Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Forestry projects, such as reforestation, afforestation (the introduction of forests in lands
where there were no forests before), and deforestation avoidance.
●
Destruction of industrial gases with high global warming potential (e.g., hydrofluorocarbons).
●
Energy efficiency projects, which includes fuel efficiency, energy efficiency, and combined
heat and power generation.
●
Some GHG offset products are specific to particular projects (e.g., hydropower),
but generally they represent a combination of several reduction project (i.e., sources) to
compensate for GHG emissions. Table 7.4 presents a list of carbon offset providers around the
world that sell carbon credits to large and small companies with a variable number of reduc-
tion projects.
Carbon credits have a vintage year, which is basically the year when the reduction has
taken place, and can be used to offset emissions for that particular year. For instance, offsets
sold against a reforestation project that has been certified to sequestrate
x
amount of carbon
during the year 2005 has a 2005 vintage; therefore, those certificates can be used to offset only
emissions during the year 2005.
Because the selling of carbon offsets is virtually an unregulated activity, there are different
mechanisms to measure and certify emission reductions. This is called the
certification regime
.
For example, the clean development mechanism (CDM) is a certification process designed to
certify reduction projects in developing countries that can earn “certified emission reduction
(CER) credits” that then can be sold in the world market (CDM, n.d.).
Table 7.4
Selected providers of carbon offsets for large and small companies.
Provider name
Location
Number of
projects
Price in 2010-US
dollars per tonne
Tricorona
Sweden
69
25.95
The CarbonNeutral Company
United Kingdom
28
13.26
Sustainable Carbon
Brazil
14
8.43
Carbon Advice Group Plc
United Kingdom
12
14.00
Climate Neutral Group
Netherlands
9
12.97
Verus Carbon Neutral
Georgia (U.S.)
6
2.75
Clear, the Carbon Offset
Company
United Kingdom
5
21.84
ClearSky Climate Solutions
Montana (U.S.)
5
12.00
ZEROCO2
Canada
3
20.30
CLIMACT
Belgium
2
35.03
Less
Canada
2
45.67
Carbon Retirement
United Kingdom
1
21.84
Global Tan Energy
Turkey
1
7.14
LiveNeutral
California (U.S.)
1
14.00
Carbon Conscious Ltd
Australia
0
20.30
Carbon Tanzania
Tanzania
0
10.00
Copenhagen Carbon
Management Ltd
United Kingdom
0
11.03
emission
Portugal
0
18.47
RSJ Ozone
India
0
4.75
Silva Tree
Panama
0
18.16
Sterling Biosciences LLC
Ohio (U.S.)
0
4.99
Data obtained from Carbon Catalog, n.d.
