Standards

Project Standards

TerraPass supports specific carbon offset standards, which assure transparency and quality in the creation, quantification, and verification of offset projects. These standards require that offsets be real, additional (i.e., they wouldn’t have happened under a “business as usual” scenario), permanent, quantifiable, never double-counted or double-sold, and independently verified.

Currently, TerraPass uses the Verified Carbon Standard and the Climate Action Reserve as our only carbon offset standards.

Verified Carbon Standard (VCS)

The VCS is a global benchmark standard for project-based, voluntary, greenhouse gas emission reductions and removals. VCS was developed by The Climate Group, the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and a range of business, government, and non-government organizations. The current version of the standard – VCS Version 3

Projects qualify for VCS after being validated against the standard’s requirements by an accredited third-party. Climate Action Reserve offsets may also be converted to VCS offsets. The validation rules under VCS are as robust as those of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). TerraPass quantifies its VCS offsets using either CDM methodologies (such as the CDM Landfill Protocol and the CDM Renewable Energy Protocol) or the Climate Action Reserve protocols noted below.

When TerraPass uses VCS for registering offsets, you can see project listings and our submittals in the VCS Project Database website

Climate Action Reserve (CAR)

The CAR is a national offsets program focused on ensuring environmental benefit, integrity, and transparency in the US carbon market. It does this by establishing high-quality standards to quantify and verify greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction projects, oversee independent third-party verification bodies, issue carbon credits generated from such projects, and track the credits over time in a transparent, publicly-accessible system.

TerraPass uses the CAR Landfill Protocol Livestock Protocol and may use other protocols in the future.