough they were pioneering they did breakthroughs but if we're taking the physicist objective look were they more than a ton on average no so revalues doing the following how do we just go well above and beyond what anyone else has done here before like how do we build avoidance credits that value nature that people didn't even imagine were possible like you couldn't even anyone in this world is like I hadn't even pictured that was a that was a now you could do that and to give you a flavor of of what we mean there and maybe there's a link we can we can put here but for example we've got the most accurate biomass but like the first things first is do you understand how much carbon are in these forests it's actually a really hard prop you know problem to solve how do you know how much carbon is in a forest the size of Scotland it's kind of hard yeah really hard so we're using that's we're using cutting edge technology we're using what's called lidar it basically uses lasers so we're using drones that are firing out lasers more than 500 000 pulses a second and those lasers are bouncing off the forests and we're creating a complete three-dimensional reconstruction of these forests down to like a sub six millimeter resolution so if again podcasts we're talking to each other it's kind of like i want to show you this right and i can show you the link but you can see a complete three-dimensional reconstruction of a forest it's except like it's mind-blowing it look we've had comments like it looks like avatar it's you can just see that when you look at you see the accuracy that we're going to this wasn't possible even two years ago doing what we're doing today is completely groundbreaking so it's things like that so you know we've got the most accurate measurements of the carbon on the ground then we're deploying things now here's where i'm going to try not to get too i'm going to try not to get too technical and pull me up at any point but basically there's one of the interesting questions for avoidance credits is how do you know what would have happened for that to that area if you hadn't intervened so how do you know that nature would have been lost how do you how do you predict the future how can you forecast what would have happened how do you know your intervention actually had that real world impact and protected that forest well fortunately it's a hard question but it's a question that's been solved in different sectors outside of carbon so we have a similar question when we're doing pharmaceutical trials so how do you know that this drug is actually having an impact on you you weren't feeling well you took the drug you felt better afterwards fantastic or was that the drug or were you going to feel better anyway right yeah um there's a new you know that's actually the perfect example actually you weren't feeling well you took the drug you felt better was it the drug or not um in statistics it's called a causal inference problem no need to get into it but basically that's where you use control groups so that's where you have a load of people that are sick and don't take the drug people do take the drug and then you compare the difference between the groups i'm oversimplifying but basically we're taking the very best scientifically rigorous it's called synthetic controls from dynamic baselines it does not matter what that means.

20:34The basic point is it's the most scientifically rigorous way of measuring this. I won't go into any more technical details there. A couple of the final things we're doing, this next one's more easy, is sometimes the simplest things are the best. So we've got these cutting edge lasers to measure the biomass. We're using these synthetic controls, basically taking the best of the best of statistical rigor from pharmaceutical industries and other areas that have really got this right. sometimes the simplest is the best so today a carbon credit is always meant to be called one ton of carbon so you buy a carbon credit it's meant to equal one ton but the question we've asked is does it have to equal one ton is that actually what's critical and we think the answer is no what's critical is that it's not less than one ton that's actually what you care about like i want to know if i buy this it's not less than one ton i don't know it's probably a bad example but if you're buying 18 carat gold, I don't know anything about gold, by the way, so I'm going to say something that just reveals that completely.

21:37If you're buying 18 carats, if you've got fewer carats, you'd be annoyed. If you've got more carats, you'd probably be like, oh, great. Yeah. It's not a bad thing. I'm not going to complain about this. So the simplest thing we do is we say, we'll make a carbon credit 1.2 tons. We'll give you more real world impact. So we do all the cutting edge science, all the rigor, all the statistical rigor. And then on top, we say we'll make a credit more than one ton, 1.2 tons. So you can be really comfortable. but now you're starting to see one of the challenges right because it gets to the surface level it's pretty simple to articulate a carbon credit but to go one step below to get into the methods now we're talking this is real scientific stuff this is data science this is ecology this is forestry it's it's hard to always connect people to it and show them and have them understand it so one of the things that we've done recently that I'm really excited about and then I'll pause because I don't want to monologue at you is the best thing I could do right now is I could take you to our project in Tanzania.

