In the fight against climate change, we often hear terms like “carbon offset” and “carbon credit”. While they are often used interchangeably, these two phrases actually have different meanings. Carbon offsetting is something you do, while a carbon credit is what you use do it. Understanding the difference between them is important for businesses and individuals looking to address their environmental impact.
Carbon Credits: Creating a Global Market for Carbon Emission Reduction
The concept of a carbon credit originated decades ago as mechanism to fund the reduction of carbon emissions. One carbon credit represents the reduction of 1 metric ton of CO2 from the atmosphere. There are two different kinds of carbon credits – voluntary and compliance. We will explain the difference, but this article primarily focuses on voluntary carbon credits which apply to everyone – businesses and individuals alike.
Compliance carbon credits are relevant for only a small number of very large companies. Compliance credits exist in government regulated cap-and-trade carbon markets that are isolated to specific high-emission industries like power generation or heavy manufacturing. In regulated carbon markets, the government identifies an industry that is responsible for significant carbon emissions. The government establishes a carbon emission limit for each facility (a cap) and enforces financial penalties on facilities that exceed their cap. Facilities with carbon emissions below their cap are awarded credits that they can sell to facilities who are over their cap. Hence the term cap-and-trade. Notable regulated carbon market includes the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), California (CARB) in the United States, and the China Emissions Trading System (ETS) to name a few.
Voluntary carbon credits on the other hand are generated by projects that are implemented exclusively to reduce carbon emissions. These projects rely on the sale of carbon credits for funding and have no other regulatory or financial incentives to exist. Voluntary carbon credit projects are basically carbon reduction factories. These carbon reduction projects are major capital projects just like building and operating a manufacturing plant. They have significant up-front investment and ongoing operating expenses. They need continuous carbon credit revenue for decades to recoup the cost of construction and operation. Every year that these projects reduce carbon emissions, they generate carbon credits that they sell to keep the doors open. That’s why it is important for you and I to buy carbon credits. We help existing projects continue to operate and we create demand for new projects.
Only certain types of carbon reduction projects are allowed, and they must meet rigorous data collection, inspection, performance and reporting standards. So, what makes something a carbon reduction project? These rules are set by registries like Verra, Climate Action Reserve, American Carbon Registry, and Gold Standard. Registries are organizations that identify scientifically valid forms of carbon reduction and establish the data collection and reporting standards necessary to prove that a carbon emission reduction has occurred. The rules are called project methodologies.
Carbon reduction project developers all over the world follow apply with the registries to build and operate projects under the rules of a certain methodology. These include nature-based projects like protecting forests so they can grow and capture carbon, to engineered projects like installing systems to capture methane leaking from landfills. There are many types of projects and there are many more in development. Newer projects include direct air capture (DAC) plants that literally suck CO2 out of the air and soil carbon projects that incentivize farmers to use farming practices that store CO2 in soils.
When you buy carbon credits, you become the owner of the carbon reduction they generate, and you ensure that these projects continue operating and reducing carbon emissions. Terrapass is proud to play a critical role in bringing these amazing projects to our customers, so they have the funding needed to succeed.
What Are the Important Terms for Carbon Credits?
Voluntary: There is no regulation or requirement to generate or purchase voluntary carbon credits; they are available for purchase by anyone who wants to fund carbon reduction, from individuals to businesses.
Additionality: A key concept in carbon credits; this means that the project wouldn’t have happened without carbon credit revenue, leading to a genuine reduction in emissions.
Reduction and Removal: Reduction (or avoidance) carbon credits are generated by projects that reduce a source of greenhouse gas emissions, like landfill gas capture. Removal carbon credits are generated by projects that remove CO2 from the atmosphere like forestry or direct air capture.
Carbon Offset: Balancing the Scales
At Terrapass, we talk about three critical steps in climate action, Calculate, Conserve and Offset:
- Priority 1: Calculate means understand where carbon emissions come from in your business or personal life by estimating your carbon footprint annually.
- Priority 2: Conserve means create a plan to reduce carbon emissions over time and achieve consistent progress.
- Priority 3: Offset means balance the carbon emissions that you can’t eliminate (your residual emissions) by purchasing carbon credits.
Imagine you take a flight that generates carbon emissions. Carbon offsetting is compensating for those flight emissions by purchasing carbon credits that fund an equivalent amount of carbon reduction.
