Gold Standard-certified carbon credits. What’s a ton of good worth?

WHY SUPPORT GOLD STANDARD PROJECTS THROUGH THE MARKETPLACE

When you purchase Gold Standard-certified carbon credits, you’re not only helping to protect the planet from the effects of climate change, you’re helping to improve the lives of people in vulnerable communities by supporting sustainable development. Gold Standard projects lead to benefits such as the creation of jobs, protection of endangered species, access to safe water, and improved health and livelihoods.

The benefits of purchasing credits through the Gold Standard marketplace include:

• Online process makes it easy to purchase credits from a selection of Gold Standard projects in one order.
• Sustainable prices enable project developers to cover their costs and expand their project activities and impact.
• Immediate transparency, as you can search for the credit retirement within the Gold Standard Impact registry minutes after making the purchase.

HOW PROJECTS ARE PRICED

Gold Standard sells verified emission reductions (carbon credits) on behalf of participating project developers. To ensure that projects remain viable, a minimum price is applied for each different project type. This minimum price is calculated based on the Fairtrade carbon credit pricing model and adjusted – using data from the Vivid Economics study ‘Valuating the benefits from improved cooking solutions’ and ‘The real value of robust climate action’ report published by Netbalance – by 2 cents for every $ of shared value created to take into account the added benefits delivered beyond simply reducing carbon.

With these minimum prices as a starting point, project developers choose at what price to sell their credits. The prices can be located in the project profiles. 

WHERE DOES YOUR MONEY GO?

For individual projects, 80% of the proceeds go to the project developers to help maintain and expand their climate protection projects. The remaining 20% is used to cover variable PayPal service charges and the administrative costs in maintaining the platform and transparently retiring the credits. 

For those who choose to support a variety of projects in the Climate+ Portfolio, the price per credit in this portfolio is set by calculating the average price across the project types. Proceeds from the sale of these credits go directly to Gold Standard to support our Initiatives and Innovations and the ongoing improvement of Gold Standard for the Global Goals. More information on this approach is included in the Climate+ Portfolio project page. 

If you want to keep it simple, look at average monthly estimates* for countries around the world to help you set your Climate+ target:

*(Data from World Bank estimates of CO2 emissions per capita)

1 tonne/month or less

Most of European countries, emerging economies and developing countries

2 tonnes/month

Australia, Canada, Estonia, Luxembourg, United States + several oil exporting countries

3 tonnes/month or more

Curacao, Kuwait, Qatar, Trinidad & Tobago

To find the details of your climate impact, use the footprint calculator from WWF UK. You can also learn more about the value of carbon credits and how Gold Standard tonnes are priced. And if you’re having trouble deciding on a project, you can now offset with a variety of projects through the Climate+ Portfolio.