Carbon Credits
Nature-based climate solutions to help offset your hard-to-abate carbon emissions.
Sustinere’s Premium Carbon Credits in the Voluntary Carbon Market
Sustinere trades premium carbon credits for corporate buyers from nature-based climate projects that combine high quality with high impact. We guarantee quality by only trading credits from new projects (no historical or old credits) that have been certified under VERRA or Gold Standard, the most rigorous and respected registries in the world today. We stand by the principles of additionality, permanence, no double-counting and no leakage, and enforce rigorous controls to ensure compliance with these principles in every project. We guarantee impact by having each project contribute to as many as 12 of the 17 SDGs, making our projects some of the most impactful in the industry by advancing social, economic, environmental, health, gender and community well-being.
Our society has a CO2 emissions problem. Our ozone layer has thickened, and climate change has accelerated, which generated climate risks, catastrophes and extreme weather events all over the world, with rural communities in developing countries and indigenous people particularly affected. Carbon emissions have also deteriorated air quality which has an impact on human, animal and vegetal health on our planet.
Our society also has a deforestation problem. Globally we deforest around 10 million hectares every year, which not only releases carbon emissions into the atmosphere, but causes us to destroy ecosystems and habitats, lose numerous species of fauna and flora, and leads to desertification, soil erosion, flooding, and the destruction of the lifestyle of numerous indigenous people.
We consider carbon emissions and deforestation to be the most serious environmental problems of our era, and for that reason, Sustinere has committed to helping scale the voluntary carbon offset market by delivering quality carbon credits that come from forestry projects, that capture or avoid carbon emissions while restoring or protecting our forests around the world and bringing a maximum contribution to the health, food security and economic development of communities, with a special focus on women and indigenous groups.
What are carbon credits?
A carbon credit (also known as carbon offset credit or carbon offset) is a transferrable instrument certified by governments or independent certifiers to represent an emission reduction of one metric tonne of CO2. The purchaser of an offset credit can “retire” it to claim the underlying reduction towards their own GHG reduction goals.
Purchasers of carbon credits are normally governments or corporations. The former have GHG reduction goals under an international agreement (such as the Kyoto Protocol) or national laws, while the latter have company or industry-wide carbon reduction or neutrality goals. The first, led by governments, is referred to as the compliance carbon credits market, while the second, led by the private sector, is referred to as the voluntary carbon credits market.
Sustinere operates in the voluntary carbon offsets market and sells its credits directly to private companies that have committed to becoming carbon neutral. In order to purchase our carbon offsets, a company must be actively and separately taking steps to reduce its carbon footprint in its operations, either through diminishing energy usage, adopting cleaner technologies, or better waste management, to name just a few methods. In other words, a company is not eligible to buy carbon offsets from Sustinere if it cannot demonstrate that it is actively involved in carbon reduction to progressively reach its maximum potential in that area.
What does it mean to be certified?
All of our projects are registered and certified with either Verra or Gold Standard, two highly rigorous, highly respected organizations dedicated to maximizing the impact of climate projects.
In order for our projects to be certified by these organizations, we must go through multiple rounds of verification, first as an organization, and then for each individual project. During this verification we undergo a background check, provide detailed descriptions of the project and those involved, and organize an on-site visit. We also might be required to undergo a stakeholder consultation. This is a months long process in which we are required to prove that our projects meet standards similar to those of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism
Verra and Gold Standard also require us to prove additionality, permanence, no leakage, and no double counting. This means that these organizations require us to prove that any carbon sequestration that occurs is a direct result of the project and would not have happened on its own without the project, that the project is sustainable and will continue to sequester carbon in the future, and that the project will not lead to carbon emissions simply being displaced somewhere else or double counting in the calculation of carbon credits the project generates.
What kind of projects generate nature-based carbon credits?
Sustinere is a project developer of nature-based climate solutions, and therefore our carbon credits come from projects where nature itself absorbs carbon emissions through a specific type of human intervention. The most common types of intervention in our projects are reforestation/afforestation and conservation (particularly REDD+ and IMF projects). Other project types are agroforestry (usually connected to reforestation), carbon farming (or regenerative agriculture) and blue carbon (such as mangrove reforestation and enhanced mineral weathering, the latter method still being under study).
What technological edge or advancements is Sustinere bringing forward?
Transparency is one of our core values and we commit to allowing the general public to have access in real time to accurate and complete information about our projects as well as the carbon credits being generated. Sustinere is working on two technological edges to increase transparency. First, listing all our carbon credits using blockchain technology. This allows anyone to view the carbon credits being generated in real time, completely eliminates the risk of double counting, and makes the management of the credits more simple and effective. We are working with various partners to develop the best way of integrating blockchain. Second, displaying all the progress of our projects in real-time using advanced satellite technology and geospatial monitoring. This allows anyone to view the trees being planted or conserved, along with other project activities, and the level of advancement of the SDGs in each project. We are working on developing the platform to make this information accessible.
What does it mean to offer premium carbon credits?
Quality problems in the voluntary carbon credits market are rampant. Many suppliers offer carbon credits from old projects, where quality controls were less rigorous and where problems of additionality, permanence, leakage and double counting were rampant. Even more recent projects are sometimes certified with registries that have a less rigorous quality control process, and/or verified by auditors who are less thorough in their verifications since they have an economic interest in seeing the project approved and continuing to audit that project for the whole duration of the project life cycle. Many suppliers of carbon credits also offer projects that only focus on forestry, but do not deliver any additional benefits to empower communities economically, socially or health-wise.
Sustinere is different from most competitors because it offers premium carbon credits, meaning of high quality and high impact. We guarantee high quality by only working with the certifying bodies that have the most rigorous, thorough and well-respected registration process in the industry, meaning Verra and Gold Standard. We only work with auditors that are recognized and recommended across the industry, and known for their quality, accurate, and independent audits.
Even so, our team has recognized that in order to guarantee project quality, it is not sufficient to rely on the project audits conducted by the official auditors. Having pre-existing, long-term relationships with both the registries and the project developers, project auditors could be perceived to have an economic incentive to approve projects because they become a long-term source of revenue for them. This is not to say that audits are not generally good or accurate, but there are many quality issues that could possibly slip through the cracks. To remedy this problem, our team have signed agreements with reputed NGOs and Universities to conduct additional project verifications, to ensure the project baseline is properly constructed, the methodology for calculating carbon is correct and the additionality of the project is true and verified. These agreements are on a per-project basis and the partners get paid a modest fee only once, regardless of whether their assessment of the project is positive or negative.
We guarantee high impact by being virtually the only supplier of carbon credits whose projects are contributing to as many as 12 of the 17 SDGs. Please visit the SDGs section to learn more about how we achieve this. Because of these elements, we are considered a luxury brand in the carbon credits industry and our credits are of premium quality.
For information on Sustinere’s carbon credits available inventory, please consult our Projects section.
SUSTINERE GLOBAL
Suite 1400, 18 King St East, Toronto, Ontario (Canada headquarters)
Email: info@sustinere-global.com