Before Terrapass, carbon offsetting was mostly an area for major corporations who can calculate their own carbon emissions and buy carbon credits from projects without any help – but most of the world cannot do that. Terrapass changed that by creating the tools, products and platform that enables anyone to easily estimate their carbon footprint and purchase carbon credits from amazing projects.
Terrapass is constantly working to make it easier for individuals and businesses to offset their carbon footprint. We are doing this by creating a wide variety of newer, smarter products that match our customers’ needs like Business Plans, Family Plans or Wedding Offsets. We are also working with businesses to make carbon offsetting part of how you buy products.
Without question, we need to reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere as quickly as possible. The only way to do this is to stop carbon emissions everywhere we can and offset our remaining emissions. We must do both of these in order to achieve the impact we need. Most importantly, this within our reach – if every individual and every business does their part, then together we can reduce the impact of climate change.
Beyond the Basics: Additional Facts About the Carbon Market
The Voluntary Carbon Market Integrity Initiative (VCMI): VCMI is a not-for-profit organization focused on ensuring carbon offset programs are credible and contribute to real environmental benefits. They work to prevent misleading claims and promote high-quality carbon markets that fight climate change. The market for carbon credits is vast and complex. While some credit providers maintain high standards, concerns exist regarding project verification and the overall effectiveness of some offset programs. Choosing reputable providers with transparent reporting is crucial.
Choosing the Right Approach with Carbon Credits
It’s crucial to choose reputable carbon credit providers with strong quality standards, verified projects, and transparent reporting such as Terrapass. By understanding the differences and limitations, you can make informed decisions to offset your environmental impact and be part of the solution.
Brought to you by terrapass.com
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Nature-based carbon investments deserve consideration when they address a specific business dependency and produce outcomes you can measure. Imagine Moonbucks, a global coffee roaster planning next season’s espresso blend. It is considering natural Grade 4 coffee from Jimma, in southwestern Oromia, Ethiopia. Its sourcing decisions affect the roasting schedule and the cash tied up in coffee purchases. Moonbucks needs to understand which measures could protect that supply, what they would cost and how it would judge the results.
1. Define the sourcing problem before choosing a project
Moonbucks needs a dependable component for its espresso blend. Its procurement team wants continuity of volume and an agreed cup profile. Replacing a shipment at short notice could require new sample approval and changes to the blend, and given the schedules for cultivation, processing, and freight delivery, is practically impossible. Moonbucks needs to get this right, and its initial concern is inconsistent deliveries. It commissions an assessment of the supplying farms and post-harvest chain. The questions cover land condition, harvest availability and whether drying or storage problems are affecting saleable lots.
This distinction changes the investment brief. A tree-planting proposal cannot be assumed to fix drying problems. Better storage cannot restore eroded land. The team must establish which problem exists before selecting the response.
CCC’s guide to finding nature-based solutions in your supply chain explains where to look. Here, the next task is to turn a broad concern into a testable proposal.
2. Develop nature-based carbon investments around the actual supply chain
The assessment would trace Moonbucks’ purchases back through the exporter and supplying producer groups. Which farms supply the contracted lots? Who controls land-management decisions? How long does the buyer expect to maintain the purchasing relationship?
Furthermore, Jimma natural Grade 4 cannot be treated as interchangeable with every Ethiopian coffee. Moonbucks would need to test any substitute against its own blend and quality requirements.
Suppose Moonbucks’ assessment identifies an opportunity to maintain shade trees and restore vegetation along exposed streambanks. The IPCC describes agroforestry as a way to store carbon in vegetation and soil, with potential benefits for erosion control and water quality.1 Moonbucks would need local advice on species, growing conditions and maintenance before deciding how these measures fit its sourcing plan.
The proposal now has a defined sourcing connection and a candidate intervention. The next steps are to test its effect on production, assess carbon eligibility and build the financial case.
3. Compare the proposal with other ways to protect supply
WBCSD’s Nature-based Solutions Blueprint recommends comparing nature-based options with other responses across their benefits and costs.2 For Moonbucks, that means evaluating the landscape proposal alongside drying improvements, storage controls and alternative sourcing arrangements.
The product’s natural-process designation matters. Moonbucks should examine the drying and dry-milling chain alongside land conditions. Its team would check storage practices, contamination risks and incoming-lot quality to see whether problems arise before or after the coffee leaves the farms.
