Tokenized Carbon Market Replaces Brokers
Paul Gambill, CEO of Nori, on tokenized projects for social good
The real point is that carbon procurement is still an expensive services business disguised as an asset market. Large buyers do not just pay for tons, they pay for internal staff, consultants, brokers, legal review, and project diligence because credits are heterogeneous and hard to compare. In that context, Nori pricing a simple transaction layer at 15% looks less like a trading fee and more like software replacing a bundle of manual procurement work.
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Traditional carbon buying is operationally heavy. Nori describes the old flow as registry protocol design, third party validation, separate verification, broker intermediation, then retirement. Patch describes the buy side pain similarly, with buyers otherwise negotiating many project contracts and doing their own diligence across suppliers.
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The cost stack starts before offset procurement even begins. Persefoni explains that large companies often build carbon accounting through consultants and internal teams, and cites SEC based first year costs of roughly $490,000 to $650,000 when labor and external help are included. That makes a percentage fee on procurement look small relative to the full climate operations budget.
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This is why newer infrastructure companies sell simplification, not just credits. Patch packages supplier agreements, portfolio construction, and buyer protection. Sylvera markets faster sourcing, multiple quotes, and fewer vendor relationships. Nori pushes the same wedge from a tokenized angle, by collapsing brokerage and price discovery into one marketplace workflow.
The market is heading toward carbon buying that looks more like modern software procurement and less like bespoke project finance. As ratings, accounting, and sourcing tools absorb consultant and broker work, the winning platforms will be the ones that make credit quality legible, reduce contracting friction, and turn climate teams from deal makers into policy setters.