Impact

The Sustainable Development Goals are the blueprint to achieving a better and more sustainable future for all. They address the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, and peace and justice. The SDGs, also known as the Global Goals were adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030. For more info on the SDGs check out the UN website here.

There are so many good resources available to educate and inspire us to take climate action. Here are are some good places to start:

Check Out Gen Less’ site to find out how you personally can embrace a lifestyle that uses less energy: https://genless.govt.nz/

Stuff’s article 10 tips for business to reduce their emissions is a good place to start for actions your workplace can take

For individual action, check out WWF’s guide here

Carbon Click recommends that businesses take climate change action along the following lines

Step 1

Measure your impact, through internal sustainability audits, or using MPI’s emissions guidelines.

Step 2

Reduce. Businesses and individuals must drastically reduce their emissions if we are to avoid the worst of climate change. Nothing else can work.

Step 3

Offset. For any emissions leftover once these emissions reduction goals are realised, offsetting is key to reducing any business’ impact to ‘net zero’. The UN Sustainable Development Goals can be achieved in tandem with carbon offsetting, because the projects supported often have positive social and economic benefits in the local communities in which they take place.

Emissions

Offsetting is a way to take action on climate change right now, alongside your compliance with the Emissions Trading Scheme. To fight climate change we urgently need to reduce the amount of carbon in the earth’s atmosphere, by funding projects that permanently reduces or avoids emissions being released into the atmosphere. This is carbon offsetting.

The purchase of NZ Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) carbon credits doesn’t necessarily do this. This is because 1) the government allocates free ‘permits to emit’ to certain trade-exposed industries and 2) any organisations can buy uncapped, fixed price units from the government to fulfil their NZ ETS requirements. Neither of the carbon credits issued in either of these situations are connected with a real and permanent emission reduction, for instance, a forestry blocks absorbing carbon. Therefore, a business meeting its NZETS requirements is not ‘offsetting’ it’s emissions, because they may have bought or been allocated credits that don’t directly reduce or avoid carbon emissions. However, NZETS credits registered under the New Zealand Permanent Forest Sink Initiative (NZ_PFSI) can be used for carbon offsetting because they are permanent and connected with a permanent reduction in emissions.

Offsetting with CarbonClick is a way to compensate for a business’ footprint and to make a direct measurable impact to fight climate change, something that is done alongside and in addition to meeting NZ ETS requirements.

The NZ ETS credits CarbonClick has retired as offsets are NZU_PFSI credits and are therefore connected with projects that permanently reduce or avoid emissions being released into the atmosphere. Once these projects have issued us the carbon credits, they are retired, meaning that no other organisation can claim the credit for this offset.

Congratulations on taking steps towards reducing your emissions and being part of the fight against climate change. Offsetting is part of the larger journey towards ‘net zero’ carbon, as not all emissions can be avoided and reduced. For these emissions, offsetting is the only way to neutralise your impact.

Climate change threatens our economy and our way of life. Moody’s Analytics report that climate change could cost the global economy US$ 69 trillion by 2100. Greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to increase exponentially worldwide, which means we need to increase our efforts to transition to a low carbon economy. This, however, is likely to take significant investment and time. Offsetting the CO2 we are producing is something we can do right now to take climate action.

Carbon offsetting

A carbon credit is what is bought and sold when dealing with voluntary carbon offsets. For every tonne of CO2 that a project manages to absorb or otherwise reduce, a carbon credit is issued. Carbon credits are certified by international standards and held in registries like the Gold Standard registry (international credits) or the Emissions Trading Register (New Zealand).

Voluntary carbon offsetting is to compensate for unavoidable carbon emissions. To do this, organisations support projects that positively impact the environment and reduce or avoid carbon emissions that would have otherwise contributed to climate change. If the positive impact of this support negates the negative impact they have, ie: if the emissions avoided equal the original emissions of an activity, that activity is said to be “offset”.

Voluntary carbon offsetting is to compensate for unavoidable carbon emissions. To do this, organisations support projects that positively impact the environment and reduce or avoid carbon emissions that would have otherwise contributed to climate change. If the positive impact of this support negates the negative impact they have, ie: if the emissions avoided equal the original emissions of an activity, that activity is said to be “offset”.

Funds

To be successful and deliver impact on a global scale, our business needs to be sustainable. We need to cover costs such as wages, quality assurance, administration and transaction fees. Our sources of revenue are:

  • We take a 20% margin on the carbon credits. Note, we are also working hard to negotiate volume discounts with our brokers (minimum 10%) to ensure customers get carbon credits at, or below market rates.
  • Our e-commerce plugin is priced as a Freemium model, where some customers will pay a monthly fee to get additional features in their store.
  • We charge an integration fee for any business that needs a customised solution.
  • We are backed by seed fund investment so that we can remain sustainable as our business scales up.

Check out our pricing page for more details.

For New Zealand based projects, we are looking to work directly with landowners and reputable brokers who can give us full end-to-end transparency on the forest and movement of credits. Our current provider of permanent New Zealand forestry credits is NZ Carbon Farming, who are leaders in this space. We hope to announce additional partners in the near future.

For international offsets, we purchase from global voluntary offset market platforms like the UNFCCC, Carbon Trade Exchange, from brokers like Umwelt-Projekt-Management GmbH and CarbonBay. The projects sourced from all over the developing world. Information about particular projects is available to view on our projects page.

Our offsets

CarbonClick follows industry best practice to ensure that the offsets we provide have a real, measurable impact on reducing climate change. By ensuring our projects are of the highest quality, CarbonClick seeks to reduce reputational risks and maximize the impact our customers are having by taking the following steps:

For international projects, we only short-list projects that comply with our independently verified selection methodology, which uses many of the same stringent requirements of ICROA Code of Best Practice.

For New Zealand based projects, we purchase units registered under the Permanent Forestry Sink Initiative.

We only select projects certified to the highest international standards, and seek projects that contain co-benefits wherever possible.

Our selected projects undergo a qualitative review by our network of industry experts.

For New Zealand based projects, CarbonClick buys credits certified under the Permanent Forest Sink Initiative and Plan Vivo voluntary standards.

Internationally, we only fund carbon offset projects which have been certified by the following standards; Gold Standard, Verra, Plan Vivo, United Nations’s UNFCCC Clean Development. These standards provide a methodology framework, independent verification process, and a registry to ensure emissions reductions are real, additional, permanent and unique.

The money paid to CarbonClick for carbon credits goes towards certified carbon offset projects that have met the highest standards. The funds are distributed amongst carbon offset suppliers carrying out the projects and CarbonClick takes a margin on the carbon credits for sourcing projects, quality assurance, administration and transaction fees.