Haters will say that the entire framework for carbon credits is flawed and point to obvious historical problems in the carbon markets. The EU ETS and the Californian compliance markets are hugely important in driving down carbon emissions and have spurred a trend to rethink the way timberlands are managed and agricultural assets are operated. ( Cool Effect is another company acting as a carbon credit retailer, but operates on a non-profit basis - charging fees just sufficient to offset its operating costs.) For-profit carbon credit retailers (e.g., TerraPass and atmosfair) make money just the same way Wal-Mart does – they buy credits in the wholesale market from a developer like Bluesource, packages them into bite-sized portions, and offers them to consumers at a mark-up. Once these checks are made, the Standards organization issues it serial-numbered carbon credits which can be sold to the cement manufacturer to allow the latter to meet its regulatory requirements in the short-term.Īs an aside, when an end user like you or I rent a car and choose to spend $4.99 per day on carbon offsets, we’re actually buying carbon offsets from a retailer.
#Buying carbon credits verification
Once the landowner’s conservation project is independently verified, the appropriate regulatory agency (such as the California Air Standards Board) reviews the project, makes sure it adheres to its regulatory requirements, and checks that the verification was done by approved providers. These firms, a list of which you can find on Climate Action Reserve’s website, validate projects up front, then verify that the validated projects continue to operate in accordance with the protocol on an ongoing basis. The organizations behind the standards generate fees from managing the certifications of projects as well as handling the logistics of issuing and retiring credits.Īll high-quality projects are subject to review by third-party auditing firms. Some examples of private Standards are the Climate Action Reserve, American Carbon Registry (managed by Winrock), and the Verified Carbon Standard (managed by Verra).
The California Air Resources Board is an important regulatory agency in the carbon credit world Standards can be government agencies (in the case of compliance markets) or non-profit organizations (which provide services for both compliance and voluntary markets). Each Standard has a particular set of rules or “protocols” that sets out how carbon credits will be assigned to different types of projects based on various criteria. The landowner in our example works with Bluesource to develop a project and register it as adhering to one of several carbon offset Standards. They say that there are riches in niches, and Bluesource’s niche is one with the mother of all tailwinds as politicians and businessmen begin to wake themselves to the necessity of taking action to mitigate the effects of climate change. and also finds buyers for the emission credits generated by smaller developers’ projects.īluesource derives a fee for advising clients and developing projects, and also takes a cut of revenues generated in the sale of others’ credits. Bluesource is the largest environmental projects developer in the U.S. One of the most important companies in this advisory niche is Bluesource, which operates a full-service environmental markets firm from offices in the U.S. To get this very specialized help, our landowner would turn to an adviser with deep experience in carbon offset regulations and markets. It also probably needs help in planning the timber conservation project so it generates the maximum amount of credits possible. The landowner must jump through some regulatory hoops to make that offset process happen. View of Waldo Lake, Willamette National Forest US FOREST SERVICE
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