22:38But wait, I say our project is not our project, our partner's project that we pay off from the credit. Best thing I could do is take you there. Then you could see it. You could be in this beautiful Miambo woodlands. You could see the hippos and the elephants. You could see you'd drive past, you'd see the forest loss. You could talk to the communities and they'd tell you why they were you know deforesting and you can talk to the communities that we're working with and they'll tell you why that cash they get from the carbon credits has stopped them deforesting right and why it's critical so the best thing i could do is take you there but i can't so what we're doing the nearest we can get to is we went there and we did full filming and virtual reality so we'll be able to put an apple vision pro headset on your head and you'll suddenly be in Tanzania and we're going to be able to show you because you'll be there basically it'll feel like you're there in the moment you'll be able to show you the forest we'll be able to show you the deforestation you'll be able to talk to the communities and well you won't be able to talk to them but the communities will be talking to you and telling you what they you know what they're doing and and how they feel about the carbon project that's got nothing to the credit but it makes it real and it connects people to it and it says we're not hiding anything we want to take you and show you this stuff right because this is the most impactful thing we could possibly do yeah so yeah that gets a flavor i've just touched on avoided that gets a flavor of some of the things that we that we do yeah i think also that transparency what you said about the guardian headlines about how carbon credits are essentially useless things like that that transparency that you have really shows that that is what's happening there is true real world impact behind them and it's not and you have the science behind it and you're saying that there's 1.2 tons not just one that might not be one so i think what you're doing there is a lot of kind of proof that okay you might think that about carbon credit but we're doing this and this and this to prove it yeah we want to show you and don't just trust us we're gonna these rate their rating station system we want them to look at our work look at it independently there's top academics that are staring at us we're collaborating with them yeah we want them to stare so don't just take our word for it take the word of others that are pressure testing everything we're doing so yeah it's a fundamental part of it but the best thing we can do is just show you and so the beautiful thing about combining avoid remove and durably store and you know you'll be able to visualize it you'll be able to see a landscape which lost forest every year for decades then if we're successful you'll see that forest slow down from space you'll see that forest loss slow down from space and then you'll see it regenerate from space you'll see the world getting greener in that area and that's the that's the ultimate proof point that you can see it yeah how do you pick your project partners oh good question so that partnership is like a marriage because it is a project lasts well in our eyes a project never finishes people think of it as like a 30 to 40 year thing we see it as 30 to 40 years it's just the starting point right put it this way it's decades right i will have died and these projects should still be going on that's the whole this goes beyond this is a multi-generational thing yeah so it's like a marriage and and so hopefully that that makes it clear the kind of things we we look for in some ways we need a partner we can trust right we have a we need a partner that shares the same values with us it can't be someone that wants to take shortcuts it can't be someone that's willing to you know do slightly the wrong thing because it's quicker or cheaper or faster and frankly we only work with who we consider to be the best in the world and what they do because this is hard so are you the best in the world at what you do protecting and regenerating forests and working with communities and in difficult nuanced jurisdictions and have you got a track record so those are some of the things that we that we look for great so as regulations around carbon markets evolve how do you stay ahead of policy changes so it is difficult it is difficult so the okay ahead is the head is the trickiest thing typically the best way we stay ahead is that just being in or knowing people that are in the conversations that are going on so we need to know people that have a seat at the table basically yeah so then we get a sense you can never guarantee it but we get a sense of the direction of travel and the conversation so that's how we we get a sense of it but uh it is not an uncomplicated thing and so it's taken honestly i've been obsessed with this for about seven days a week for eight years others for even longer in the team and even now i'm looking at stuff and going oh i didn't know that oh that was a blind spot for me i hadn't understood that oh what's i should have known that so yeah i don't want to give the impression that we know everything because we certainly don't but we do our best to i think we have a pretty as understanding system goes we have a pretty good viewpoint of it yeah great so kind of leading on from that on what you said about kind of constantly learning and figuring things out what challenges have you faced on the journey so far and how have you managed to overcome them i mean a lot right because so if you okay if you want to pick up a load of hard things and put them all together starting up a company building a new company startup not easy working on a business that values nature and is working in the carbon market especially when the carbon markets have these headwinds at the moment not easy working on projects across the tropics and across the globe not easy so basically what I'm saying is I think I've basically picked one of the hardest things I could have picked to do but i love it yeah i love it but yeah it's come with a ton of challenges i mean big and small right one of the most interesting potentially is and something that i was naive to is just how much resistance there beats are trying to improve these things and i think i was naive here and again i think this is something that i've come i've come to understand more about myself recently but that that the reason i probably i was going to say because i'm a physicist probably the reason i studied physics originally comes from this okay there's three there's three deep there's you'll see i'm going with this but there's three deep things in my personality that i think come through and help with the company and then i'll that'll reveal also the naivety so one is i i just i want to understand how something works like do i actually understand something that's the reason i want to study physics can i understand the universe the answer is no i came out of studying physics at oxford for three years and i realized i'd that I knew less.

