- Company to advance remote measurement and monitoring of nature-based solutions for carbon removal in the world’s grasslands

Proveye, a leading Irish remote sensing company at the forefront of nature-based solutions and sustainable food production, today announced that it has been awarded a second contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) under the ARTES Business Applications and Space Solutions Programme.

The contract valued at just under €900k will enable Proveye to further develop its pioneering platform that integrates satellite and drone image processing and AI technologies for high-precision, metric-based measurement and monitoring of land use, carbon sequestration and biodiversity in the world’s grasslands.

Today’s announcement underscores Proveye’s growing influence in the field of sustainable food production and environmental monitoring. The company’s innovative remote sensing platform enables the measurement of the performance and risk in nature-based solutions projects that look to increase biodiversity and carbon sequestration through regenerative management of grassland ecosystems.

According to the Rangeland Atlas 54% of the world’s land surface is covered by grass, shrubs or sparse, hardy vegetation storing over 20% of the Earth’s soil carbon as well as playing a key role in global food production. The world’s grasslands are seen by many to be an undervalued source of climate resilience and food production primarily, due to difficulty of measuring and monitoring at vast scales.

By combining cutting-edge technology the Proveye platform delivers stakeholders in nature-based solutions and regenerative grazing, such as farmers, project owners, buyers of carbon credits, natural capital investors, food processors and insurance firms, the trusted data to confirm and deliver on claimed activities and targets to create high-integrity nature-based credits.

Proveye, headquartered at NovaUCD in Dublin, was founded by Jerome O’Connell and Professor Nick Holden as spin-out from University College Dublin.

“This contract with ESA marks a significant milestone in our mission to help deliver nature-based solutions that drive climate resilience and sustainable food production,” said Jerome O’Connell, CEO, Proveye.

“We are excited to build on our previous success with ESA and continue advancing our technology to support the pressing need to produce more food in a more sustainable manner. Grassland ecosystems are under significant pressure from climate change and intensive agriculture. Our platform empowers farmers to manage grasslands more efficiently, give actionable insights to project owners and provide investors and corporates with empirical evidence on the impact of their nature capital investments.”

He added, “Frequent and accurate metrics are critical to the widespread adoption of nature-based solutions and given the lack of significant financial commitments being secured at COP29 highlights even more the pressing need for platforms such as ours to give investors the assurance of impact on their investments.”

“Proveye’s second collaboration with ESA highlights the company’s pivotal role in shaping the future of sustainable food production and climate resilience. This contract is expected to have far-reaching impacts, not only in Europe but globally, by driving efficiencies in habitat and grassland management and contributing to broader sustainability targets for all stakeholders in food production, natural capital and biodiversity restoration,” said Paul Kennedy, CCO, Proveye.