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Today’s interview is with Jennifer Jenkins, Chief Science Officer, Rubicon Carbon
What is Rubicon Carbon?
For those unfamiliar, what is Rubicon Carbon, and how does it uniquely contribute to the carbon removal and storage ecosystem?
Rubicon Carbon is a carbon credit investment and management firm that works closely with large enterprises to help them achieve their sustainability goals. The company was incubated by TPG Rise Climate in 2022, and we have since brought together leading executives in finance and climate science to build a new kind of carbon credit company that is vertically integrated, working with developers and buyers to help manage projects and credits from pre-issuance to retirement.
Companies in the private sector are responsible for releasing the bulk of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 84 percent of global emissions in 2021. While companies are working to decarbonize their internal operations, reaching full decarbonization today inside a corporate value chain is often just too difficult or costly. Many of the decarbonization technologies that companies are counting on are immature, not yet scalable, or priced out of reach for companies with voluntary emissions targets.
That’s where the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) can step in. Many of the emissions reduction or removal projects in the VCM have costs per abated ton that are much lower than the decarbonization technologies available today, meaning that companies can often create impact more economically by looking outside their own value chains, especially in the near term.
Building on our expertise in both finance and science, we’ve developed tools and approaches to help carbon credit purchasers navigate VCM 2.0 and its updated emphasis on quality, leveraging new methodologies, emerging tools, statistical analyses, and best practices to foster a new level of transparency and confidence in carbon projects. In addition, the company is built around an end-to-end business model that is paired with strategies like portfolio diversification and active management in order to streamline our clients' procurement, evaluation, and sale of credits.
This dual focus positions us as a truly integrated carbon credit investment and management firm that addresses both the supply and demand sides of the VCM, enabling us to provide buyers with the highest-quality credits, whether they are purchasing diversified credits from our Rubicon Carbon Tonne portfolios or a stream of credits from a single project.
Procurement
Rubicon Carbon curates a portfolio of high-integrity nature-based and emerging engineered CDR solutions. Could you elaborate on how these credits are selected and why scientific rigor is core to your procurement model?
Our flagship product is referred to as the Rubicon Carbon Tonne, or RCT, for short. Inspired by traditional financial products, such as ETFs and mutual funds, our RCT portfolios are composed of actively managed, diverse sets of carbon credits across multiple projects, aiming to mitigate the various risks inevitably associated with individual projects. We also pioneered the concept of risk adjustment for overcrediting risk, and we offer this risk adjustment option across all RCTs. This capability enables us to over-retire credits alongside our customers, ensuring that each retired credit from a risk-adjusted RCT corresponds as closely as possible to one tonne of carbon benefit in the real world.
All credits in our portfolios originate from an existing registry system and then undergo our in-house, scientific due diligence check via our proprietary Rubicon Carbon Tonne Standard, which was designed to be consistent with ICVCM’s Core Carbon Principles.
But the RCT Standard is not the only way we provide quality assurance. Well beyond simple “RCT eligibility,” we conduct additional assurance at the project level beyond established VCM registries through our own expert ratings and independent auditing, as well as direct discussions with developers, site visits, and public reporting. This detailed and rigorous process ensures that our projects have effective oversight and governance, independent validation, transparency, and all other necessary measures in place to ensure the highest possible quality.
Every project carries risk, and we share that risk with our customers by holding the credits that we sell on our own balance sheet. As a result, our buyers can be certain that any credit included in Rubicon Carbon’s portfolio has been thoroughly vetted and de-risked.
MRV
Measurement and verification are critical in carbon removal and storage. How does Rubicon Carbon’s scientific due diligence process ensure transparency, durability, and trust across diverse project types, from biochar to forestry?
We’ve built the Rubicon Carbon Integrity Framework (RCIF), which rates projects on a 1-100 scale based on five subscores related to Climate Impact, Certification, Principled Durability, Future Delivery, and Additionality. This framework can be applied to any project category.
To assess durability in particular, we evaluate how long the carbon that has been removed or avoided by a project will remain out of the atmosphere, and how confidently that storage can be sustained over time. How long each tonne of carbon stays stored—which we refer to as its residence time—varies by project type. Projects with shorter storage durations tend to score lower on durability.
We also evaluate a project’s design, credit issuances, monitoring reports, and monitoring organization details, while confirming appropriate details have been made public in a clear and accessible manner.
Our team continues to monitor portfolio performance, even after initial purchase, and adjusts the RCIF scores based on scientific due diligence and market signals that may impact them. For instance, if a project’s environmental performance changes, the RCIF score for its credits will be recalibrated accordingly. This active and ongoing management helps reduce exposure to underperformance, strengthen credit quality, and support long-term confidence in the market.