29:50When you realize how much there is to know, you feel like you learned less than you came in with, right? But I want to deeply understand something and I obsess about it. Someone says, oh, it's because of, you know, expert says X. That's why. Doesn't work for me. No, I want to understand. So how do I obsess and understand something? That's always one part of my personality. The next question is then always, well, just, is it correct what I'm hearing? And I've never been hierarchical. So it could be, you know, the world's greatest expert says X is right and if I'm looking at it and I'm thinking it doesn't seem correct to me it's not that I'm saying I'm right there's there's that I'm not being that having that amount of hubris but I'm going hang on a minute my brain will go I need to keep asking questions to understand this doesn't seem right to me what am I missing what am I missing what am I missing and if it's not right it's not right until I can work it out right so either I'm missing something or that thing's not right and then the last part of my personality is well why can't we make it better it's always been that well why can't we and i'm not very good at taking because it's hard because it's difficult or it's not well is it possible and why can't we just make it happen so i took that i mean i think that's actually the reason i ended up founding revalu right because i looked at these credits studied them went well this i think i'm trying to deep down i don't think it's good enough i'm being told it is but i don't think it is and then why can't we make this better why can't we just take a fundamental leap into the future and make something better here and my naivety was but of course people will want this of course when when you go hey guys the way we've been measuring carbon in forests has been excellent for the last few decades but now we have technology that means we can all those limitations not all of them but most of these limitations we can overcome and it's easier faster more accurate in my mind of course we should do that but actually it gets lots of resistance um and that was that's one of the most interesting challenges because you find yourself in a system with lots of experts who by the way are extremely intelligent and very thoughtful and in it for the right reasons but for a number of whatever it may be aren't immediately saying of course that's what we should do there's there's a lot of natural inbuilt resistance for various reasons not not for negative reasons but that's been one of the biggest challenges yeah i feel like i talked to a lot of founders and not just kind of in the sustainability space but also in a lot of kind of like legacy industries such as also finance and in kind of med tech and even they have the same thing where what they're doing people say this is so good but then when it comes to adopting it or considering having something better than what they're doing it's like oh it might take a couple years to even consider that let alone implement something like that i think a lot of industries see startups working in the space and they're like wow what you're doing so great but maybe not right now yeah exactly maybe not and it's and it's fascinating right because it comes i mean it's for a number of reasons and again it's not necessarily bad some of it's i mean this space you've been trained on methods for decades this is that this is this how it's done this how it's done this has done that is what you're taught and a lot of the breakthroughs come from completely outside the space you know the the our for example our machine learning our artificial intelligence team they are taking completely radical breakthroughs on the cutting edge of ai and they're coming and applying it to the carbon space and it's an expertise that those that have been in the space for decades don't have because that's obviously not what they were trained on and so it's hard to understand it at first it's also hard to understand is it just hype because you do get a lot of companies that come in and they're just doing stuff there's not anything real behind it there's an ai that and and i get it there's a there's a natural like there's a natural like you're just this is just hype and it's not real i think there's probably and it's very human and i'll suffer from it as well there's probably a bit of like a hymn if that's where the future's going that's not what i do or not what i do so i think that maybe that's conscious or unconscious i don't know it's human i'll have that but there's definitely there can definitely be a bit of that but here's the problem we're in a climate crisis we actually don't have time to wait around right it's we way behind all our climate targets we're losing nature at a terrifying rate we are i mean that we're talking about carbon and and climate right now but we're going through biodiversity collapse the am i gonna get this right sixth mass extinction event right now the last one was the loss of the dinosaurs we're going through a mass extinction event it's a crisis it's it's it's we have to move forward now fast crisis mode and the world's not good at that on the climate side because ukraine and russia is clearly a crisis and corona's virus is clearly a crisis but this doesn't touch us every day immediately even though we need to take crisis action now to be able to prevent it so it's two different speeds and yeah and carbon credits to say this is the chance to be able to protect and regenerate nature of scale like i can't see if i if i could see a better option i would i'd be following that if i thought the goal was we'll just get governments to to agree to this and they all protect and regenerate their forests well i mean i think we will see what's going on in the world right now i don't know if if you have more confidence that's going to happen than me but i'm let's say a little bit cynical so this is the chance it's a crisis we have to act now and we have to see reality are these carbon credits good enough are most of them good enough they're they're not is the idea good enough is it possible absolutely are the projects on the ground great enough yeah the projects on the ground are having amazing impact the problem is the credit we're over we're misrepresenting the real world impact so i always come at this yes it's going to be painful to we don't yeah i'm always careful with the word disrupts because i think it's thrown around but yeah because that's not the intention but we obviously need to do better now and um we don't really have time to wait around and this is we're not successful if it's just revalued but the way so our attitude is not the following our attitude is not well this is just for revalued to be successful at and no one else it's the opposite we like we want to partner we want to collaborate we want others to copy we want to work with others because we want the whole world to come up to the standard and and keep improving and do it now so yeah it's kind of crazy one hand climate crisis speeds needed we have to breakthroughs on the other hand it's slow and it takes a long time for people to come along and there's some something here in the middle yeah yeah hopefully the transparency that you have as a company to really show the impact that's happening hopefully that gets people more on side and actually sees okay this is this is working because i think to a lot of people they move slow because they're like i want to i want to know there is impact before we even consider this as an option 100 let's see it first so part of our goal is let's demonstrate it because it's not as much as you know no one's going to just listen to me let's be clear if stewart standing here saying hey objectively this method is a better at this than this method and here's the way to create fundamentally like scientifically rigorous credits no one's going to listen to me yeah so what's the best thing we can do let's demonstrate it and let's show it works and that's the point where we hope people go oh yes of course that's what it should have looked like okay it's possible let's do it as well yeah great so kind of on the flip side of the challenges and the doom and gloom of what's going on in the world what would you say have been the highlights on your journey so far so okay so for me i think it's it's two things the first is the first honestly okay here's the thing that gets me when i see some of those talented people like really that some of those talented people in the world just that are the best at what they do and they have found a place in revalue where they are they feel like they've got their dream role and I'm just watching them do things that astound me and they love it and it's not easy but they love it and they're like this is what I want to be doing for me that's that's everything because that's what we need for this to be so yeah that that's the thing that gets me every time those moments yeah and then the other highlight is always just being out there not it's not just about being in nature that's the thing that makes it real but when you see when you get out there and actually see the reality on the ground and the impact both ways when you see the forest being lost and it's being burnt and then you see the opposite then you go okay that's why like this is why we're doing the long hours and the hard work and you know collecting the scar tissue along the way that you always collect yeah this is this is why we're doing it.

