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Finding trustworthy carbon removal and avoidance projects is key to successful carbon management. Third-party verification can establish this trust.
When properly vetted, purchasing a stake in a carbon removal or avoidance project is a great way to assure your customers that you’re serious about climate-conscious business. Carbon offsets and credits offer a path to partner in real and lasting change and conservation efforts.
However, investing in carbon management can feel risky when there are headlines about bad projects that passed off less-than-authentic carbon credit programs. Some companies have overstated the carbon reductions their credits generated and have left local communities worse off than they started.
Without a system for thorough third-party verification and an offset procurer with a deep commitment to verified projects, the carbon credits market risks losing its reputation for reducing overall carbon dioxide output and slowing the factors that cause climate change.
Coral is combining climate expertise with knowledge from its in-house AI and blockchain experts to centralize carbon management information from scientific literature, specialized industry knowledge, and regulatory-informed best practice.
Even a few bad headlines can bring the validity and integrity of carbon markets into question in the public eye. This can be devastating for companies that genuinely want to reduce their footprint and integrate legitimate, credible climate action into their business models. Project administrators who recognize the value — and necessity — of trustworthy dealings will commit to the needed transparency and documentation involved in third-party verification.
To demonstrate that projects are legitimate, companies offering carbon credits for purchase should seek verification by an outside organization that’s equipped to truly understand their project’s plan, scope, and impact. Independent verification builds trust with the companies that buy the credits and, later on, with customers who want to purchase from climate-conscious companies.
Ultimately, this will lead to a more robust, traceable and trusted carbon market across the board, while also allowing companies to integrate climate risk into their daily operations.
Third-party verification in carbon management is currently provided by a wide range of companies. A few with strong reputations include:
While the specifics vary, every standardization organization involves project planning and review, revision of plans to include necessary steps for transparency and long-term sustainability, and meticulous data collection to demonstrate that the project’s impact will bear out in reality as they expect.
Third-party verification organizations are careful to make sure that they are knowledgeable about what makes a sustainable project. This means thoroughly studying the data that will show the project’s feasibility as well as the likely short and long-term effects of the undertaking.
These verification companies must also ensure that they don’t have conflict-of-interest ties to other companies that could jeopardize their independent status. If a third-party verification company has ties to a larger company, for instance, they could feel pressure to certify projects that serve their parent company’s interests rather than only projects that meet their stringent standards.
Reputable third-party verification organizations are able to evaluate carbon projects based on recognized metrics and certifications. Such metrics are growing more complex over time, as the world begins to recognize just how complex reducing the human impact on climate change is going to be.
In theory, carbon offsets and carbon credits are a great way for companies who care about slowing the impact of climate change to meaningfully invest in the future. When your work produces carbon impact, opting to invest in projects that either remove carbon that is already in the environment or protect places like old-growth forests that sequester a large amount of carbon already can go a long way in building trust with your customers.
Carbon offsets and carbon credits are not created equal, however, and both reputable programs and programs that exaggerate their impacts can find an audience for their efforts. That’s why most companies participating in carbon management would benefit from the assistance of an offset procurer with stringent due diligence policies.
One example where your procurer might be able to help you compare and choose between projects is in claims of avoidance versus removal. To know the true impact of the credits or offsets you’re purchasing, you must understand that avoidance and removal are completely different claims. To avoid producing carbon is one thing, while removing existing carbon from the environment is another. One thing to keep in mind is that defining best practice in carbon management is a fine balance between scientific and regulatory verification and inter-industry, real world experience.
A simple example of the difference lies in forestry: to create a project that protects existing forests is usually an effort in carbon avoidance, since deforesting that area would remove a valuable carbon sink. Reforestation, however, is an effort at carbon removal — reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Each of these sub-activities need to qualify in their own right to mitigate risks around additionality. For example, in assessing a forestry project, Coral would consider whether the forest would have existed with or without carbon investments.
When carbon management began to take hold as both a sustainability measure and a way to showcase corporate responsibility to customers, less scrupulous projects did crop up where the positive impacts were exaggerated or simply not investigated. Verification helps you find impactful ways to reduce your carbon footprint as a company, while also proving your trustworthiness to your customer base.
While this leaves the carbon market sphere playing catch up to remedy the negative perceptions, it’s a good exercise in keeping even the largest companies accountable for their environmental claims, while facilitating SMEs to similarly take action. Each of these lessons provide insight into how to more appropriately and effectively make climate action accessible across the board.
This is where Coral comes in; we’re committed to enabling credible climate action through data analysis and non-disruptive solutions which adapt seamlessly into virtually any business model. We all share a common goal in supporting widespread, credible and verifiable initiatives which ultimately support long-term direct carbon or greenhouse gas reductions, and offering an expert, holistic, end-to-end view is at the core of our business.
Coral’s goal is for companies that are interested in carbon management to feel confident in the offset projects available. We offer clarity by preferencing projects that:
We also want to make sure the project is doing what it says it’s doing. If anything about the impact of the project seems inflated or double-counted, that raises a red flag. We only work with projects that clearly benefit local communities in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.
As you can see, there are many ways that carbon credits might not offer all they promise, but with third-party verification and a platform committed to real carbon impact, you can reap the benefits.
Coral’s philosophy is that companies create genuine change and choose better carbon emissions offsets when they have all the information: our AI-assisted technology can help you understand and reduce your carbon footprint, make informed decisions using predictive forecasting models and offset any remaining impact with credible carbon credits. This is core to any valuable climate strategy, where offsets and credits supplement your overarching goals.
To get started with carbon management and feel clarity in your climate action choices, schedule a demo today.
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