Afforestration
Agricultural management
Green Earth Carbon Solutions LLC
Blue Carbon
Renewable Energy
About Carbon Credits/Offsets
The terms carbon offset and carbon offset credit (or simply “offset credit”) are used interchangeably, though they can mean slightly different things. A carbon offset broadly refers to a reduction in GHG emissions – or an increase in carbon storage (e.g., through land restoration or the planting of trees) – that is used to compensate for emissions that occur elsewhere. A carbon offset credit is a transferrable instrument certified by governments or independent certification bodies to represent an emission reduction of one metric tonne of CO2, or an equivalent amount of other GHGs (see Text Box, below). The purchaser of an offset credit can “retire” it to claim the underlying reduction towards their own GHG reduction goals.
The VCM (Voluntary Carbon Market) suffered a serious setback last year (2023) when media investigations into projects discovered serious defects within them. The industry is making significant changes to become much more credible, thereby making credits more valuable.
The Voluntary market was created primarily to enhance and support nature-based & technology-based projects by creating an investment base to grow these projects. Our efforts, along with many other groups, is to create transparency into the marketplace for creating many more projects to help remove carbon from our atmosphere.
Core Portfolio Criteria
We follow specific criteria for our core portfolio, where each project is evaluated across the following key factors: Additionality: Assessing whether the project would happen without financial support. Permanence: Evaluating the project’s ability to sequester carbon for at least 1000 years. Verifiability: Determining the level of certainty and measurability of the project’s impact. Vintage: Considering the age of the project (favoring newer projects but conducting further research). Co-Benefits: Identifying positive social and environmental impacts beyond carbon reduction. Low Environmental Risk: Ensuring that the project poses minimal risk to the environment.
Specifications and Considerations: Exclusion of projects with known environmental degradation risk (e.g., hydropower plant projects). Exclusion of projects with known additionality, permanence, or verifiability issues (e.g., certain afforestation projects). Balancing cost by supporting both low-cost offsets in less developed countries and higher-cost projects on emerging technologies or in developed countries.
We avoid projects with low scores in additionality or environmental risk. We encourage clients to review project profiles, ratings, and assurances in collaboration with our leadership team. While direct verification of all project attributes is challenging, we rely on ratings agencies, verifiers, and information provided by the projects themselves to assess project quality.