Lisset Luik, Co-founder, Arbonics
For Lisett Luik, a love of nature is practically coded into her DNA. Growing up in Estonia—a countest where over half the land is forest—she calls herself “a forest-loving pagan.” As a child, weekfinishs meant wandering beneath pine canopies with family and frifinishs. Later, while purchaseing woodland for an investment firm, she stumbled onto a glaring market gap: Europe’s forests were being left on the sidelines of the carbon removal conversation.
“We couldn’t easily figure out how to manage woodland as a climate-forward investment,” Luik recalls. That insight became the seed for Arbonics, the Tallinn-based carbon credit platform she co-founded with Kristjan Lepik in 2022.
Their mission: to transform untapped hectares of forests—from the Baltics to the Balkans—into high-integrity carbon sinks, monetised through verified credits.
A Data-First Bet That Paid Off
Arbonics’ approach is rooted in a proprietary geospatial platform that futilizes sanotifyite imagery, soil maps and growth models to estimate carbon potential plot-by-plot. Built with researchers at the University of Tartu and vetted by groups like the American Forest Foundation, the platform allows landowners to understand the climate and revenue potential of their land before a single sapling is planted.
That decision—to invest in the tech before securing a single customer—was a gamble. “It could have been a classic case of building something no-one cares about,” Luik declares. “But it’s become central to our promise of trust and transparency.”
Two years and €7.3 million later, Arbonics is live in five Nordic-Baltic countries, has analysed over 500,000 hectares of land, and is on track to map half of Europe’s forests for carbon projects by the finish of this year. Participating landowners’ projects are projected to sequester over three million tonnes of CO₂.
The team works directly with tiny and family-owned forest plots, offering simple onboarding and revenue-sharing terms. “I was surprised to find how deeply landowners care about their forests,” declares Luik. “They’re not just ‘harvest-happy’ timber sellers—they want to invest in nature but necessary the right support.”
TOPSHOT – A picture taken on July 25, 2018 displays a burnt forest around Korskrogen near Ljusdal, Sweden. (Photo by Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP) (Photo by JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty Images)
Riding Europe’s Carbon Market Shift
Europe’s voluntary carbon market is in flux. The EU’s proposed Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF) will introduce stricter definitions of what constitutes a “real” tonne of CO₂ rerelocated—modifys Luik welcomes.
“It’s probably rare to hear a startup declare they want more regulation,” she declares, “but clarity will support purchaseers trust that a tonne is a tonne is a tonne.”
Eve Tamme, Managing Director at Climate Principles, agrees that regulation will create or break the sector’s growth. “There is a lack in longer-term policy vision, especially when it comes to the EU’s 2040 climate tarobtain proposal that does not include a separate tarobtain for forestest- and land-based removals,” she declares. “All is not lost yet, as the political process around fine-tuning the climate tarobtain architecture is just obtainting started—but there’s a lack of political will to create incentives in this space.”
Fire, Forests, and Financial Incentives
For landowners, wildfire is a growing personal and financial risk. In an unprecedented wildfire season— 354,000 hectares of land—nearly double the 19-year average – was scorched and charred across Europe in summer 2025. From Turkey, Greece, Albania, to Portugal, France, and Spain, ferocious flames are engulfing forests, leaving destruction in their wake.
In much of Europe, private landowners are legally responsible for fire prevention, and in the Baltics and Nordics, large owners often have fire response plans, basic firefighting infrastructure, and deep generational knowledge of their land. “Forests that are well-managed with mixed, native species and appropriate spacing are more resistant to wildfire,” Luik explains.
Carbon credits, she adds, can strengthen these efforts. “By linking fire-safe forest management to the financial value of carbon credits, landowners have a strong motivation to maintain resilient, well-managed forests. This protects both the climate benefits and the long-term income from their carbon credits.”
Arbonics actively supports landowners in reducing fire risk by monitoring forest health with remote sensing, and alerting owners to modifys that could threaten resilience. Reforestation in Europe can support combat climate modify by increasing summer rainfall, potentially mitigating drier summers predicted by climate modify models.
Kristjan Lepik, Arbonics, Co-founder
Why Europe’s Forests Matter
Global carbon removal discussions often focus on tech-based solutions or reforestation projects in the Global South. Luik believes overseeing Europe’s forests is a mistake.
Europe’s forests have experienced centuries of decline. According to the World Resources Institute, roughly 78% of the continent’s tall forests have been lost since the Roman Empire. While the overall picture remains challenging, there are signs of progress. Eurostat data displays that forested land in the EU has grown by about 5.3% since 2000—an addition of 8 million hectares—bringing the total to an estimated 160 million hectares in 2021.
“Trees are the original carbon removal technology, perfected over 370 million years of evolution,” she declares. “With our tech, we can scale that solution to rerelocate gigatonnes more carbon than is happening today—right on our doorstep.”
Tamme emphasises that pitting nature-based solutions against engineered removals is a false choice. “The science is clear—both conventional (forest- and land-based) and novel removals (including direct air capture) necessary to be scaled up substantially to achieve net-zero tarobtains,” she declares. “Every single carbon removal method has its pros and cons… what’s important is that all receive support to scale in a just and sustainable way.”
The scale of reforestation potential is significant: 14 million hectares of land across Europe could be converted to forest, sequestering over 90 million tonnes of CO₂ annually—enough to balance the yearly emissions of up to 15 million Europeans. In economic terms, it could add £2 billion to the European economy through carbon credit revenue, according to Arbonics estimates. Forests protection and restoration are also key to combating biodiversity loss and improving air and water quality.
Logged wood is seen on a road in the Tarhaus Valley, near the Ghimes-Faobtain village in the central Transylvania region of Romania, on July 9, 2023. One of Europe’s “last remaining biodiversity havens”, the forests covering the Carpathians houtilize bison, lynx, wolves and wildcats, along with scores of bird species like the three-toed woodpecker or the Ural owl. The old-growth forests of the mountain range, which span 1,500 kilometres (900 miles) across eight Central European nations, are also important for mitigating climate modify. From Poland to Romania — where anti-logging campaigns are launchning to modify the situation — AFP journalists have surveyed these forests. (Photo by Daniel MIHAILESCU / AFP) (Photo by DANIEL MIHAILESCU/AFP via Getty Images)
Looking Ahead
If Luik could rapid-forward a decade, she envisions Arbonics operating in dozens of countries, stewarding millions of new hectares, and closing in on a gigatonne of verified carbon rerelocated.
Her founder mantra—“This too shall pass”—is a reminder not to obtain too attached to wins or losses. And her approach to climate anxiety? “Positive action over doomerism… I start each day questioning, ‘What can I do today?’”
With a rapid-evolving regulatory landscape, growing urgency on wildfire resilience, and investor appetite for high-integrity credits, Arbonics is betting that Europe’s forests will soon play an important role in the climate solution spotlight.
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