Plantee’s reason for being is to accelerate the global transition to a much more sustainable and robust food system that is Plant-Based in order to combat Climate Change.
What does food have to do with Climate Change?
It’s to do with land use. Approximately 3/4 of the world’s land is habitable. The remaining quarter is considered uninhabitable because it’s either covered in ice or is a desert. Of this use-able land, about 1/2 is used for agriculture.
80% of this agricultural land is used for rearing livestock. Vast swathes of land are required to both grow crops for animal feed and to provide land for these animals to graze.
One would expect that with the colossal amount of land used, we would be able to produce a proportionate amount of the world’s calories but this is far from the case.
Just take a look at the chart below. 80% of the land used to sustain livestock produces only 17% of the global calorie supply. On the flip side, only 16% of the remaining agricultural land is used to generate an inordinate 83% of the global calorie supply in the form of plant-based foods.
Society tends to equate protein with meat so this may come as a surprise to some because about 2/3 of the world gets their protein supply from plant-based sources.
We are wasting a lot of land to produce inefficient protein. Meat demand is on the rise and as a result more and more land will need to be cleared. Animal farming is the leading cause of rainforest deforestation and the single largest driver of habitat loss in general. In the Brazilian Amazon cattle ranching is reportedly responsible for 80% of rainforest loss[1]. An investigation in 2019 showed that fires in the Amazon were three times more common in areas where there is cattle ranching.
Okay so now we know how inefficient animal agriculture is in terms of land use but it’s also tremendously wasteful when it comes to water use. With Climate Change we are expected to face challenges with regards to both food and water security so we simply cannot afford to throw precious resources away.
The rate of deforestation is likely to continue growing. Meat production has doubled in 30 years from 1988 to 2018 and increased by 4x since the mid 1960s. By 2050, global meat consumption is projected to reach between 460 and 570 million tons[2].
Why we need to avoid further deforestation.
What have our forests been doing for us all this time? And why should we protect and preserve them? It might be safe to assume that most know the answers to these questions but just in case, we should probably cover all the bases quickly.
Forests play a crucial role in sequestering carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), forests absorb and store approximately 2.4 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent annually, which is about 1/3 of the total CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning and land use changes.
If not for this effect, we would have likely felt the negative impacts of Climate Change much sooner and be in very deep trouble by now with A LOT more GHG (Greenhouse Gases) in the atmosphere. “Oh hi there Runaway Climate Change, we weren’t expecting you so soon”.
Plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere through tiny openings present on the epidermis of leaves called stomata. They then harness the power of the sun through photosynthesis to convert the CO2 into glucose. This glucose is then stored in the plant’s biomass (the body of the plant). Some carbon is also stored in the soil through the plant’s roots.
When forests are cut down or burned, the stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere. What was once a carbon sink turns into an emission. Deforestation wipes out entire ecosystems and with that comes the massive loss of biodiversity but “What role does biodiversity play in the fight against Climate Change?” I hear you say?
Here are some quickfire reasons why biodiversity is important and yes, they’re not particularly obvious:
Adaptation to climate change: Biodiverse ecosystems are better equipped to adapt to climate change, maintaining their carbon sequestration potential.
Species Complementarity: Different species have unique carbon sequestration strategies, enhancing overall ecosystem carbon storage
Nutrient cycling: Biodiverse ecosystems have efficient nutrient cycling, promoting healthy plant growth and carbon sequestration.
Soil health: Diverse plant communities improve soil health, increasing carbon storage in the soil itself.
Ecological interactions: Complex ecological interactions in diverse ecosystems enhance carbon sequestration through processes like symbiotic relationships and predator-prey dynamics.
Genetic diversity: Genetic diversity within species ensures that some individuals can adapt to changing conditions, maintaining ecosystem function and carbon sequestration.
Ecosystem services: Biodiverse ecosystems provide additional ecosystem services like air and water filtration, supporting overall ecosystem health and carbon sequestration.
