Buy carbon credits

Cost
LOW
Cost
MEDIUM
Cost
HIGH
EFFORT
low
EFFORT
medium
EFFORT
HIGH
IMPACT
low
IMPACT
MEDIUM
IMPACT
HIGH

Some carbon credits are not certified by third party auditors or carbon offset schemes, however they are also legit and verified. Some prefer to go with uncertified credits to allocate the most of the credit cost to the offset program, as third party certification of carbon credits can be expensive. This high certification / middlemen price has 2 consequences:

  1. only a fraction of the money allocated to positive impact actually reaches the project on the ground. To take into account middlemen's margins, some recommend to buy 4 times more carbon credits than necessary to really offset one's emissions.
  2. only the biggest organisations can afford it, de facto excluding smaller organisations that still need funding to create climate positive actions. Remember you still need to choose the highest quality of credits and projects!

To be considered high quality, any carbon offsetting project need to meet a number of quality criteria. You should plan to carry out independent due diligence on the quality of individual credits purchased throughout your procurement process.

74%

of carbon credit issued in 2021 come from independent standards, totalling 352 million credits
(Open Knowledge)

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES