Removals:
Buildings as
C sinks
With the "Global Construction C-Sink Standard" of the Ithaka Institute, OPENLY as C-Sink Manager issues CO2 certificates for biogenic building materials used. New construction & renovation. Immediately. Worldwide and according to valid EU law.
Get 1-4% of the construction costs subsidized
How it works:
You build a timber construction and/or use hempcrete and/or biochar concrete.
We carry out the certification of your property (not for profit).
Rule of thumb: The certifiable C-sink is approx. 0.3 tons per m2 of gross floor area. With a CO2 price of 100 euros, this means 30 euros/m2 which in turn reflects around 1% of the construction costs.
Use: You can use the CO2 certificates yourself for insetting in your company or sell them to offsetting customers through Milton.Earth Ltd. (Voluntary Carbon Market, individual prices & negotiations - whereby Milton.Earth guarantees at least 100 CHF / ton)
Subsidy: Currently, up to EUR 400/tonne of CO2 (= approx. 4% of the construction costs) is paid net, which also corresponds to the internal CO2 price of the Swiss Confederation (430/tonne from 2025).
Your investment:
Certification costs of 10-20 euros / ton
Small projects 5000 Euro lump sum
Your building cost subsidy:
At least 100 Euro / ton
The
standard:
Creator & Owner: Ithaka Institute
C-Registry: Carbon Standard International
C-Sink Manager: OPENLY (CO2 certificate issuance & monitoring)
Content:
Standard is based on the principle of additionality and focuses on > 60 years (EU requirement 35 years) of structurally used, biogenic building materials such as structural timber, biochar concrete, hemp, straw, bamboo, grass and reed.
This is a cooling service, i.e. it represents a temporary C-sink and must be compensated or renewed by the certificate recipient when the building is demolished. Tracking is carried out annually by the C-sink manager.
There is no baseline scenario, but the calculation is net, i.e. minus emissions from farming, processing, transportation and installation.
Certification takes place on the property (the building is the c-sink) in favor of the property owner.
Use case:
Credit: Construction Stored Carbon
The OPENLY VALLEY WIDNAU pilot project with 19 apartments has saved around 900 tons of CO2 (avoided emissions, not certifiable) and stored an additional 800 tons of CO2 (stored carbon)
approx. 80 tons of biochar in concrete from CarstorCon
approx. 180 tons of hempcrete from Cancret.com (exterior insulation and non-load-bearing interior walls)
approx. 540 tons of construction timber
The C-sink of Valley Widnau is therefore approx. 500 kg per m2 net floor area or approx. 350 kg / gross floor area above ground.
What is CDR?
Plants as CO2 vacuum cleaners:
1kg of hemp binds around 1.7kg of CO2 during growth (3 months). Photosynthesis removes CO2 from the atmosphere.(Carbon Dioxide Removal)
CO2 balances are based on Ökobaudat or KBOB (Switzerland).
We have prepared these for you in an understandable way:
Hempcrete: Net negative emissions approx. -100kg/m3
Please note:
A) The primary goal must be to avoid CO2 emissions.
OPENLY engineered buildings achieve up to 5.5kg CO2 per gross floor area, which means a reduction of > -50% and corresponds to the legal requirements of Denmark 2029.
B) If certificates from carbon sinks are used for insetting or sold on the Voluntary Carbon Market, they can no longer be included in the carbon footprint of the building construction. Such a building may then no longer be labeled "net zero".
C) If you are building without OPENLY advice, make sure that your building material suppliers have not already sold the C sinks on the market. The sink belongs to you (or the building) as you have also paid for the building material.
The certification
The role of Openly
Lever of insetting:
As a C-sink manager, OPENLY supplies the CO2 certificates for your construction activities, which we immediately "decommission" for the neutralization of your core business. Groups such as NESTLE, ACCOR and BNP Paribas are already using such insettings today.
In particular, around 50,000 groups that have been subject to EU taxonomy reporting since 2024 can benefit from this.
The potential of buildings as C sinks
The annual C-sink potential is around 5 gigatons of CO2, which corresponds to a market value of USD 1 trillion.
Our roadmap envisages carrying out pilot certifications of 10,000 tons in 2025.
In 2026 we expect 100,000 tons of certified sink output and from 2027 we want to become a megacorn and certify 1 million C sinks from biogenic construction activities every year.
All sinks are necessary to achieve net zero.
For your transparency: Further standards in the area of buildings
already active:
Easy Housing (NL), focus on Africa
planned:
Swiss Timber Finance (CH) (Verra)
related:
PURO (carbonated building materials)
TAO Climate (Agriculture Focus Hemp)
HCS (Agriculture Focus Hemp)