Indigo Ag’s satellite-derived atlas of U.S. agriculture is helping Indigo’s biofuels partners prepare for the launch of upcoming tax credits.
Individuals and organizations up and down the sustainable aviation fuel and biofuels value chains are awaiting details around what the 40B and 45Z tax credits will mean for them. Until the 40BSAF-GREET and 45Z-GREET models are released, no company knows precisely how climate smart ag practices will impact crop-based feedstock CI scoring. However, Indigo is helping our partners and growers accommodate a number of different scenarios in order to manage that uncertainty.
Indigo has a proven track record of executing sustainability programs that are mutually beneficial to all participants through the use of our sustainability technology platform. In spite of the ambiguity in this budding market, we’re already leveraging this technology and our experience to help partners in the biofuels industry plan for these changes and navigate this rapidly evolving landscape. Here is how.
Over the past six years, Indigo has been developing our satellite remote sensing capabilities in service of our sustainability programs. Through proprietary technology employing advanced image processing, machine learning and, increasingly, artificial intelligence, we have built a comprehensive field-scale atlas of US agriculture. First, we delineate field boundaries for each agricultural field directly from imagery. We then generate models across growing seasons that identify management practices and quantify emissions on those fields. These data help us to lower the barrier of entry for growers interested in enrolling in our sustainability programs. They also provide an excellent foundation upon which our biofuel partners can build upon and experiment with when planning for 40B and/or 45Z.
To support this use case specifically, Indigo has combined our atlas of field-scale management practices with a proprietary version of the model expected to underpin the 40B and 45Z credits. We’ve used this model to calculate Carbon Intensity (CI) scores for every field in our system (i.e., over 6MM each harvest year). We combine this field scale data with a comprehensive inventory of US grain buying organizations and their facilities to run scenarios for our partners to help them i) prospect the best facilities to work with, and ii) identify areas of opportunity for lowering CI scores. In situations where we find a fit between a biofuel producer and their upstream supplier network and a CI reduction opportunity, Indigo’s sustainability platform, specifically our Source offering, has a proven track record of helping our partners run similar grower incentive programs with low overhead for both them and their growers.
If you’d like to learn more about these capabilities and how they can benefit your business, no matter where you sit on the biofuels value chain, reach out.
*Estimates based on existing models, pending changes subject to final details of 40B and 45Z
*Estimates based on existing models, pending changes subject to final details of 40B and 45Z