The future of developing high quality carbon credits might have a lot to do with satellite technology.

‍What’s happening:‍

• Planet Labs (NYSE: PL) has launched a new product known as Forest Carbon Monitoring, which is aiming to provide a breakthrough in high quality and accessible data on global forest change
  

The big idea:‍

• Planet Labs is focused on leveraging satellite technology to support the voluntary carbon market, better understand carbon storage and mitigate against deforestation
  
• Carbon reduction projects typically fly costly airborne missions over select areas of forest or pay for satellite imagery which only covers a small fraction of the forest they are trying to understand, whereas Planet Labs’s new product provides historical satellite imaging of the entire area and use machine learning to process airborne data
  
• Through precise, accurate and granular satellite imaging, Planet Labs is able to monitor every hectare of forest, determine tree heights, canopy heights and quantify carbon assessments in order to verify carbon credit projects
  

Why it matters:‍

• Finding a way to gather precise data on carbon reduction projects within forests is one of the most important aspects of accelerating the voluntary carbon markets and developing more high quality carbon credits globally
  

Going deeper:‍

• Global carbon credits rating agency BeZero Carbon has already begun using Planet Labs’s new Forest Carbon Monitoring product in order to enhance their process of verifying the quality of new carbon credits being developed
  
• Planet Labs has landed multiple notable new partnerships of late, recently entering into a new multi year partnership with the German Space Agency as well as a deal with the NATO Communications and Information Agency for defense tech

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