About Offsets

What are carbon offsets?

A carbon offset is a service that works toward reducing the net carbon emissions of individuals or organizations indirectly, through proxies who reduce their emissions and/or increase their absorption of greenhouse gases. A wide variety of offset actions are available; renewable energy such as wind and solar projects, methane capture, energy efficiency and Forestry/bio sequestration are the most popular.

Selecting an Offset Provider

A growing number of offset providers are entering the market to meet the increasing demand from individuals and businesses wishing to reduce their carbon footprint.  The result is a wide range of offset products being offered by providers with different motivations and issue expertise, at various offset quality and price levels. This makes it   particularly difficult for purchasers to know who to choose from.

In order to address confusion regarding how to select offset providers to mitigate GHG impacts (after efforts to reduce energy use and GHG emissions internally), Carbon Concierge developed the Carbon Offset Provider Evaluation Matrix (COPEM). It includes eight detailed criteria of high importance when selecting an offset provider.  COPEM enables a thorough and subjective assessment of offset providers that can be used by purchasers to select the best offset provider for the individuals’ or organization’s goals.

Carbon Concierge selected offset providers to be evaluated under our COPEM framework by examining several lists of offset providers and narrowed the selection to North American providers. We then looked for providers that appeared on multiple lists and prioritized those that occurred most frequently.  In order to cover offset providers that can provide significant offset sales for large companies, we also included several wholesale providers.  The following is a link to the white paper with the results. Click here to review the white paper and to learn more about COPEM.