39:13So yeah, those are always the highlights for me. Amazing. And what would you say has been the most valuable lesson that you've learned while starting a company? Obviously, you said you'd started a different company before this one. What would you say have been the most valuable lesson that you have learned during your whole entrepreneurial journey? Yeah. So, okay. I don't even count company number one because it didn't get far enough for me to count it. So yes, it just got up. Yes. Did I get far enough for me to count it? there are startups and then there are startups so i'm i'm i'm not even going to count it okay so here's another area that i think i was naive and maybe over corrected a bit so what i didn't want to do was the following what i didn't want to do is found revalue and then come out and shout to the world hey this is what radically better carbon credits look like we're doing high quality high integrity it's all these you hear all these buzzwords now you know and not have anything behind it that felt wrong to me because it's too important to come out and hype up something that's not real like i didn't want to do a hype thing yeah i wanted to bring the world's best talent in and and fundamentally work out how you get this right and demonstrate it and demonstrate the best partners we could possibly demonstrate it with and then once we've shown it come out into the world and say okay this is what we think it looks like and we'll we'll show it come look like we'll we'll we'll prove this so that i think was right in some ways but wrong in others because we didn't talk we didn't come out to that we weren't talking enough right we were just in stealth mode but for too long yeah and now i'm playing catch up for that over correction i mean i think i think net net and glad i went i've come out later than earlier but if I if I came if I came back and told me something at the start so just start actually communicating about this earlier yeah great so to wrap up the podcast episode what is next for yourself and the companies and what goals do you have for 2025 yeah okay so three big things one this year we're coming out with again what we consider to be radically better avoidance credits so this avoidance credits where we think people go oh we hadn't even imagined this was possible right avoidance credits where those those same academics that i think quite rightly criticized early carbon credits they for the right reasons we hope they look at it and go okay this is actually what scientifically rigorous approaches look like and this is what it should have should be like so that's one right second is again three models avoid removing jewelry store but the beautiful thing is taking a landscape and being able to slow and sort of deforestation and then regenerate that forest and you're going to start to see that from us and our partners at scale like we're talking when we say scale we mean you know it makes new york city look small it's when that level of you know reforestation and yeah and avoidance and then the last bit and this is something i'm particularly excited about there's a new type of carbon credit that's been emerging over the last few years and typically it's called engineered.

