Recycling experts Scott Bros is seeking to enter a carbon credit market worth £200m using artificial soil developed from waste products.
The family-run company has joined forces with Teesside University through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP), partially funded by Innovate UK, to explore how remote technology can be optimally used to monitor its effectiveness in capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Establishing a reliable method of measuring the carbon capture abilities of the materials – a combination of natural clay, construction by-products, and green waste -will allow the firm to generate an income from carbon sequestration.
Businesses and organisations buy credits that represent the reduction or removal of one metric ton of carbon dioxide or its equivalent, either by those required to meet regulatory emission targets or those wishing to voluntarily offset their carbon footprint.
Teesside University has a long-standing partnership with Scott Bros, which is currently hosting a three-year research programme to identify the best waste materials and blends for optimum carbon sequestration.
As part of the collaboration, the firm provided a football field-sized site near its headquarters at Haverton Hill, Stockton-on-Tees, which features 30 test pits filled with various combinations of waste clay, activated filter cake, recycled aggregate, and compost.
The latest KTP will investigate how artificial intelligence and internet of things (AIoT) technology can be used to evaluate Soil Carbon Content (SCC) to improve the Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) of carbon capture.
Existing MRV methods are unreliable as they struggle to precisely evaluate SCC for many reasons, including data quality and manual and error-prone monitoring infrastructure.
An intelligent MRV framework utilising AIoT expertise is needed to precisely measure and understand emission sources and trends in order to design appropriate mitigation strategies, assess their efficacy, and support market credibility and public perception.
It will also enable Scott Bros to provide an external service, providing land and the necessary digital remediation tools to help other landowners measure the carbon performance of their waste.
In addition, Scott Bros is working with University researchers to scale-up and commercialise a prototype brick that it has successfully engineered from recycled waste clay and is also installing a plant to use the recycled waste clay in the production of low carbon concrete.
Dr Sina Rezaei Gomari, Associate Professor of Research at Teesside University, who is leading the KTP, said: “This project will develop in-situ sensors and remote sensing platform to monitor Soil Carbon Content and provide a machine learning model to predict the carbonation under different soil conditions for years to come.
“This can be used by farmers, material waste managers, and government to evaluate their contribution to carbon budget and credits.”
Bob Borthwick, a Director of Scott Bros, said: “Our strategic ambition is to recycle 100 per cent of our construction waste and to identify alternative intelligent recycling solutions and markets to enable this.
“We are proud to have committed to the delivery of this new business area by investing heavily in land within the Tees Valley to utilise for the digital monitoring of the carbon performance of waste streams.”
Fellow Director Peter Scott added: “A digital solution will help us expand our reach, allowing us to offer our new MRV services across the country and eventually to landowners and haulage companies internationally.
“This KTP will create the opportunity to generate around £200 million annually in carbon credits by turning waste into value through technologies that remove carbon dioxide.
“Building a reliable MRV system is crucial for carbon markets to succeed, helping landowners earn money for capturing and storing greenhouse gases in the soil.”
Professor David Hughes, Associate Dean (Research and Innovation) at Teesside University’s School of Computing, Engineering & Digital Technologies, added: “This project aligns perfectly with our £40 million investment in our forthcoming Digital Life Building, which will house state-of-the-art AI and robotics suites, and will complement our Net Zero Industrial Innovation Centre (NZIIC) supporting companies to achieve their net zero ambition.”
