CACAO releases its 2025 forest carbon maps

Published on 20/05/2026

A burgeoning yet complex market, the sale of carbon credits can generate new recurring revenue for landowners. In its pursuit of excellence to develop a comprehensive tool capable of facilitating seamless and transparent transactions through continuous monitoring, the CACAO project unveils its forest carbon storage maps in 2025 at its study areas in Italy.

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Carbon index in the forest area of the Mountain Community of Bussento, Lambro, and Mingardo (SA) for the year 2025. © Euro.Soft – Latitudo40

CACAO (Carbon Credits AI tools based on Earth Observation), a platform born from the synergy between Euro.soft, Latitudo 40, and IWT, is set to break down barriers preventing small landowners from entering the green economy through the voluntary carbon market (VCM). Because of the complexity of the VCM, at the end of 2024, Euro.soft created a start-up, Earth Sensing, to completely focus on this project and, overall, on forest monitoring.

By integrating Satellite imagery Artificial Intelligence, and Blockchain, CACAO transforms complex and time-consuming forest monitoring into a transparent and accessible process.

The problem

The Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) represents a framework in which corporate entities, organizations, and individuals acquire carbon credits to mitigate their environmental impact. In contrast to compliance markets, participation is not mandatory, but it is driven by companies’ ethical goals. This market, operating through private certification standards, finances the development of diverse sustainability, ranging from reforestation to renewable energy and carbon sequestration projects.

However, despite its potential to democratize climate action, the VCM currently faces significant structural barriers:

Prohibitive Transaction Costs: The reliance on intensive and costly field surveys for carbon stock assessment creates a substantial barrier to entry for small-scale landowners.
Scalability Constraints: The absence of automated quantification methodologies limits the market's reach. Consequently, small landholdings and geographically inaccessible areas remain largely excluded from carbon financing opportunities.
Integrity and Transparency Concerns: Issues such as 'greenwashing' and double counting undermine market credibility, necessitating more robust monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) frameworks.

The CACAO solution

CACAO automates the entire lifecycle of a carbon credit. Using Deep Learning models trained on ground data, the platform precisely calculates CO₂ sequestration without the need for constant, manual on-site inspections.

For Landowners: A streamlined workflow where they simply upload an area file (shapefile) to receive an AI-driven estimate of their carbon potential.
For Companies: A secure marketplace where they can calculate their footprint and purchase local, certified credits with "real-time" monitoring of the forest’s health.

► Carbon index in the Municipality of Moio della Civitella (SA) for the year 2025. The colour gradient facilitates the interpretation of the spatial distribution regarding carbon sequestration capacity. Specifically, violet denotes values approaching zero megagrams (Mg), whereas yellow signifies the upper limit of the recorded data. © Euro.Soft – Latitudo40

Ground-data

The CACAO project is currently advancing into the technical validation phase through a specialized forest laboratory established in Ottati, in the province of Salerno, by a consortium comprising Euro.soft, Latitudo40, and Earth Sensing. This real-world testbed is specifically designed to validate the CACAO solution by utilizing advanced dendrometric (relating to trees) measurements, including LIDAR technology and direct field surveys, to refine its AI models before global deployment. In addition to these core validation activities, the laboratory facilitates broader forest research such as evaluating climate change impacts on biomass and implementing autonomous drones for wildfire prevention.

By integrating satellite monitoring and sophisticated algorithms to map carbon storage and calculate credits, the facility ensures full compliance with international certification standards.

The future is scalable

Starting from the forests of Southern Italy, CACAO aims to provide a global, scalable solution. By making carbon offsetting local, digital, and verifiable, the platform ensures that protecting a forest isn't just an ethical choice - it's a viable economic one.

🎥 For more information, watch the recording of CACAO’s presentation at the October 2025 ClimateSCOpe.