Read the full transcript of Jaye Connolly’s talk titled “Are carbon credits legit?” at TEDxSanDiegoWomen 2025 conference. Jaye Connolly is the Chairman and CEO of RippleNami, Inc., an innovative tech firm in Africa that integrates AI, blockchain, and data visualization providing traceability and transparency to connect unconnected communities.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
JAYE CONNOLLY: Hi. Imagine this. For every plume of fossil fuel smoke that goes up into the air, a tree springs up in Africa. For 30 years, this has been the bold promise of carbon credits. What if I told you carbon credits are crap?
Would you believe me? Yes. Okay. Good. Let’s do this.
Join me on my 10,000-mile journey to the heart of Africa to determine whether carbon credits are a genuine solution or a mere smokescreen.
Africa Facts
Before we dive into carbon credits, let me just share some Africa facts with you. Did you know Africa is the 2nd largest continent in the world? And it contains Earth’s second lung, next to the Amazon, called the Congo basin. And together, these two areas make up our global oxygen production.
There are 1,500,000,000 people that live within 54 countries, and the average person makes $1 a day. By 2030, Africa will have the largest workforce and suffer the most by climate change created by us in the developed world.
Understanding Carbon Credits
So let’s go dive into some carbon credits. Have you heard of them before? Yeah.
Okay. Have you heard of companies trying to be net zero emissions by 2030? Yeah. Okay. How about your friends trying to shrink their carbon footprint by eliminating fossil fuels, like getting rid of plastic bags or gas-powered cars?
Carbon credits allow companies and individuals to offset their pollution emissions that they can’t do anymore internally. And they do this by funding sustainable projects, usually in underdeveloped communities, that either:
- Absorb carbon, like planting a tree or protecting a forest, or
- Reduce emissions by using renewables, such as solar or hydro power.
For every one ton of carbon offset, a carbon credit is generated and issued similar to a stock. Carbon credits are traded on an ever-booming marketplace worth over $2,000,000,000,000. I refer to this as the climate economy, where environmental and sustainability intersects with economic growth.
The Reality of Carbon Credits
Last year, an eye-opening article revealed that 90% of all forest-related carbon credits were worthless. In one particular project in Africa, companies innocently bought these worthless carbon credits to reduce their emissions, to offset them, and it generated over $100,000,000 of sales for a climate company. The article went on to state that 30% or $30,000,000 of those sales went to the very African community striving to protect the forest. Okay. I thought, bad for the climate, bad for the companies, but good for the communities.
Right? What I discovered was a little bit different. And to be clear, I am no climatologist. I am a chairman and CEO of a technology company.
And for the past decade, we’ve been working in Africa deploying technology to strengthen their economies. Learning that the majority of these projects were happening in Africa, it hit me hard. And this is when my professional focus turned to a personal mission.
Journey to Africa
So off I set off to my journey to the heart of Africa to determine firsthand how these carbon credits were affecting these communities. My first stop was to meet with the local African chief.
He has a tribe and a community. I shared with him the article, I explained carbon credits, and I told him this community should have received $30,000,000 of benefits. You know what he said? “With that kind of money, this place would look like New York City. Instead, we suffer for the basics: food, clean water, jobs, education, fuel, and, oh, by the way, no Internet around here.”
I apologized to that chief on behalf of that climate company, and I told him I would speak up on his behalf. And here we are today.
My second stop was to go meet with the government officials. I shared with them that a foreign company made $100,000,000 off their trees in the name of carbon credits. You want to hear their reaction?
Their first reaction was, “Air is worth that much money?” And their second one was one of anger that they’d been taken advantage of. I promised them I would help educate them and accelerate their participation in this climate economy.
Key Players in the Carbon Credit Ecosystem
To conclude my investigation, I met with the 3 key players of this carbon credit ecosystem, and here are my observations:
- The first group was the project developer. They valued profit over sustainability.
- The second group was the standards governing board, who lacked quality standards to actually measure carbon offsets.
- The third group were the climate investors, who lacked oversight as to what was actually happening on the ground.
Each party assured us that their project positively impacted the environment and the communities, that they followed strict international guidelines requiring ongoing assessments and real-time monitoring. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
If that system was as rigorous and airtight as they claim, why were 90% of the forest carbon credits worthless? And why did the community see so little benefits?
The Need for Transparency
Carbon credits should uplift, not exploit communities. Real change requires complete traceability and transparency. We should see clear, verifiable facts about each carbon credit’s origin, impact, and benefits, not buried in some 1,000-page report with a little 8 by 10 glossy, a little video.
And when companies bought these worthless carbon credits, and they did, they need to speak up, and they didn’t.
A Sustainable Solution: Biochar
Climatologists once told me, “Jay, carbon capture is easy. You can make it traceable. You just plant something, it grows, and then you bury it.” Inspired to dig a little deeper, I went off to Oregon, and there I came across the company that was taking tree waste and making biochar.
Think of charcoal’s eco-friendly cousin. The biochar is mixed with manure and creates a rich compost that goes back into the soil for centuries.