Beyond Carbon: Do Good, Not Harm
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.
This series has explored how time, money, and information play critical roles in the quality of carbon credits OffsetC offers.
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.
Greater Good: Co-benefits
Co-benefits describe positive effects that a project may have on local communities and the surrounding environment beyond its carbon reductions. These co-benefits take many forms and are often specific to the project type and local context in which the project is operating. They include:
Improved local air quality
Preservation of biodiversity
Restoration of habitat
Reduction of health hazards from pollutants
New jobs associated with the project
Creation of green spaces
Environmental education
Production of clean energy
Many of these co-benefits align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that support “peace and prosperity for people and planet”. All projects offered by OffsetC have three or more co-benefits, in most cases including multiple UN SDGs.
For example, OffsetC offers credits from the Lebanon Landfill Gas to Electricity project in Lebanon, PA, USA. The project issues carbon credits based on the capture and destruction of methane—an extremely potent greenhouse gas—that results from organic decomposition in landfills. Distinct from these methane reductions, the project also:
Produces electricity and exports it to the grid
Creates approximately five well-paid local jobs
Improves local air quality
Houses an on-site education center, where students and other groups can learn about the technology and benefits of methane capture
Those co-benefits, along with the project’s primary activity, support three UN SDGs: good health and well-being, affordable and clean energy, as well as climate action.
While co-benefits demonstrate a carbon project’s potential to do additional good, OffsetC also keeps vigilant to ensure that carbon projects do no harm. Project qualities that help prevent harm include:
Clear communication and agreements between local communities and project developers
Continued monitoring and reporting of project efficacy and outcomes
Applying the best current scientific and engineering principles during project implementation and verification
All OffsetC projects have been examined using the above principles to ensure there are no inadvertent harmful effects.
Keep Learning with OffsetC
Future posts will focus on other aspects of carbon credits and the carbon market, like the role of Rating agencies and additional criteria to consider when purchasing credits. Can’t get enough of these deep dives? Get the OffsetC app to get these blog posts delivered right to your phone as soon as they’re live.
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Our Understanding Carbon Offsets Series:
Part 4: Trust, but Verify
Part 5: Beyond Carbon: Do Good, Not Harm
Trust, but Verify
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.
In previous posts, we explored the role that time and money play in establishing the quality of carbon credits. This post discusses the last criterion OffsetC applies to assess quality: verifiability. What do we know about a project and how do we know it?
Verifiability means that a project is well-managed by:
Keeping good records
Using best scientific and engineering practices to monitor project operations and outcomes
Providing public access to documentation so that anyone can verify the project’s activities, carbon offsets, and credit retirements
Confirming the project’s documented methods and activities via regular site visits
This information is crucial to assess all other attributes. It permits all players in the carbon market to know what they’re buying and verify the offsets. All projects offered through OffsetC have the necessary documentation, on-site analysis, and access to carbon credit transaction data. Rating agencies and buyers need this data to ensure that we’re having the expected impact.
Knowing what we know: Verifiability
The methods and documents to verify a project usually run hundreds of pages per project. They differ depending on the type of carbon project. A reforestation project’s methods and standards look very different from those of a methane capture project. But verifiability has three main parts shared by all projects.
First, there is the body of documentation that confirms whether a project has met – and continues to meet – all the appropriate technical, legal, and regulatory standards. Every project OffsetC offers makes this documentation publicly accessible.
Second, the carbon removal or avoidance can be precisely estimated independent of what the project developers claim as their reductions. Independent third-party rating agencies evaluate specific projects’ carbon reductions using the available documentation. They publish objective reports that inform carbon credit purchasers’ decisions about which projects to support.
The rating agency Renoster(link), for instance, primarily evaluates the kinds of ‘avoided deforestation’ projects we discussed in an earlier blog post. If you want to wade deeper into how they estimate a project’s carbon reductions, check out their freely published analyses and videos of each project they rate. We love their open-source, informative, and transparent ethos.
Third, verifiability means OffsetC can track a carbon credit across its life-cycle. Briefly, a credit is ‘born’ when a project actually removes or avoids one ton of carbon dioxide emissions. The credit ‘lives its life’ being bought, sold and traded, much like a stock. However, unlike a stock, every carbon credit will eventually be ‘retired’. This means it is no longer able to be bought, sold, or traded, and hence the corresponding carbon is removed from atmospheric circulation, literally.
Retiring a Carbon Credit
Once a specific credit has been retired, that information is publicly and irrevocably published by ‘registries’, such as Verra and Isometric, that enforce standards and keep records in the carbon marketplace. OffsetC retires every single credit we buy on your behalf within one month. As an OffsetC user, you can see which credits your funds helped retire in your monthly impact report.
In the final post in this series, we’ll discuss additional co-benefits a project may provide to local communities, distinct from its carbon activities.
