Emissions reductions
This category covers a wide range of projects that aim to reduce and avoid emissions versus business as usual. Examples include: renewable energy, destruction of refrigerants that would otherwise be vented to the atmosphere, and capture of methane emitted from landfills.
This project collects landfill gas at a municipal landfill near the city of Fortaleza in Brazil. It avoids the emission of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere and displaces natural gas in the distribution grid.
This project reduces natural gas leaks from a gas distribution network in Bangladesh through the use of an advanced leak detection and repair program that would not be feasible without carbon credit revenue.
This project collects landfill gas to generate 5.655MW of electricity at a landfill serving Gaziantep City, Turkey, avoiding the emission of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere and using the methane to generate power and displace dirtier fossil-fuel-driven power in the electric grid.
This project collects landfill gas to generate 2.5MW of electricity at a landfill in southeastern China, avoiding the emission of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere and using the methane to generate power and displace dirtier coal-fired power in the electric grid.
Conservation
This category typically consists of nature-based projects that help retain an existing source of natural carbon storage that would otherwise be at risk — for example, rainforests that would be cut down for development or peat bogs that might be drained for agriculture.
One of the highest-regarded avoided deforestation projects in the world, this project protects and restores 149,800 hectares of peatland ecosystems in Indonesia that would likely otherwise have been converted to palm and other plantations.
Nature-based removal
This category typically consists of nature-based projects that remove existing carbon and store it in new plants, trees, or soil — for example, planting trees in an area that has previously been clear cut or restoring plant life to tidal wetlands.
A relatively small North American forestry project, Kootznoowoo protects 20,159 acres of forest across four areas on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska.
This improved forest management project, which is located on native land called an Ejido in Veracruz Mexico, enables an indigenous community to manage their forests more sustainably to remove carbon from the atmopshere while earning income.
An Improved Forest Management project that combines regeneration practices, reforestation efforts, and silvicultural treatments to enhance forest sustainability and ecosystem integrity, all monitored under FSC guidelines.
The largest restoration project in the world, Delta Blue seeks to restore 225,000 hectares of land through large-scale mangrove restoration on the Indus Delta in Pakistan.
Long-lived removal
This is a highly diverse category of projects that includes cutting-edge engineered solutions that hold significant promise but are not yet available at scale. Examples include direct air capture technology and storage of carbon through enhanced rock weathering.
Frontier is an advance market commitment to buy $1B+ of permanent carbon removal between 2022 and 2030. It aims to accelerate the development of carbon removal technologies by guaranteeing future demand for them. The goal is to send a strong demand signal to researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors that there is a growing market for these technologies.