Q&A with Marco Albani - Co-CEO & President of Chloris Geospatial

In the lead-up to COP this year, we are speaking to some of the founders and CEO's of companies we invest in as part of our Natural Capital Strategy. 

Our third Q&A is with Marco Albani, Co-CEO & President of Chloris Geospatial. 

Q: Can you explain what Chloris Geospatial does? 

We measure above-ground biomass from space. In practice, that means we use satellite data, sensor fusion and machine learning to quantify how much carbon is stored in vegetation and how that changes over time. We offer annual, global coverage at 30-metre resolution, and more recently at 10 meters, with a time series that goes back to about the year 2000. Our goal is to give companies, governments, and project developers the confidence to act on forest conservation, restoration, and supply-chain climate risk.

Q: Why do we need accurate measures of forest carbon biomass? 

The carbon exchanged between the atmosphere and vegetation is several times greater than industrial emissions every year, and forests store a massive amount of carbon. Without accurate measurements, it’s impossible to understand how much carbon is being removed or released by ecosystems. Scientists often talk about the planet’s “unexplained sink,” which refers to a mismatch between total emissions and the observed levels of atmospheric CO₂, suggesting that vegetation is absorbing more than we can currently measure. Because most forests cover vast, remote areas, they are poorly monitored today. Remote sensing from satellites is the only realistic way to observe them globally and consistently. Accurate biomass measurement is also crucial for understanding whether conservation or restoration projects are working, and for determining how much carbon credit can credibly be issued in the market.

Q: Who are Chloris’s customers? 

We serve two main markets: carbon markets and corporate supply chains, particularly for forest-risk commodities such as palm oil, cocoa, soy, and timber. In carbon markets, our clients include project developers, standards bodies, credit buyers, and insurers. Our data is used for due diligence, monitoring, verification, and baseline setting in carbon markets. In corporate supply chains, where companies often face deforestation risk across enormous and fragmented land areas that span multiple countries, the data is useful to support greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reporting against both voluntary and compliance needs. These companies don’t necessarily want to measure trees themselves, they just need credible, scalable data that they can use in procurement or reporting systems.

Q: How far back does your data go, and does that time span actually matter? 

Our data series extends back to the year 2000 at 30-meter resolution and to 2017 at 10 meters. That historical depth is vital because it allows us to distinguish genuine long-term trends from random fluctuations. It also makes it possible to compute historical land use change emission debt in corporate supply chains, and to use dynamic baselines or synthetic controls when evaluating a carbon project. To assess project impact, you need to compare the project area with similar regions where no intervention occurred. Having two decades of data lets us match pre-intervention behavior and establish credible counterfactuals.

Q: How do standards around carbon credits deal with measurability and counterfactuals, and how is Chloris involved? 

One of the biggest challenges in nature-based carbon credits is defining the counterfactual — essentially, what would have happened without the carbon removal project. Historically, project developers often defined their own baselines, for instance by assuming a certain rate of deforestation, and then received credit for outperforming that assumption. This approach opened the door to overcrediting due to weak additionality. Because we measure biomass everywhere, we can help establish dynamic baselines by comparing the project zone to matched areas that have had no intervention. That provides more accurate counterfactuals.

We are collaborating with standards bodies such as Verra and Equitable Earth to integrate direct biomass measurement into their methodologies. Standards tend to move cautiously but if carbon markets are to be credible, they must evolve to include more robust measurement approaches – and our data can play a central role in that transition.

Q: Are standard setters receptive? 

In principle. But by nature they are conservative. They rely on consensus, peer review and public consultation, which makes them slow to change. Shifting norms require alignment across many stakeholders. Even so, we are working directly with standards bodies, contributing our data to methodology development and advocating for the use of direct biomass estimation.

We are partnering with forward-looking standards such as Equitable Earth, which are embedding our data into their rules and shifting toward direct carbon measurement rather than land-cover proxies. Direct measurement gives much more accurate data, rather than inferring the carbon based on the land area.

Q: How do you differentiate yourselves from competitors? 

In many ways we don’t compete directly with other providers as much as with the absence of measurement itself – or with organisations that still rely on manual, in-house, or proxy-based approaches. Some providers do estimate biomass, but we differentiate ourselves through the depth, scale and consistency of our data - and our longer time series.

Q: Can you explain your revenue model? 

Our current business model is based primarily on data licensing, including enterprise contracts and re-seller arrangements. We’ve seen very strong revenue growth in 2024 when we doubled our contracted revenue.

Q: Looking back over the last year, what are your biggest achievements? 

We recently completed a Series A round to expand product development, grow our team, and accelerate market reach. Another major milestone has been onboarding Equitable Earth as a partner, they now use our data as their exclusive provider for digital monitoring, reporting and verification. We also scaled dramatically, moving from hundreds of thousands of hectares to billions of hectares processed through our system.

Q: What do you look forward to at this year’s COP? 

Firstly, we would like to see clearer rules for voluntary carbon markets. The ideal outcome would be standards that strike a balance between rigour and feasibility, rather than ones so strict that they stifle market activity altogether. Secondly, a more sensible treatment of corresponding adjustments — the accounting changes countries make to avoid double counting emission reductions when carbon credits are traded internationally. We don’t expect COP to resolve every detail, but we do hope it reinforces a strong policy signal that carbon measurement and accounting matter — and that they are here to stay, whether through markets, taxation, or regulation.