Climate Active Carbon Offsets

“Climate Active is an Australian Government program that drives voluntary climate action by Australian businesses” (Climate Active/ About Us).

Members calculate and reduce their emissions, purchasing eligible carbon offsets to achieve carbon neutral, which once independently validated enables them to use the Climate Active trademark.

A carbon offset is a quantified emissions outcome from an accredited climate action verified as having achieved a climate impact equivalent to 1 tonne of CO2-e during a particular reporting period.

In short, each carbon unit is a tonne of verified climate benefit which would not have occurred without carbon finance.

Everything we sell.

Climate Active carbon offsets need to meet the requirements below, as outlined in Appendix A of its Carbon Neutral Standard.

Vintage

• Units must have vintage later than 2012 (often described as 2013+)

Standards and Units

• Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Verified Carbon Units (VCUs) – we sell these.
• Gold Standard VERs (Verified Emission Reductions) – we also sell these.
• ACCUs, CERs and RMUs – created by compliance markets, these are financial products and not sold by Beyond Neutral.

Projects voluntarily create carbon units and sell them into the carbon market to generate the carbon finance which helps make the project viable.  The units will ultimately be retired by someone who wishes to offset their emissions.

The VCM enables you to buy real emission reductions verified as having occurred, from projects undertaken voluntarily, using the carbon revenues to achieve action on climate change and sustainability beyond business-as-usual.

Highly reputable, both Standards use recognised assurance frameworks with carbon units only issued once the accrediting Standards’ requirements are met.  Each Standard and the appropriate Methodology guide the project’s development and both Standards update their Methodologies and Standard over time.

Both Standards’ accreditation processes specifically address additionality, permanence, leakage, monitoring and verification.

The two highest ranked VCM Standards, as determined by Australia’s Climate Change Authority (Climate Change Authority, 2022: 71).

Both scored ~90% each for Integrity, Principles and Governance with high overall quantitative integrity across 14 principles (abatement integrity and sustainability) and 9 governance criteria for effective implementation of principles.

Climate Active requires carbon offsets with a vintage of 2013 or later (2013+) for carbon neutral certification.

Vintage refers to the time period over which a project’s verified climate impact occurred.

• When you buy 2018 vintage carbon offsets, you are buying that many tonnes of CO2e which are not in the atmosphere because of the project’s activity in 2018.

It is useful for tracking the carbon units and forms part of each tonne’s serial number.

Older/ earlier vintages (e.g., 2013) represent emissions held out of the atmosphere for longer before their use as an offset and they are from projects instigated at a time when climate action and carbon offsetting was not as normalised as it is today.

Every carbon offset available through our Carbon Shop meets Climate Active’s vintage requirements.

No, you don’t.

Climate Active accepts international Gold Standard and VCS carbon offsets, as well as those from Australian Gold Standard and VCS projects.

Renewable energy generation and REDD+ project types cannot create Australian carbon offsets, while kitchen/ household-scale projects (cookstoves, safe water, biogas, etc) are not located in Australia.

From the atmosphere’s perspective, a carbon offset project’s location is irrelevant.

A verified tonne of CO2e stopped from acting on the atmosphere by an Australian project has the same carbon impact as a project in Asia, Africa or South America.

Looking beyond just carbon, the sustainability co-benefits created by VCS and Gold Standard projects are substantial and multifaceted.

Ask yourself, do I have electricity, clean water and no need to gather fuel from the local forest?  We offer carbon offsets from projects providing these “basics” to some of the world’s poorest.

Ample, verification-ready evidence demonstrating the carbon offsets were retired specifically for Climate Active is provided and this can be used for your carbon neutral certification requirements.

The offsets are retired permanently, with this retirement publicly viewable as required by Climate Active.

Beyond Neutral confirms your preferences (name, message) prior to the carbon offsets’ retirement.

We tailor the retirement message specifically to your requirements.  You can use our default Climate Active retirement message, or we can add to it.

Retirement documentation includes:

• Registry’s retirement notification email;
• Statement from Beyond Neutral listing key details about the retirement including the units’ serial numbers;
• Screenshot of the entry on the Registry’s Retired Units page; and
• Directions on how to find the public-facing entry on the Registry website.

Lots, over many years.

We’ve retired carbon offsets for many members of Climate Active (and its predecessor, NCOS).

We cater for any amount of tonnes, from 1 tonne (via our Carbon Shop) to very large amounts (via formal quote).

Need to top up your offsets to match your verified inventory?  We can do this quickly (can be same day if using our Carbon Shop).

If you are part of Climate Active, we can help you as we have helped companies and organisations big and small, across local government, tourism, manufacturing, construction, service sector, finance, events, etc.

We’ve helped Climate Active members to use Australian Gold Standard carbon offsets, ensuring they are “stapled” to quality non-Australian carbon offsets.