This series has explored how time, money, and information play critical roles in the quality of carbon credits. However, those attributes are not the whole picture. In addition to carbon reductions, every project affects its local community and environment – usually beneficially. A project’s carbon reductions benefit the global environment that we all share. Local co-benefits impact the people actually performing the work of the project and the communities hosting it. Any carbon project must respect and protect the health, values, origins, and practices of these local communities.

What do we know about a project and how do we know it? This information is crucial to assess all other attributes carbon credit, and permits all players in the carbon market to know what they’re buying and verify the offsets.

What role does money plays in determining the quality of a carbon credit? Buying the cheapest credits rarely corresponds to the greatest real-world impact. You get what you pay for.

At OffsetC, we only offer projects where the sale of credits results in significant additional carbon reductions, based on analysis of the project’s context, economics, and specific activities.

Our mission at OffsetC is to build trust and confidence in carbon credits. We explain how they work and which attributes we use to determine their quality and efficacy. Every carbon credit possesses attributes that: indicate whether purchasing that credit is a good value and whether it will meet our planet’s urgent needs for carbon reduction. 

While the definition of quality varies somewhat, everyone agrees on three attributes that a high-quality carbon credit must address: time, money, and information. In this post, we focus on the role of time. 

If you’re using OffsetC, you’re not just purchasing carbon credits. You’re joining a community that needs to trust that carbon credits provide meaningful climate action. We are opening ourselves to a deeper dive into our methodology and the projects your purchases support. Let’s make our future communications a conversation!