Microsoft Agreement
Rubicon Carbon recently facilitated a landmark 18 million tonne CDR agreement with Microsoft. What have been the key learnings from structuring a deal of this scale, and how do they inform your strategy for future large-scale deployments?
Our agreement with Microsoft represents 18 million tonnes of nature-based removals, which is one of the largest-ever commitments from a single buyer in the history of the VCM, and we’ve been honored to collaborate with them on it. Microsoft sources credits from a broad portfolio of carbon removal projects, and our agreement includes multiple 15-to-20-year offtakes that come from Afforestation, Reforestation, and Revegetation (ARR) projects from across the globe.
Industrial Decarbonization
Industrial decarbonization is a growing priority. How does Rubicon Carbon’s approach to project selection help companies reduce or compensate for hard-to-abate industrial emissions in credible, science-aligned ways?
At Rubicon Carbon, we understand that decarbonization technologies for many hard-to-abate operators remain decades away from commercial viability. Our solution, by contrast, is available today and provides operators with a practical way to advance their sustainability goals now while working toward long-term decarbonization.
Every tonne reduced or avoided is a tonne that has not been added to the atmosphere, regardless of where in the world that reduction or avoidance takes place. If we keep the end goal in mind – to reduce the GHG burden in the global atmosphere on the road to net zero – then a company that is purchasing carbon credits in order to neutralize its ongoing emissions or help reach its net zero target is creating measurable climate action.
In addition to nature-based credits, our portfolio of engineered carbon removal credits continues to grow. In June, we announced a strategic offtake partnership with Deep Sky, which is the first Direct Air Capture provider in our portfolio.
Regulatory Frameworks
With your global portfolio and engagement across multiple methodologies, how does Rubicon Carbon ensure its offerings are adaptable, regionally appropriate, and aligned with evolving regulatory frameworks like ICVCM and SBTi?
Our scientific diligence process is additional to the quality standards imposed by the ICVCM. Like a ratings agency, we conduct in-depth project-level due diligence to ensure that the projects we bring into the portfolio have the highest quality and integrity. Because our global portfolio encompasses a range of project types and geographies, we can tailor our diligence to each project while maintaining equally high standards across all project types.
As SBTi continues to update its Corporate Net Zero Standard, I hope the organization encourages decarbonization activities that offer companies the flexibility to act decisively now without adding more complexity. Strengthening the VCM will always be a continuous process, similar to how traditional financial products have evolved, and I hope that the market’s governing bodies will implement workable guardrails and frameworks that encourage companies to make claims using carbon credits with confidence.
This is the motivation behind Rubicon Carbon’s model, which combines rigorous science with a diversified, risk-adjusted portfolio approach. It’s built to evolve alongside new guidance so our clients can meet high standards now and adapt with confidence as rules change.
Collaborations
The CDR market is rapidly evolving. How does Rubicon Carbon position itself within this landscape, and what strategic collaborations, whether with buyers, verifiers, or technology developers, are pivotal to your growth?
Our process for evaluating and identifying high-quality carbon credits is the foundation of our commitment to building buyer confidence.
Our recent agreements with Microsoft and ByteDance exemplify how strategic collaborations with major corporate buyers mobilize large-scale capital. These agreements will unlock private investment for high-quality projects worldwide, providing both financial stability for project developers and credible carbon credits for buyers.
We also recently announced the Rubicon Rated Tonne portfolio, which is the first carbon credit portfolio to receive an AAport rating from BeZero Carbon. This product was developed with companies that require third-party validation of carbon credits in mind.
Since we frequently invest directly in the credits we hold and sell, we’ve also initiated strategic partnerships with projects all around the world. A few examples of this include a partnership with YvY Capital to scale up carbon investments throughout Brazil and South America, an upfront investment in Ponterra’s 3.24 million tonne project on the Azuero Peninsula of Panama, and an investment in Imperative Global’s large-scale ecosystem restoration project in South Africa.
Our partnerships aim to bridge finance, science, and innovation, scaling credible climate action while offering market participants confidence and clarity in an increasingly complex space.
Challenges
What’s the biggest scientific or operational challenge facing the scaling of high-quality CDR today, and what is required in 2025 to accelerate durable, trustworthy solutions globally?
The biggest hurdle to scaling high-quality carbon removal is transitioning from promising, early-stage ideas to large-scale, reliable solutions that deliver real climate impact at a competitive cost.
But what really drives growth in the market is demand. If we want to see meaningful growth across the market in all sectors – from forest protection to superpollutant elimination and permanent removals like direct air capture – we need buyers to send a clear signal to developers and others that they’re ready to invest. For that to happen, we need practical frameworks that make it easier, and not harder, for companies to get involved and create the right incentives. If we can do that, the resulting demand will fuel real, lasting climate action.
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