Additionality

‘Additionality’ is an essential component of any carbon offset project. This means that the project must not have gone ahead but for the investment of the funds from carbon offset clients; it must represent new activity over and above the baseline or ‘business as usual’ scenario. In order  to make this easy to demonstrate and transparent, co2balance only invests clients’ funds in its in-house projects where at least 50% of the project capital is funded by carbon offset payments. Some other organisations will argue that a project is additional where just a few percent of a project’s capital originates from offset funding. We at co2balance do not find this a credible approach, hence our minimum 50% rule. We are not aware of any other offset provider with such a high standard and in fact most of our in-house projects are entirely funded through carbon offset fnance.

As well as the visible additionality, we provide further assurance through third party auditors who validate our claims.