COMPANY PROFILE
EcoAsset Markets Inc.
Owners: Richard Pace, managing partner, plus six partners
Type of business: Environmental
intellectual property and data
Location: 203 South Main St.,
Providence
Contact information: eamarkets.com; (401) 831-6640
Employees: 7 (partners) plus consultants
Year established: 2004
Annual Sales: WND
Firm develops new ways to protect the planet and quantify their value
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
By Emilio DiSpirito IV License Partner | Engel & Völkers Oceanside Leader | The DiSpirito…
Learn More
When trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air, they perform an ecological service.
When wetlands cleanse water, it is an ecological service. Yet most people don’t think of natural processes as services – or as services that could be capitalized.
Richard Pace, Peter Gengler and their partners are trying to change that, developing new methods to assign a monetary value to ecological services, new models for markets to trade in those services, and new approaches to environmental improvement that could be traded.
Their company, EcoAsset Markets Inc., is an offshoot of UDM Land Sciences, a land surveying, environmental mapping and data analysis firm that Pace and Gengler – an engineer and a designer, respectively – started in 1996.
The new company builds on a concept being applied, on a global scale, to implement the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty negotiated in 1997 that set targets for worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. (As of last April, 163 countries had ratified the protocol; the United States has not.)
Under the treaty, each country has its own target for greenhouse emissions. Once that target is met, or if the country is already below the cap, it can sell credits to other countries. Canada, for example, could buy credits for the planting of 40,000 trees in South America.
Corporations can do the same to meet emissions targets set by laws or regulations, Pace said. The buyer meets its requirements, the seller makes a profit and the environment benefits.
EcoAsset Markets is developing pilot projects that use that model, Pace said. And it is developing software to quantify the data needed to make the model work – to quantify the amount of carbon dioxide a tree absorbs, for example, based on the size, species and total number of trees planted.
The partners are working on pilot projects in Rhode Island and other states to test the feasibility of different ecosystem service market models and software to support them.
The projects involve different kinds of “services,” from greenhouse gas emission reduction, to water quality improvement, to wildlife protection.
One pilot project involves preserving migratory bird nesting habits in Jamestown by paying farmers to alter the way they cut and harvest hay, said Pace. EcoAsset Markets is working on the project in conjunction with scientists and biologists at the University of Rhode Island using a U.S. Department of Agriculture Conservation Innovation Grant, Pace said.
EcoAsset Markets software would quantify data such as how many migratory birds live in the fields, how many fields, the acreage of the fields, etc. “Software allows you to measure the physical aspects of nature,” Pace said. “The markets can’t evolve without quantifying them.”
Once the values are quantified, the company could sell or act as a broker between farmers and people willing to pay them to change their practices. The company also could use software to quantify the results, comparing the bird population before, during and after conservation efforts take place.
All of the company’s work is currently funded through grants and the partners’ investments, Pace said. If the pilot projects are successful, they could serve as prototypes for similar projects in other states. In that case, EcoAsset Markets could either sell the project models or provide services as a consulting firm.
But right now, “we don’t know what we’re selling,” Gengler said. Software is the only tangible product.
Pace said EcoAsset Markets is one of just four companies exploring the development of ecosystem service markets nationally.
And the work they do has caught the attention of scientists, government officials, private land owners, utility companies, conservation societies, and regulatory agencies such as the USDA and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, he said.
“It is a whole new way to think about conservation,” Pace said. “And it creates other ways people are willing to financially support conservation.”