Preventing deforestation is really key as it has a compound effect - not only does it prevent further emissions but it also helps to maintain the land’s carbon sequestration capabilities whilst protecting the land from Climate Change itself.
Are Carbon Credits the answer?
The main point of carbon credits is to incentivize reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Companies or individuals can then offset their own emissions by purchasing credits from projects that reduce, avoid or remove GHG emissions elsewhere.
However carbon credits can nullify “Cognitive Dissonance”, a psychological phenomenon where individuals experience discomfort when their beliefs or values conflict with their behaviour. Here we have environmentally conscious consumers purchasing carbon credits to offset high-carbon activities such as frequent flying. This can effectively reduce the guilt felt by a consumer to a point lower than it would’ve been if carbon credits were not available.
If the offset of the carbon credit is at all over reported, this can very quickly lead to increased high-carbon activities, the very opposite of the original intent!
Experts suggest that we can start overcoming Cognitive Dissonance by acknowledging and accepting that it exists followed by taking concrete steps to reduce emissions - more on this later as this is really what Plantee is all about at its heart.
Some carbon credits come from “Direct Air Capture” projects, a technological approach where massive machines suck carbon directly out of the air. These are theoretically the most accurate type of carbon offsetting but also the most expensive and barely exist at commercial scale. These being “too expensive” reflect what carbon credit consumers value at this point in time. They value affordability over accuracy. Interestingly once the offset buyer is aware that accuracy is lacking, they are again faced with a familiar choice - do I change my belief or do I change my actions. For this dissonance to be neutralised, belief and actions must align.
Therefore in order for a solution to really gain traction, it needs to be as affordable as possible whilst being “accurate enough” and this leaves us with a particular type of offsetting project.
What are “Avoided Emissions Offsets”?
Avoided emissions offsets are a type of carbon offset that represents the reduction of GHG emissions that would have occurred if a specific project or activity had not been implemented.
“Improved Cookstove Carbon Projects” in developing countries are a good example of this. These projects involve introducing and promoting the use of advanced clean cookstoves to replace traditional cooking methods that burn solid fuels, contributing to deforestation, air pollution, and health issues.
The thermal efficiency of these improved cookstoves is much greater than the status quo and therefore uses much less biofuel, reducing CO2 emissions significantly. The reduced emissions are quantified into carbon credits which can then be sold on the market.
Efficiency DIfferentials = Potential Offsets
Upgrading from the standard cookstove to an advanced clean cookstove represents a thermal efficiency gain from 10% to 75%. This efficiency differential of 65% can then be used to determine that a household equipped with an advanced cookstove can help eliminate 1.5-4 tonnes of carbon emissions per year. That’s equivalent to the carbon footprint of flying from Singapore to New York 5 times per year.
Similarly upgrading from the standard omnivorous diet to a high efficiency plant-based diet represents a tremendous land-use efficiency gain.
If we used all the agricultural land available to us at present for growing crops only (no livestock/meat production etc), we would be able to provide for 518.75% of the global calorie supply. In essence instead of feeding billions of farmed animals, we could just feed 5x our current human population.
This efficiency differential really gives a sense of the potential scale of what the max offset could look like. The goal of course is not to feed more humans but to sustain the same current population of humans but at a fraction of the land use cost thereby reducing co2 emissions and deforestation in a meaningful way.
The global farmland used can be reduced by 75%[3] and that land can be freed up for rewilding and so on. To give you a visual idea of the scale of the opportunity, the amount of saved land is equivalent in size to China, Australia, the USA and the entire European Union combined.
However, food is a touchy subject as one’s diet can represent their identity and culture. Very few are able to simply change their diet overnight and stick to it indefinitely. Permanent lifestyle changes like this create too much friction. With that in mind, going from the standard diet to a “Flexitarian”diet is much more realistic for most people. The idea behind Plantee is to incentivise people to go plant-based one meal at a time.
The Plantee Credit - The Diet-based Offset
Everytime someone verifiably consumes a plant-based meal, a “Plantee Credit” is created that represents a certain mass of CO2 being saved from that action. The question is how do we approximate how much co2 is being saved from one meal?