Heard enough and want to start taking climate action by offsetting your fuel purchases? Join our carbon crusade!
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Our Understanding Carbon Offsets Series:
Part 4: Trust, but Verify
Part 5: Beyond Carbon: Do Good, Not Harm
Are carbon credits financially necessary?
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.
In the last post, we introduced the concept of carbon credit durability – how long a project locks away carbon emissions. In this post, we explore the role that money plays in determining the quality of a carbon credit.
There are two linked questions:
How much does a given project cost to offset carbon emissions?
Was sale of carbon credits necessary to achieve its carbon reductions?
On the surface, the first question is straightforward. Just check the price of the project’s carbon credit. By definition, every carbon credit equals the removal or avoidance of one metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions. A credit’s price indicates a project’s cost to offset that carbon dioxide.
If all projects were identical in attributes like durability and additionality, then the obvious strategy to maximize climate impact would be to buy the most credits for the cheapest price. However, carbon projects vary widely in their attributes and, hence, quality. If you only looked at the price, a $10/ton project might look attractive – except that it has a high risk of not sequestering that carbon long enough to have a significant impact (low durability).
Buying the cheapest credits rarely corresponds to the greatest real-world impact. You get what you pay for.
Money well spent: Additionality
The second question addresses an essential and nuanced attribute of a carbon credit: additionality. For a carbon credit to be considered high quality, funds generated from its sale must result in ‘additional’ carbon reductions.
Consider an avoided deforestation project that receives money from carbon credits versus one that does not. If the land in question was not under serious threat of logging or degradation, then credits sold to preserve it did not result in additional carbon reductions. The forest would have been preserved with or without the sale of those credits, and the funds could have been used more effectively on another carbon project. The credits have low additionality.
In contrast, if the sale of credits allowed the project to purchase and save a plot of land from deforestation, it prevented the release of the carbon stored in the forest. Those credits had high additionality.
Context matters for every type of project. If a methane-leak mitigation project operates in a developed country where local regulations require methane capture, credits sold for that project are not necessary. They would have low additionality. A similar project operating in a developing nation that lacks methane regulations might require carbon credits to fund the mitigation. In that context, the credits are additional.
Additionality changes over time. The cost of commercial solar power has dropped by about 80% and solar panel performance has increased over the last 15 years. Solar power is now economically viable on its own. Such projects displace emissions, but they rarely require the sale of renewable energy carbon credits to move forward. The developer already has an economic incentive.
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.
In the next post, we’ll explore the third crucial attribute we use to assess the quality of projects we support: verifiability.
Heard enough and want to start taking climate action by offsetting your fuel purchases? Join our carbon crusade!
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Our Understanding Carbon Offsets Series:
Part 3: Are carbon credits financially necessary?
Part 4: Trust, but Verify
Part 5: Beyond Carbon: Do Good, Not Harm
Choosing Carbon Projects Built to Last
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.
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. In the last post, we emphasized that every carbon credit possesses attributes that: (1) indicate whether purchasing that credit is a good value and (2) 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 (a.k.a. high-integrity) carbon credit must address: time, money, and information. In this post, we focus on the role of time.
Lock it away: Durability and Permanence
To be considered high quality, credits must be ‘durable’ or ‘permanent.’ Whatever activity the project engages in, it must result in carbon removal or avoidance that lasts a long time. A high-quality credit offsets carbon longer than the lifetime of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, typically about 100 years. Credits with low durability re-emit the carbon before the reductions have an appreciable impact. They are not effective in halting climate change.
OffsetC offers projects projected to have durability greater than 100 years. In some cases, they’re projected to last more than 1,000 years. These long time scales give humanity much-needed runway to develop technologies and implement policies for a carbon-sustainable future.
Durability encompasses various natural and human risks to the longevity of a project’s carbon reductions. Some newer technologies, like direct air capture or enhanced rock weathering, chemically transform carbon dioxide into solid form and store it underground for hundreds to thousands of years. They are highly durable.
Don’t Get Burned
Conversely, sometimes projects we feel good about, like planting trees, may be at risk from processes that undo their carbon benefits, like wildfires or illegal logging. Those events re-emit sequestered carbon into the atmosphere, making such projects significantly less durable.
Beyond the project type, carbon credit durability is also driven by project specifics and context. Consider two reforestation projects. One is on the US west coast and faces mounting risk of wildfire. The other project is in the US southeast where wildfire is rare. All else being equal, the second project would have higher durability, because in any given year there is a lower probability that it will suffer a wildfire.
Depending on the project type, assessments of durability may need to be updated as climate change and local conditions evolve. Generally, however, projects that stably store carbon (e.g. deep underground) or remove potent greenhouse gasses (e.g. methane mitigation) have high durability.