The revised proposal might combine land stewardship with separate post-harvest controls. Each component needs its own purpose and budget. A sustainability label should not obscure which activity is expected to solve which problem.
The project develops as the evidence improves. Its scope should follow the diagnosis rather than preserve the first idea unchanged.
4. Establish what the carbon outcome could count toward
Moonbucks’ sustainability team now tests the proposed carbon case separately from the sourcing case. Is the objective a measurable change in Moonbucks’ value-chain emissions, verified credits for separate voluntary use, or distinct outcomes under carefully defined arrangements?
Scope 3 covers value-chain emissions. A purchasing relationship alone does not prove that a farm intervention can be included in Moonbucks’ inventory. The team needs an applicable accounting method, defensible boundaries and evidence supporting attribution.
SBTi’s FLAG Guidance (forest, land and agriculture), version 1.2, says purchased credits used as offsets cannot meet near-term FLAG or energy and industry targets. Eligible land-based removals are subject to accounting requirements.3 Moonbucks needs to test its proposal against those rules before including an outcome in its targets.
For Moonbucks’ Jimma proposal, maintaining existing trees and establishing new vegetation could involve different carbon questions. Specialists must examine the baseline and additionality, meaning what changes because the project proceeds. They must also assess measurement and the risk that stored carbon is lost. CCC’s MRV and additionality article introduces those tests.
Until that work is complete, Moonbucks should not budget an assumed Scope 3 reduction or credit-sale receipt. Direct emissions reductions remain the priority.
5. Build a financial case that survives weaker assumptions
Moonbucks’ finance team would now build a multi-year budget. UNEP’s State of Finance for Nature 2023 compares current finance with the investment needed to meet climate, biodiversity and land-restoration goals.4 The company would cost its proposed activities, farmer participation and ongoing monitoring. Verification, where required, is a separate expense. Maintenance and responsibility for replacing failed plantings must remain visible after the initial establishment budget ends.
Operational benefits need equally careful treatment. If fewer rejected lots reduce emergency purchasing, count that saving once. Do not add “supply resilience” as another financial benefit when it represents the same avoided cost.
Moonbucks should compare a base case with slower benefits, higher implementation costs and no carbon revenue. It should also distinguish production outcomes from quality and shipment outcomes. A single good harvest would not prove that the landscape intervention caused better delivery performance.
A project can remain worth funding even when its carbon case needs more work. That decision must rest on the operational evidence and the company’s objectives, without unsupported environmental claims.
6. Fund a pilot with a clear expansion decision
Moonbucks’ first approval would fund a bounded pilot, rather than commit the entire sourcing program. Before spending, Moonbucks would agree on participating farms, responsibilities and the evidence needed at review.
Its scorecard could track farmer participation, implementation costs and plant survival, alongside accepted coffee volumes and lot-quality results. Carbon measurements would follow the selected method. Farm-level traceability must connect the intervention to the actual sourcing relationship.
Suppose Moonbucks’ review later finds that storage changes explain most quality improvements, while the land measures need longer observation. Those findings would shape the next decision: expand the proven component, adjust the landscape work or pause further spending. They would not justify crediting all improvements to tree planting.
This gives nature-based carbon investments a practical place in a multi-year strategy. Funding increases as the evidence supports it, and the project can change direction before a larger commitment.
Discuss a sourcing opportunity with CCC
Carbon Credit Capital’s nature-based supply-chain investment service uses its Dual-Value Model to examine supply-chain economics alongside potential sustainability outcomes.
Schedule a consultation to discuss your sourcing exposure and the questions to resolve before allocating capital.
Sources
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change, Chapter 7, Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses, section 7.4.3.3 (Agroforestry).
- World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), Nature-based Solutions Blueprint, 5 June 2024.
- Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), Forest, Land and Agriculture Science-Based Target-Setting Guidance, version 1.2, March 2026, section 3.1.4, pp. 37–38.
- United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), State of Finance for Nature 2023, 2023.
A plastic credit funds the collection of plastic waste in places where no formal system exists to collect it. Each credit represents a measured, independently audited quantity of plastic taken out of the environment or returned to use, tracked on a public registry.
EU carbon credit claims changed on 27 September 2026, the day the Directive (EU) 2024/825 began to apply across the European Union. The change is narrow. It changes how a company can talk about the credits it buys. A product can no longer be called neutral on the strength of compensation alone; however, every specific, evidenced statement about what a company measured, reduced, and funded stays fully available.
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