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Mitigate your greenhouse gas emissions

Reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is the fundamental principle guiding the carboNZero programme. However, it is not possible for an organisation to reduce all of their GHG emissions. To achieve carboNZero certification, participants are required to offset their remaining unavoidable emissions with carbon credits. Carbon credits may be created by projects that:

• Avoid GHG emissions through renewable energy generation
• Reduce GHG emissions through energy efficiency initiatives
• Sequester GHGs e.g. through regeneration of native forest or methane capture

Carbon credit quality

To ensure the integrity of carboNZero certification, carbon credits used for offsetting must be:

• Independently verified to a voluntary or compliance standard recognised by the Programme
• Assessed and approved by the Programme
• Issued in a recognised registry
• Retired, cancelled or otherwise taken out of circulation in the Programme account in the appropriate registry

In developing our assessment process, we have taken into account regulations that are being developed by various governments. There are numerous publications where the quality of offsets or carbon credits is debated. The use of poor quality offsets is often the basis on which accusations of “greenwash” are made. Claims of carbon neutrality based on offsets that do not meet the requirements of recognised standards may be subject to investigation by regulators of advertising standards or consumer protection laws, therefore it is important to ensure good quality credits are used.

Registries

The Programme holds accounts in several external carbon credit registries as the means to publicly cancel or retire credits used to offset Participants’ emissions during the carboNZero certification process.

The Programme relies on registries to satisfy some of the key principles for offsetting such as traceability and transparency, as shown in Table 1.

The Programme currently has accounts in the following registries for managing and retiring carbon credits:

• Markit Registry (www.markitenvironmental.com)(direct link to public view)
• Gold Standard Registry (gs1.apx.com)
• NZ Emissions Unit Register (www.eur.govt.nz)

These registries have been assessed by the Programme and are considered to be appropriate for use.

Table 1: Key principles of offsetting and how they are satisfied.

Principle	Registry or Standard	Explanation
Additional	Standard	The credit standard should ensure that the project overcomes investment barriers by requiring appropriate additionality tests to be performed
Permanent	Standard	The standard should ensure the emissions reductions will be effective for at least 100 years
Leakage	Standard	The standard should ensure that there additional or unintended emissions will not take place as a result of the project’s implementation and operations
Measurable	Standard	The standard should ensure an appropriate methodology for measuring the emissions reductions generated by the project is used
Verifiable	Standard	The standard should ensure the credits claimed are verified by an accredited verifier
Traceable	Registry	A registry should have systems in place to ensure a user can track any credit back to the source project and demonstrate that there has been no double counting
Transparent	Registry	A registry should require sufficient documentation showing how the credit was created and/or provide references to source this from outside the registry

Standards

Most carbon credits available on the global carbon markets are based on either compliance or voluntary standards.  Good standards will cover the principles listed in Table 1. There are some carbon credits within the voluntary market that are based on no established standard. The Programme reviews and assesses carbon credits at the project level. This means that the standard and the project are assessed i.e. not all carbon credit projects from an acceptable credit standard will be accepted by the carboNZero Programme for offsetting. Standards that have been assessed as being acceptable to the Programme currently include:

• Gold Standard (GS) (voluntary standard)
• Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) (voluntary standard)
• Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) (compliance standard)
• Joint Implementation (JI) (compliance standard)

Gold Standard

The Gold Standard (GS) was established in 2003 as a non-profit foundation under Swiss law by a consortium of non-governmental organisations led by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). The Gold Standard provides a certified label that can be applied to CDM, JI and voluntary projects. The requirements and methodologies of the Gold Standard are freely available at www.cdmgoldstandard.org.

The Gold Standard maintains a public registry for all Gold Standard certified projects (including the CDM and JI projects) and for Gold Standard VERs at goldstandard.apx.com.

Voluntary Carbon Standard

The Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) claims to provide a robust, new global standard and programme for approval of credible voluntary offsets. Its programme objectives are to :

The VCS uses an eight point framework – all carbon credits must be real, measurable, permanent, additional, independently verified, transparently listed, uniquely numbered, and conservatively estimated .

The following programmes are also approved under the VCS:

• UNFCCC Clean Development Mechanism
• UNFCCC Joint Implementation
• Climate Action Reserve

This means that projects that have followed the requirements of one of the programmes listed above will be recognised by the VCS.

Clean Development Mechanism

As described on the CDM website , the CDM allows emission-reduction projects in developing countries to earn certified emission reduction (CER) units. These CERs can be traded and sold, and used by industrialised countries to a meet a part of their emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol.

The mechanism stimulates sustainable development and emission reductions, while giving industrialised countries some flexibility in how they meet their emission reduction limitation targets.

Joint Implementation

As described by the UNFCCC , the mechanism known as “joint implementation (JI)” defined in Article 6 of the Kyoto Protocol, allows a country with an emission reduction or limitation commitment under the Kyoto Protocol (Annex B Party) to earn Emission Reduction Units (ERUs) from an emission-reduction or emission removal project in another Annex B Party, each equivalent to one tonne of CO2, which can be counted towards meeting its Kyoto target’.

Credits can be earned via either Track 1 or Track 2 procedures, and projects must have approval of the host Party and participants have to be authorised to participate by a Party involved in the project. Track 1 essentially allows the host Party (country) to verify and issue the ERUs, provided the host Party meets all the eligibility requirements to issue their own ERUs. If a host Party does not meet all of the eligibility requirements, verification must be done through the verification procedure under the Joint Implementation Supervisory Committee (JISC) – this is a Track 2 procedure. Under this procedure, an independent entity accredited by the JISC determines whether the relevant requirements have been met before the host Party can issue and transfer ERUs.

Useful links

www.markitenvironmental.com voluntary carbon credit registry

goldstandard.apx.com carbon credit registry for Gold Standard credits

www.eur.govt.nz the New Zealand national register for ownership and status of Kyoto units

www.cdmgoldstandard.org Gold Standard website

www.v-c-s.org Voluntary Carbon Standard website and project database

cdm.unfccc.int/about/index.html Clean Development Mechanism website

unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/mechanisms/joint_implementation/items/1674.php Joint Implementation website

www.ebex21.co.nz – a New Zealand native forest sinks project