LONDON, UK — New research* from British company Kana Earth Ltd, which has recently launched a unique UK nature carbon directory listing over 1,700 nature carbon offsetting projects, reveals that 64% of UK consumers favor brands that make a conscious effort to tackle climate change. Some 65% of women said this compared to 61% of men, and the corresponding figures for those aged 25–34 and 65 and over are 69% and 58% respectively.
The study also found that 69% of consumers would try to avoid buying products from brands that have a large carbon footprint and negative impact on the environment if more climate-positive alternative products and services were available. The corresponding figures for women and men are 73% and 64% respectively. Overall, 62% of people said that they would be willing to spend more on these climate-positive alternative products and services (68% of men said they would do this compared to 58% of women).
Andy Creak, CEO and Co-founder of Kana Earth Ltd, said, “Our research shows that the majority of people in the UK are consciously looking to buy from companies that take their impact on the environment seriously and do something about it, and they are willing to pay a premium for this. This is clearly becoming a business-critical issue for companies, but many need to show greater transparency around the impact they make on the environment, and what they are doing to tackle this.”
Kana Earth is developing an open ledger and investment platform for the UK’s carbon offsetting market, which addresses many of the major obstacles holding the sector back.
It enables UK developers and landowners with carbon offsetting projects to list, manage, and promote these on the platform, providing unprecedented levels of transparency in terms of overall goals and carbon reduction targets for the schemes, and how these will be achieved.
This makes it easier for companies, fund managers, pension funds, other institutional investors, wealth managers, and all other organizations looking to reduce their carbon footprint or generate ethical returns through buying and investing in transparent UK offset projects.
Kana Earth research for a report entitled “The Future of UK Nature Carbon Offsetting” written by Brendan Curran, a Sustainable Finance Policy Fellow at the LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, and Darshini Waibel, CEO of Wiseblik LTD, a UK strategic advisory firm, revealed 97% of UK FTSE 350 board directors agree that as a UK company, a large part of its carbon offset budget should be allocated to UK based projects, but the company claims there isn’t the provision.
The UK nature carbon offsetting challenge
Carbon offsetting is critical in meeting the UK’s target to reduce carbon emissions targets by 78% by 2035 from 1990 levels, and to be carbon neutral by 2050, but the domestic market is disjointed and underdeveloped.
Between now and 2035, the country will emit a sizable 3,340 million tonnes of CO2 but the UK’s Nature-based Carbon projects to date will absorb only 18 million tonnes of CO2.
The UK carbon offsetting market’s complexity and lack of scale means it is missing out on massive carbon growth in other countries.
The Kana solution in practice
The Kana Ledger introduces an open, auditable, and scalable foundation for UK carbon offset where schemes can be created, managed, and traded in a liquid marketplace.
Professional investors, businesses, and organizations, in general, will be able to search a single directory of carbon offset projects that operate under a Standard Legal Framework.
The Kana Marketplace provides distribution and scale to the carbon projects and provides a straightforward process for professional investors and UK corporates to buy carbon units across multiple projects, project types, and time periods, including the ability to evidence their purchases on their own website.
The Kana Investment Platform brings in private money which allows developers to scale carbon-offsetting projects. The platform will be critical in supporting asset managers’ new “Green” thematic funds’ investment in future carbon units and provide avenues for insurers and other institutional investors to channel money to carbon offsetting projects.
* Kana Earth commissioned the market research company Viewsbank to survey 1,078 British consumers across the country. The sample represented the demographic profile of Great Britain. The survey was conducted online between 26th and 27th November 2022.
