Information Desk

Accreditation Body  is the authoritative body that assesses a verification body’s competence to perform GHG verification activities.

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Additionality is used to mean the carbon sequestration is over and above that which would have happened anyway in the absence of a given project (or during business as usual). It is a determination of whether an intervention has an effect when compared to a baseline and is essential for the quality of carbon offset credits.   

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Aggregation is when smaller projects register jointly as a group. 

Baseline (Baseline Emissions) is a project-specific established level against which reductions are measured to show GHG emission reductions are ‘additional,’ or would not have happened under a business-as-usual scenario.

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Biodiversity is all the different kinds of life found in one area—the variety of animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms like bacteria that make up our natural world. Each of these species and organisms work together in ecosystems, like an intricate web, to maintain balance and support life. 

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Biomass Energy is energy found in plants.

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Brokers and Exchanges are buyers and sellers in the carbon market that can facilitate transactions. Exchanges are usually frequent trades or large volumes with standardized contracts, while Brokers typically arrange transactions for occasional trades, and small volumes.

Carbon Credit is a tradable instrument that conveys a right to emit a unit of pollution.

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Credible Carbon Credit is those issued under standards that have robust requirements to ensure additionality, permanence, third-party verification, and proper accounting systems.

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Carbon Dioxide Equivalent (CO2e) means the number of metric tons of CO2 emissions with the same global warming potential as one metric ton of another GHG, and is calculated using Equation A-1 in 40 CFR Part 98.

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Carbon Footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide and methane) that are generated by our actions. 

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Carbon Negative is when more carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere than is emitted.

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Carbon Neutral is achieving net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by balancing carbon dioxide emissions with the removal or elimination of carbon dioxide emissions altogether.

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Carbon Offset Project is a project that allows companies to invest in environmental projects to make up for emissions of GHG.

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Carbon Sequestration is the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide. It is one method of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere with the goal of reducing global climate change. 

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Carbon Sink is a forest, ocean, or other natural environment that has the ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

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Conflict of Interest (COI) is a situation in which, due to other activities or relationships with other persons or organizations, a person or firm is unable to render an impartial Verification Statement of a

potential client’s GHG reductions or the person or firm's

objectivity in performing verification activities is otherwise

compromised.

Decarbonization is phasing out carbon dioxide emissions from the use of fossil fuels.

Electrification is the process of replacing technologies that use fossil fuels with those that use electricity as a source of energy.

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The Environmental Integrity (of a carbon offset project) can be influenced by:  

1. Accounting for international transfers;
2. Quality of units;
3. Ambition and scope of the mitigation target of the transferring country; and
4. Incentives or disincentives for future mitigation action.

Farm, Lab, Facility, Carbon Offsets (FLFCO) is a private offsets program that establishes standards for quantifying and verifying GHG emission reduction projects, issues carbon credits generated by said

projects, and tracks the transfer and retirement of in a private online system.

Global Warming Potential (GWP) is a measurement of how much heat the GHG can trap within the atmosphere and how much of an environmental impact it is expected to have.

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Greenhouse Gas (GHG) is any gas in the atmosphere which absorbs and re‐emits heat, and thereby keeps the planet’s atmosphere warmer than it otherwise would be. The main GHGs in the Earth’s atmosphere are water vapour, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and ozone. 

A Hectare is a unit of area in the metric system equal to 100 ares, or 10,000 square metres, and the equivalent of 2.471 acres in the British Imperial System and the United States.

Joint Verification is a term that refers to cases where a project developer has multiple projects operating on a single site and the project developer has exercised the option to hire a single verification body to assess the

projects concurrently.

The Kyoto Protocol is an international  agreement that aimed to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and the  presence of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere. The essential tenet of the Kyoto Protocol was that industrialized nations needed to lessen the amount of their CO2 emissions.  The Kyoto Protocol was adopted on 11 December 1997 and sets binding emission reduction targets for 37 industrialized countries and economies in transition and the European Union. 

Project Funders are banks, private equity firms, private investors, non-profit organizations and other organizations may lend or invest equity to fund a project. 

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Project Developer is a person or organization with the intention to develop an emission reduction project. This could be the project owner, a consultant or specialized services provider.

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Project Owner is the operator and owner of the physical project installation where the emission reduction project takes place. An owner can be any private person, company or other organization.  

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A Project Participant can be any private person, company or other organization that has participated in a project's activities. 

Stakeholders are individuals and organizations that are directly or indirectly affected by the emission reduction project. Stakeholders include the parties interested in developing a specific project (e.g., owner, developer, funder), parties affected by the project (e.g., local population, host community, environmental and human rights advocates) and national and international authorities.

Validation is the scientific auditing of a carbon offset project. A series of analytical testing must be performed several times during the life of the carbon offset project in order to prove it achieves, falls below or exceeds its baseline.

*Required once per crediting period and anytime new credits are issued

** Validation and the first verification may be conducted simultaneously and may be conducted by the same approved V&V.

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Validation and Verification (V&V) are qualified, independent third-party auditors approved by Tasaku Fund Standard to perform validation and verification of carbon offset projects. 

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Verification is the process of evaluating calculations of the actual amount of greenhouse gas emissions avoided or sequestered through the implementation of a carbon offset project.

*Required once per crediting period and before new credits are issued

**Projects must also undergo a full site visit verification at intervals based on project type

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Verified Emission Reductions (VERs) are emission reductions from an offset project that’s independently audited against a third-party verification standard.

AAU -  assigned amount units 

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AoR - Area of Review

BAU - Business As Usual

CCS - Carbon Capture and Storage

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CER - Certified Emissions Reduction

* generated from a Clean Development Mechanism project activity 

 ERU - Emission Reduction Unit

* generated by a Joint Implementation project 

GHG - Greenhouse Gas

MVS - Monitoring, Verification, and Accounting

REC -  Renewable Energy Credits 

RMU - Removal Unit

* on the basis of Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry activities such as reforestation