Green-e Climate Overview

Green-e Climate is a certification program that sets consumer protection and environmental integrity standards for greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions (offsets) sold in the voluntary market. It is a three-step verification and certification service for offsets that ensures:

• Supply Equals Sales: Because offsets are an intangible product, Green-e Climate certification ensures that an offset sellers’ supply is verified and equivalent to the amount of offsets sold to customers (“retired” on their behalf). Certification ensures that those offsets are not sold to, claimed by or retired by anyone else. It also verifies that when offsets are sold, the appropriate quantity of emission reductions from each project type was retired.


• GHG Reductions are Independently Certified: Customers buying offsets need assurance that their purchase results in real, measurable, verified GHG reductions from projects that happened as a direct result of offset purchases like theirs, and would not have taken place anyway in the absence of the retail offset market. Green-e Climate offsets must pass stringent project certification protocols from Endorsed Programs that use independent third-party verifiers. Participation in Green-e Climate also entails adherence to an additional list of Program Principles contained in the Green-e Climate Standard.


• Consumer Disclosures are Accurate and Follow Program Guidelines: To qualify for Green-e Climate, sellers' claims about the types of GHG reduction projects they offer must be verified. Green-e Climate requires offset sellers to disclose project-specific information to customers such as the type of project, location, and its impact on GHG reduction. The program also provides oversight of marketing claims about certified products—that is, customers get what they're paying for.
  

Overview of How Green-e Climate Certification Works

1. This chart follows the life of an offset from creation to sale. Offsets originate from a variety of project types (shown on the left side of the chart), including energy efficiency, manure management, renewable energy, and many others. In order to ensure that these projects meet the requirements of the Green-e Climate Standard, they must be verified by one of the Endorsed Program protocols. These protocols ensure that the projects are real, additional (beyond "business as usual"), verified, permanent, and enforceable.
2. When an offset seller wants to sell Green-e Climate eligible products, they must source from a project certified by one of the Endorsed Programs. Generally these offsets originate from a variety of projects, and are mixed together to create the end product sold to consumers.
3. Green-e Climate provides certification services in the third step, when the offset is sold to the retail customer. Use of the Green-e Climate logo requires an annual independent audit of the seller to ensure that there is no double selling of reductions sold as offsets; and marketing compliance to ensure customers were told what they were buying in the form of a detailed product content label, which specifies information about their offset, including the project type, which Endorsed Program certified the project, and the location of the project.

The Green-e Climate Protocol for Renewable Energy

The Green-e Climate Protocol for Renewable Energy defines how renewable energy can be used as an offset by translating clean energy generation into tons of greenhouse gas avoided. It’s a way to track the pollution that would have happened if an equal amount of power was generated from other sources like coal or natural gas. The Protocol is seeking to become an endorsed program under Green-e Climate.