Green-e Climate Program Description

About Green-e Climate
A one-page summary of the Green-e Climate Program


Overview of How Green-e Climate Certification Works
This chart follows the life of an offset from creation to sale.

Green-e® Climate was launched in February 2008 by CRS as the first and only consumer-protection program for carbon offsets sold to individuals and businesses in the United States and internationally. It ensures that certified offsets meet the highest standards for environmental quality and are as advertised.

Green-e Climate supplements other voluntary standards organizations—including The Verified Carbon Standard [formerly the Voluntary Carbon Standard] (VCS), The Gold Standard, and The Climate Action Reserve (CAR), among others—which serve the market as project certification programs aimed at ensuring valid, verified supply of real emissions reductions to the market. These organizations assess, register, and monitor offset projects on the basis of internationally accepted offset quality criteria, including proper GHG accounting, additionality, verification and monitoring, permanence of emissions reductions, etc. Credits are issued by these organizations to registered projects for verified emissions reductions, in units of metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO₂e). The credits of each organization—Verified Carbon Units, Verified Emissions Reductions, and Climate Reserve Tonnes respectively—are assigned unique serial numbers and tracked, transferred, and retired in electronic registry systems maintained by the project certifiers in cooperation with registry development and administration organizations, including NYSE Blue and Markit.

Green-e Climate fills the gap in transparency that exists between the project generating the emissions reductions and the end use consumer by certifying retail offset products being offered by offset sellers in the market. The project portfolios of these offset sellers often include various different project types, locations, and certification programs, and their offset products often include emissions reductions from multiple and different projects. Green-e Climate certification provides the following assurances to consumers:

1. Assurance that emissions reductions come from verified and certified supply, and from projects certified under project standards that meet a certain standard of quality. Green-e Climate certification limits the supply of emissions reductions only to projects certified under robust and transparent project certification programs, which must demonstrate that their program requirements and project protocols/methodologies meet the principles and criteria laid out in the Green-e Climate Standard, and subsequently receive endorsement by the Green-e Governance Board. One of these requirements is that endorsed project certification programs utilize an electronic registry to track credits issued.



2. Assurance that emissions reductions are not being double-sold. Green-e Climate certification requires verification of ownership—sales must match supply in terms of quality and quantity. Our annual verification process protects against double-selling by verifying that offset sellers purchase and retire correct volumes and types of emissions reductions on behalf of customers—ensuring that what is sold in the market is legitimate and correct. The process consists of a verification audit performed by an independent certified public accountant or certified internal auditor in accordance with the procedures set forth in the Green-e Climate Verification Process Audit Protocol.
   
   In this way, Green-e Climate is the only certification which covers the entire chain of custody of the emissions reduction, from verified project to end-use consumer, and connects that consumer to the project.



3. Assurance that customers are being given complete and accurate information about what they are buying. Sellers of Green-e Climate certified offset products must agree to a marketing compliance review process, which includes a twice annual review of all marketing and web-based materials associated with a certified offset product against the customer disclosure requirements in the Green-e Climate Code of Conduct. One such required element is the Product Content Label (PCL), which must be presented customers upon purchase of the certified product, and must contain minimum information on the project types, location and certification program included in the product by percentage.
   

Through these unique assurances, Green-e Climate streamlines all of the vital elements of a credible offset into a single, consumer-facing certification mark.

Companies Offering Green-e Climate Certified Offsets

The following offset providers have signed up to have one or more of their offset products Green-e Climate Certified. If you are looking to buy Green-e Climate Certified Offsets and want more information about these provider's products, see Find Green-e Climate Certified Carbon Offsets.

• 3Degrees
• The CarbonNeutral Company
• Hess Corporation
• Sterling Planet