OxCarbon and Kita sign Memorandum of Understanding to facilitate greater investment into climate impact projects

OxCarbon and Kita are delighted to announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) related to their shared objective of facilitating the scale up of financial investment into climate impact projects through scientific and data-driven approaches. Key aspects of this MOU include working together to ensure the data provision and ongoing processes related to Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) is transparent and comprehensive enough to facilitate development of viable insurance products for OxCarbon projects. Such insurance can provide de-risking mechanisms to enable greater financing and future scaling at speed.

OxCarbon is a not-for-profit spin-out from the University of Oxford with a mission to promote innovation in climate impact projects through a principle-based approach supported by transparency and scientific best practice. OxCarbon believes that not only is transparency critical to establishing confidence in the integrity of any climate impact claims, it is a necessary requirement in order to facilitate further innovation. The global climate challenge requires significant mobilisation of financial capital; the availability of insurance products has the potential to channel investment towards the projects that can make a positive difference.

Kita is the carbon insurance specialist. Kita’s purpose is accelerating investment in high quality carbon projects in line with the urgency of the climate crisis. With insurance products that reduce transaction risk and safeguard the performance of carbon purchases, Kita removes barriers to action by giving investors the stamp of confidence to engage in the market now.

OxCarbon will work with project developers to facilitate engagement with Kita at the project design stage to ensure that not only is scientific best practice being applied but that it is structured in a way that optimises the prospects of commercial insurance products being made available.

This MOU is a demonstration of collaborative UK leadership in developing clear and transparent structures that will enable higher integrity and trust in carbon projects.

“Kita is proud to partner with OxCarbon on high integrity due diligence and MRV frameworks that will provide the data required to develop insurance products for the fast-moving carbon markets. The risk management expertise of the insurance industry, combined with the transparent and scientific best practice approach developed by OxCarbon, will act as a badge of confidence for scaling of financial investment into the high-quality carbon projects we need to fight the climate crisis.” – Natalia Dorfman, CEO and co-founder, Kita

“Carbon markets can only benefit from subjecting projects to the professional scrutiny and risk-assessment process of companies such as Kita. The global climate challenge urgently needs solutions to unlock carbon financing at scale. Bringing carbon projects into the regulated financial arena will accelerate this transformation.” – Stephen Lezak, Programme Manager, Oxford Smith School of Enterprise & the Environment