Planet Names Top Three Finalists of the 2021 Copernicus Masters’ “See Change, Change the World” Challenge

Planet is pleased to announce the top three finalists of our “See Change, Change the World” Challenge as part of the Copernicus Masters competition, which awards prizes to developers who leverage Planet and Copernicus data to address objectives of the European Green Deal.

The three finalists and their proposed solutions demonstrate the diverse range of use cases and applications that can be built upon daily global satellite data. The top three finalists, in no particular order, are:

NetCarbon – NetCarbon aims to contribute towards carbon neutrality by offering farmers a free solution for measuring and monetising their sequestered carbon. NetCarbon’s solution measures carbon dioxide (CO2) by fusing Sentinel-2 and PlanetScope satellite data with state-of-the-art algorithms to create compliant carbon measurement certification standards. As a result, the sequestered CO2 can be sold to companies in both the public and private sectors wishing to contribute towards carbon neutrality and directly support the development of a more sustainable agriculture and a better planet. “Our vision is to monitor the CO2 sequestration on a daily basis. Consequently, participating with NetCarbon in the Planet challenge “See Change, Change the World” seemed to us like evidence. Moreover, the chance to have technical support as well as business coaching from Planet’s experts would be an opportunity for NetCarbon to get a headstart in its journey,” said Basile Goussard, Co-founder of NetCarbon.

Carble – Six of the ten largest global coffee brands have recently committed to significantly reduce their carbon footprint. At the same time, 44% of the world’s small-scale coffee farmers still live in poverty and 22% in extreme poverty. In many countries, coffee is traditionally grown in agroforestry farms. Carble’s platform enables coffee brands to reward these farmers for the carbon stored in their forest canopies in a measurable, scalable, and cost-effective way. By doing so, Carble reduces not only the coffee’s carbon footprint, but also poverty among small-scale farmers. The impact is doubled, with a single payment. “We applied to the Planet Challenge because Planet’s mission – to image the Earth every day and make change visible, accessible, and actionable – is strongly aligned to our vision of ensuring that the coffee sector can bring a decent standard of living to all people, while remaining within our planetary boundaries. We hope for a long and fruitful partnership between Planet and Carble,” said Sander Reuderink, Co -founder of Carble.

Seqana – is building a SaaS platform, powered by satellite data, machine learning, and ground truth data, for the developers of Nature-based Climate Solutions (NCS). Their solution will provide 10x cost savings for the Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) of NCS, relieving one of the largest bottlenecks for the industry and enabling a new global generation of climate positive NCS projects. Leveraging both public and commercial satellite data from Copernicus and Planet, Seqana is changing how these ecosystem-enhancing projects operate on a global scale.

What ties the three finalists and their projects together is that they capitalize on Planet’s frequent global data for creating real-time solutions, deploying cutting-edge machine learning techniques, and demonstrating environmental and business use cases that help people and the planet, which is core to Planet’s mission.

Planet received a wealth of submissions to our challenge, which were evaluated by a panel of multidisciplinary experts. Participants were first evaluated based on their written submissions to the competition, then a selection of the best ideas were invited to pitch their solutions to the panel. The three finalists were selected by Planet during the evaluation meeting in early September.

The winner of the Planet’s “See Change, Change the World” Challenge will be announced during the virtual awards ceremony at the European Space Week in December. To learn more about Copernicus Masters, visit their website and keep an eye out for the full list of finalists from all challenges coming soon.