To learn how well a project spends its money to achieve its carbon reduction targets, read our next post on ‘additionality’.
Heard enough and want to start taking climate action by offsetting your fuel purchases? Join our carbon crusade!
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Our Understanding Carbon Offsets Series:
Part 2: Choosing Carbon Projects Built to Last
Part 4: Trust, but Verify
Part 5: Beyond Carbon: Do Good, Not Harm
Building an Informed Carbon Credit Community
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!
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. To counter misinformation, trite sound bites, and bland explanations, we are opening ourselves to a deeper dive into our methodology and the projects your purchases support. Please reach out with feedback and questions. Let’s make our future communications a conversation – not a lecture!
This post is the first in a series that discusses how OffsetC evaluates carbon projects and how we view the carbon market.
Our climate actions must focus on behavioral changes that reduce consumption and waste. For activities that directly and unavoidably produce carbon emissions, like driving a gasoline-powered car, carbon offsetting is also a crucial part of the solution.
Offsets address emissions here and now. They also fund the development of emerging carbon removal technologies that will play an essential role in future solutions to the climate crisis. This series will bolster your confidence in the climate actions you’re taking through OffsetC – and hopefully provides you with the information to convince friends and family to join our crusade.
Trust is the foundation
Like any product you buy, carbon credits have attributes that allow you to assess their ‘quality.’ Those attributes indicate how effective credits will be in achieving their intended purpose.
What we mean by ‘quality’ and who determines whether a project is high-quality are central questions for anyone using carbon credits to reduce their carbon footprint. Ultimately, the answers boil down to trust:
Trust that a project can and will meet its carbon reduction targets
Trust in the specific methods and technologies employed by a project
Trust that project reporting and monitoring are accurate
Trust that funds are well spent in service of climate impact
Without that trust, from purchasers like you who fund these activities, there is no carbon marketplace. We want to build that trust by radical transparency with the OffsetC community.
Arming You with Knowledge
Assessing a carbon project’s quality and impact can get quite technical. It requires a deeper dive than this series of posts provides. Our goal here is to acquaint you with basic concepts and lingo, as well as our stance on relevant criteria and issues. With that beginning knowledge, you can dive as deep into the details as you like on our Projects page.
We’ll start by focusing on three essential attributes we use to assess quality of the credits we purchase on your behalf:
Durability or Permanence refers to how long a project’s carbon removal or avoidance lasts—the longer the better.
Additionality measures whether carbon credits are necessary for a project to reach its reduction targets—ensuring your money is well spent.
Verifiability assesses how well a project is documented, vetted, and tracked over time to ensure it reaches its carbon reduction goals.
To gain insight into carbon credit attributes and how we use them to select projects, check out the next post and join us on our carbon crusade.
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Our Understanding Carbon Offsets Series:
Part 1: Building an Informed Carbon Credit Community
Part 4: Trust, but Verify
Part 5: Beyond Carbon: Do Good, Not Harm
Hello World
At OffsetC, we believe that small, consistent actions can create meaningful change when done collectively. By offsetting your emissions, you’re not just helping the planet—you’re joining a community of individuals who are voting with their wallets for a sustainable future
Welcome to OffsetC, where we’re working to make climate action easy, meaningful, and accessible for everyone. We’re a passionate, diverse team of climate professionals brought together through the Climatebase Fellowship Program, united by one shared vision: a healthier, cleaner planet.
At OffsetC, we know that for most of us, driving a car is an essential part of daily life, but it’s also a key source of carbon emissions. That’s where we come in. OffsetC helps individuals take ownership of their carbon footprint by offering an easy way to offset vehicle emissions directly from your phone. Our app makes it simple to fund high-impact projects—like reforestation and methane capture—that absorb or prevent carbon from entering the atmosphere, meaning you can drive with the confidence that you’re making a positive environmental impact.
We select only top-tier carbon credit projects that meet rigorous environmental standards and contribute to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Every project is thoroughly vetted by independent third-party rating agencies like BeZero, Calyx Global, and Sylvera. This ensures that your investment supports projects with long-term impact and benefits for local communities.
Using OffsetC is as easy as filling up your tank. After linking your payment card, we’ll automatically calculate the emissions from each gas purchase. Then, with just one click, you can buy the carbon credits needed to offset those emissions, knowing that each dollar you spend goes directly toward trusted, impactful climate solutions.
At OffsetC, we believe that small, consistent actions can create meaningful change when done collectively. By offsetting your emissions, you’re not just helping the planet—you’re joining a community of individuals who are voting with their wallets for a sustainable future.
Thank you for being here. We’re excited to embark on this journey together and can’t wait to see the change we create as a community. Let’s drive climate action forward, one offset at a time.
Join us and learn more about how you can make every mile matter.