Offset Criteria
To be eligible for and included in the "Fight Global Warming" campaign, emission reductions must meet the following criteria:
1. Only direct emission reductions are eligible.
Indirect emission reductions from energy generation, including renewable energy certificates (RECs) are not eligible. Portfolios that include RECs or other indirect emissions reductions will not be considered.
2. The emission reductions must demonstrably exceed business-as-usual.
A reasonable baseline should be demonstrated and additionality should be explained clearly even for highly technical projects. Baselines should not be set unjustifiably low or include claims of emission reductions that would have occurred anyway. Any emissions shifted out of the project boundary (leakage) must be accounted for.
3. Timeframe for emission reductions must be clearly identified.
Please provide detailed information about the timeframe in which the emission reductions were or are expected to be achieved. This information should be clearly identified in public descriptions of the projects. To protect against future reversals of reductions achieved via sequestration, a project developer must maintain insurance or a reserve of emission reductions for its sequestration emission reductions. In this initial RFP, a preference will be given to emissions reductions that have already been achieved. However, we are also interested in learning about projects with reductions that are expected to be achieved in the future.
4. The emission reductions must be serialized and tracked to assure that they are not reoffered for sale.
A project developer must be able to demonstrate clear ownership of the claimed emission reductions and that emission reductions are serialized and tracked to prevent individual emission reductions from being sold multiple times (double counted).
5. All claims should be independently verified and verifiable.
All emission reduction claims should be verified against credibility criteria comparable to those set forth in this memo by a third party verifier with no financial or pecuniary interest in the project. The methods and assumptions used to develop, calculate, and verify the emission reductions should be sufficiently transparent that they are independently verifiable to another interested party. The project developer and retailer must also agree to participate in ongoing quality assurance/quality control assessment by Environmental Defense and/or its designee. Copies of all verification reports and materials should be provided.
6. The emission reductions should be generated in ways that produce net positive environmental and community impacts.
The project developer should assess the direct and indirect non-climate-related environmental and community impacts of its project activities and demonstrate that the net effect of the impacts is positive.