42:33It's an engineered solution typically. And what does that mean? In short, it means how do you store carbon in a form that's going to stay there for more than a thousand years? Because nature is not the problem. Nature is good at keeping carbon in the ground. It's humans that come along and mess it up. So really there's forms of engineered storing that are human proof. That's really what it is. How do you get carbon in a form that's human proof? And that's an emerging space that's really exciting in the carbon world. Really great credits, by the way, a lot of them. Not all of them, but a lot of them.

43:11But none of them value nature or our natural ecosystems. One of the best credits out there is it takes a big fan in Iceland to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere through this big fan and it stores it deep underground. Amazing, great carbon credit. Go buy it. It'll cost you$1 ,000, by the way, for a ton, which is very expensive, but they're great carbon credits. but it does not value nature and natural ecosystems. And as I say, we sit in a climate crisis, but we're also going through biodiversity collapse. So Revalue is the first and only company in the world that's focused on how do you create durable carbon credits?

43:42So it stores carbon for more than a thousand years and humans can't mess it back up. That values nature and natural ecosystems. And that I'm really excited about. That we've really been building in stealth mode and that's one of the big things we'll be coming out with later this year. So those are three of the big things for me. Amazing. Well, it'll be really exciting to see what you guys get up to in 2025. Really appreciate it. Really appreciate it. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, Stuart. It's been amazing listening to you kind of discuss carbon credits. I feel like I've come away from today learning so much.

44:18No, it's been a pleasure. I mean, I hope I haven't rambled on too much. I hope it's been like fairly understandable to an extent. It's always trying to get a balance of this stuff and I get too excited by this because this is, I say this is my whole world. This is what I chat about. It's been amazing. I have really enjoyed that and I really hope our listeners enjoy it too. Yeah, me too. I really appreciate it. And if any of them have any questions, find a way to reach out. I'd happily get into any of this. And yeah, this is what we need to do for the planet. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and I hope to speak to you again soon.

44:56Me too. It's been a real pleasure. Thanks for advising me on. Thank you. Bye. Speak soon.