Introducing NbS Project Screening: reliable carbon potential estimates, in minutes
We’re excited to announce the upcoming release of the NbS Project Screening tool – the next step in our mission to provide full project lifecycle support to investors, offtakers and project developers.
This web-based tool lets you assess the carbon potential of pre-issuance forest carbon projects in minutes. Upload or draw your project boundary, set your parameters, and get a rapid assessment of eligibility and carbon potential over the project lifetime.
Built to align to carbon standard methodologies, it enables technical teams to review large numbers of projects efficiently while also allowing non-technical team members to explore opportunities on their own. This tool streamlines the project development and investment process, helping you make investment decisions quickly and confidently.
Why we built it
Investors and offtakers receive hundreds or even thousands of early forest carbon project opportunities every year. It becomes nearly impossible to efficiently conduct the first-stage technical reviews of projects on a large scale to find the ones with high integrity and impact potential.
This is especially difficult for small internal carbon and sustainability teams, as they end up spending weeks jumping between ArcGIS, Excel, and multiple due diligence tools to find the right datasets and perform technical diligence, instead of getting answers. We see this creating capacity constraints and meaning fewer high-integrity projects get the funding they need.
With NbS Project Screening, investors & offtakers can assess carbon potential and eligibility of multiple projects in minutes, on one platform. If you’ve got 50 candidate projects, you can narrow it down to the 5 worth progressing to deeper due diligence in – fast.
How it works
1. Create your project
Upload your shapefile or draw the area directly in the platform. Select your project type (currently we support Verra’s REDD+ VM0048, with ARR and IFM on the way) and adjust factors like below-ground biomass, project efficacy rate, logging plans, growth rates and more to take into account key influencers of project impact.
2. View your results
You’ll receive a ready analysis of how much of your area is eligible under your chosen methodology almost instantly. The tool checks for overlap with existing AFOLU projects from registries and assess eligibility of current + historic land use in line with methodology criteria.
Additionally, you’ll be able to see the project’s annual carbon potential, as well as explore the land cover and above-ground biomass maps in the area. This allows you to quickly test it against your internal investment criteria and decide whether the project qualifies for deeper diligence.
Your project is saved on a centralised dashboard which you can use to compare and analyse every uploaded project boundary, and export your findings as a PDF or a CSV for easy sharing with stakeholders and team members.
Click through the process in more detail in our interactive demo.
Available methodologies and countries
NbS Project Screening is currently available for REDD+ VM0048 projects in a select set of countries: Pará and Mato Grosso states in Brazil, incorporating Verra’s open access deforestation risk maps; and Tanzania and Indonesia, where independent deforestation risk maps produced by Space Intelligence are available for select countries to help highlight conversation opportunities. ARR and IFM capabilities will be rolled out globally over the next few weeks.
Don’t let process stand in the way of climate impact
Our aim with this new product is simple: make it easier for early-stage financing to reach high-integrity projects. There are ambitious investors ready to make a difference, and ambitious projects in planning. Reducing friction in the process of identifying those projects means those connections happen faster – and that’s a win for everyone, including the world’s forests.
This launch is also part of a larger vision: to stop global deforestation and enable forest restoration by providing end-to-end data products and services that build confidence in investing in nature.
As part of that vision, we released the REDD+ Insights platform in 2024, to help investors visualise and demonstrate project success as well as monitor disturbances.
With NbS Project Screening, you now have the starting point: quickly assess project opportunities before moving on to due diligence or feasibility studies. As you build your portfolio, we help you validate and monitor performance – so you can show your stakeholders the impact of your forest conservation and restoration projects.
Book a personalised demo with our team and see exactly how the NbS Screening tool can speed up your portfolio building.