The Voluntary Carbon Offset Market

Does Your Project Have What It Takes?

You may have seen competitors selling carbon offsets and wondered, “Can we do that?”

Maybe. But those emissions reductions you achieved for regulatory compliance can’t be sold as offsets. Neither can the improvements at a new facility that you recently built. The only projects that can be certified for the voluntary carbon market are those that create new, additional emission reductions (or carbon capture) that would not have happened without the investment from selling the offsets.

Key Points

If your company is considering whether to create carbon credits for sale on the voluntary market, there are a number of key concepts to understand before beginning:

• How do carbon credits work? How are they measured?
• Lifecycle of a carbon credit: Five essential steps
• What requirements do projects have to meet to produce carbon credits?
• Choosing a carbon offset program or framework
• Six steps to entering the carbon offset market

Why It Matters

The voluntary carbon offset market provides marketplace funding for projects that reduce carbon emissions. If your organization wants to earn some of that funding for its own projects, you need to understand from the start what kind of projects can qualify and what the process is for having your project listed to sell carbon credits on a registry.

*Click to enlarge the image below.