Someone who is 100% “Plantee” (equivalent to a Vegan) saves about 125 - 360 kg CO2 per month - of course this stat depends on what study you look at and this explains the large variance. The conservative offset estimate created by this one meal is approximately 1.4 kg CO2 per meal assuming 3 meals per day and a 30 day month.
This 1.4kg CO2 offset can then be sold onto the carbon credit market to finance the incentive. Assuming the carbon footprint of flying from Singapore to New York via Economy Class one-way is 400 KG per passenger, it would take 288 Plantee Credits/meals to completely offset this long haul flight.
What makes for a high quality Carbon Credit?
A Carbon Credit is a way to outsource your GHG emission reductions by purchasing it. But in order for this to work, there must not be any net increases in emissions in this transaction.
Say for example you are about to offset 100 kg of emissions so you purchase 100 kg of carbon credits. In a perfect world, this environmentally conscious person would have successfully managed to not increase his or her net emissions.
However all this hinges on information that only the carbon credit supplier has, namely how was the reduction calculated? What was the baseline and the new setpoint from which the reduction was calculated.
The higher the degree of confidence one has in the numbers, the higher quality the carbon credit is. A lot of projects fall short because they are lacking in a few requirements that would bolster confidence.
Additionality
If a project is “additional”, it means that the reduction would not have happened if not for the financial incentive provided by carbon credit sales. In other words, a project lacks additionality if the Carbon credits sold for a project protected land that was never at risk from deforestation in the first place. The land would’ve been safe from deforestation even with zero financial incentive.
In Plantee’s dietary context, the degree of additionality whilst not perfect is pretty good because less than 5% of the world population is vegan (a very conservative number).
From a deforestation point of view, the Plantee effect is all about protecting land that would have otherwise been deforested to produce meat products. Protected land such as a nature reserve is not in the equation as it should be.
Leakage
A nature protection scheme is said to have “leakage” if it protects an area from deforestation only to relocate the harmful activities from inside the protected area to neighbouring unprotected areas.
Plantee’s mechanism is to provide protection via a reduction in demand for diet-driven deforestation. This aggregate fall in demand addresses the harmful activities at the root.
Permanence
It is hard for any forestry project to have “Permanence”. As a protected forest grows, it will improve carbon sequestration over time but if a fire later burns down the project’s trees, some or all of the carbon may be re-emitted, leading to a reversal effect.
If Plantee manages to reduce aggregate demand for diet-driven deforestation, its success is not tied to particular plots of land. At a macro level, some land will be lost to “acts of God” like fires. Some land will be lost to “Human acts” like illegal logging.
Our focus is dialled in on the primary driver of deforestation, animal agriculture. Luckily it’s something we can control.
Co-benefits
One plant-based meal is not going to achieve much but as they say, the key to long term success is consistency. The plant-based diet done right comes with a host of benefits.
Plant-based diets are effective for weight loss and can also help you maintain weight loss in the long run.
Plant-based diets are heart-healthy and can lower your risk of developing heart disease.
Plant-based diets may reduce your risk of certain types of cancer, such as breast cancer and prostate cancer.
Plant-based diets may help slow or prevent cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease.
Plant-based diets may be an effective tool in managing and reducing your risk of developing diabetes
Personal Accountability & Cognitive Harmony
Our hope is that this type of carbon credit can promote personal accountability. Most carbon credits are about purchasing a guilt-neutralising credit from a 3rd party that is out of sight, out of mind, thereby making it easier to continue with high-carbon activities.
The Plantee credit is based on a simple emissions-reducing action that will hopefully remind everyone on a daily basis that with great individual responsibility comes great power. Power to inspire others, people you didn’t know look up to you. Let’s see what we’re collectively capable of when we align our actions with our principles.
References:
Controlling the Ranching Boom that Threatens the Amazon. Yale, 2009.
World Consumption of Meat. The World Counts.
Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, 2018.