Klima Foundation has been officially established as a non-profit organization in Zug, Switzerland, dedicated to advancing carbon markets through innovative technological solutions. Foundation aims to address key challenges in voluntary carbon markets by leveraging decentralized technologies and strategic investments.
Addressing Carbon Market Challenges
Carbon markets play a critical role in climate mitigation efforts but currently face significant obstacles. The UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2023 highlights a 22 GtCO₂e gap between projected 2030 emissions and the reductions needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C. Despite UNEP's projections, the voluntary carbon market (VCM) faces major challenges that hinder its growth. Fragmentation across registries and inconsistent standards drive transaction costs and limit market scalability. Businesses struggle with varying carbon credit definitions, pricing methods, and market access.
Klima Foundation seeks to address these challenges by:
Funding research in carbon market infrastructure
Supporting open-source technological solutions
Sharing technical expertise with novel projects
Facilitating more efficient carbon credit transactions
Supporting environmental projects by purchasing forward carbon credits
Key Projects and Initiatives Klima Foundation Supports
Carbonmark: Market Infrastructure for Trading Carbon Credits
Carbonmark's mission is to provide a platform that serves as a gateway to environmental markets. Carbonmark's platform includes a peer-to-peer marketplace, API, and Credit Issuance Platform, ensuring real-time fair pricing, fast and cost-efficient transactions, and additional benefits such as reduced risks, integrations with DeFi (decentralized finance) tools, enhanced tracking of asset origins, and greater operational flexibility. These features build trust, save time, and improve market efficiency.
Klima Protocol: Liquidity Hub for Better Price Discovery
Klima Protocol is an open-source infrastructure designed to improve carbon market transparency and liquidity. Klima Protocol provides transparent pricing mechanisms, liquid sources for carbon credit transactions, interoperability for market participants, and staking options to influence market dynamics. Carbon credit sellers can use the Protocol’s liquidity as a counterparty; buyers and businesses can access an efficient, automated provider of carbon credits for retirement claims; asset class reference prices can help all market participants with price discovery.
KlimaDAO: Eco-Conscious Community
KlimaDAO is an organic decentralized autonomous organization that was launched in 2021. DAO was founded by a group of individuals and entrepreneurs who were active in the fields of DeFi and carbon markets to accelerate collaboration and drive collective impact. It rapidly scaled to become an open-source project developing technologies for the carbon markets, with over 100 contributors participating in the project's development. Now, there are 30,000+ eco-conscious individuals collaborating to drive positive climate change; and at least 6 new projects spunned out of collaboration within KlimaDAO’s community.
Carbon Project Funding
Whilst Foundation's technical solutions steward the development of aims to increase the overall velocity of carbon markets, there is no substitute for direct funding to project developers to have a direct, tangible climate impact. The ecosystem has, therefore, allocated tranches of funding to a diverse set of carbon credit projects from geographies worldwide. Klima Foundation acts as the counterparty in these agreements for the ecosystem. These projects include Improved Cookstoves for Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh, Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement in Italy, Community Forestry Projects in Uganda and Kenya, and an IoT Water Filtration Project in India.
KlimaDAO JAPAN is a start-up grant funded by the Klima Foundation that is active within the Japanese market and works with the J-Credit standard. Its mission is to further Klima Foundation's mission within Japan by working to commercialize key parts of the ecosystem's stack by forging partnerships with local businesses, institutions, and governmental agencies.
Ongoing Commitment
As part of the evolving Klima’s ecosystem, Klima Foundation will continue supporting decentralized, transparent carbon market solutions. The organization remains committed to channeling capital into climate-positive projects with increased efficiency and impact.
About Klima Foundation
Klima Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Zug, Switzerland, dedicated to advancing open-source and decentralized technologies for carbon markets through research, funding, technical support, and sharing expertise. Learn more at klimafoundation.com.