Episode 80: Chestnut Carbon, Shannon Smith

This isn’t planting trees—it’s a return to the wisdom we clear-cut away. In this episode of The Capitalist Hippie, host Marco Pimentel sits down with Shannon, Chief Commercial Officer at Chestnut Carbon to show you what it looks like when someone rebuilds carbon offsets from the ground up—literally. 

While traditional carbon offset projects rely on leased land, unverifiable baselines, and opaque methodologies, Chestnut Carbon is flipping the playbook. Backed by $160 million in funding, they’re buying land outright, planting diverse native forests, and using proprietary MRV (Measurement, Reporting, and Verification) tools to ensure credibility at every step.

“We don’t issue credits against the carbon that’s already in the trees… we really just measure and sell carbon credits against the growth of the trees.” — Shannon Smith

Instead of monoculture plantations grown for quick harvest, Chestnut restores ecosystems that would’ve existed 100 years ago. Instead of promising future impact, they sell verified carbon removal only after it’s sequestered. Their model is slower. It’s more capital-intensive. But it’s also smarter—and far more scalable in the long run. With clients like Microsoft and Mercedes F1 signing 25-year offtake deals, Chestnut is proving that nature-based carbon removal can be credible, verifiable, and investable.