As long as we depend on fossil fuels for energy and materials, there will be some emissions that we can’t avoid. To offset those unavoidable emissions, we can support trusted offset projects that avoid new emissions and absorb existing emissions.

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How carbon offsetting works

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When you purchase carbon offsets, your money goes to emission reduction projects. These organizations offset carbon in one of two ways: 

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• They avoid emissions by replacing fossil fuel energy or preventing natural carbon sinks (like forests) from being destroyed.
• They absorb emissions by preserving or expanding natural carbon sinks, or by using technology to suck emissions out of the air. 

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When you offset with Commons, you support programs that have been rigorously vetted to maximize impact on global emissions and on local communities and ecosystems.

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Offsets in Action

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Let’s say you need to get from Phoenix to Chicago, and the only way you can make the trip work is by flying. For a standard economy class, direct flight, the emissions attributable to one passenger would be about ~440 kg CO₂e.

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You can lower your emissions by choosing a direct flight or a more efficient airline, but the plane will still burn fuel and create around 66 tonnes of emissions in the atmosphere. To make up for those emissions, you could give enough funds to an offset organization for them to reduce or remove 440kg of CO2e from the air.

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Carbon Offsetting with Commons

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We need to reduce our total emissions by 45% by 2030 to prevent irreparable climate disaster.¹ Offsets are not a substitute for reducing our emissions through lifestyle and systems change, but they can help us reach our goals.

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Even in climate scientists’ most aggressive scenarios for a low-carbon future, we still need to remove emissions from the atmosphere. We can reach climate neutrality when we’re absorbing existing emissions from the atmosphere and oceans at the same rate as we’re releasing new ones. Unfortunately, offset projects are underfunded by trillions of dollars worldwide.²

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With Commons' Climate Neutral Subscription you can automatically offset your emissions each month by supporting avoiding and absorbing CO₂e through the Commons Carbon Portfolio. When you emit more, you pay more to compensate for your emissions. When you emit less, you pay less for offsets, and get rewarded with a lower offset fee at the end of the month. Set a monthly maximum that’s comfortable for you, so you never go over your budget.

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It’s our way to pay the Earth what we owe by taking the carbon we create out of the atmosphere. 

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Go Climate Neutral with Commons→

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How Commons Selects Carbon Offset Projects

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The market for carbon offset credits lacks regulation and standardization. Offset projects can be poorly measured, tracked, and verified, drastically overestimating their impact. When offsets are abused as a license to pollute, people in vulnerable communities are most at risk. 

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That’s why Commons uses critical criteria to select offset projects for our portfolio. 

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Our experts evaluate and monitor the best, evidence-backed offset projects on the market so you don’t have to. We regularly conduct meticulous research, consult third-party evaluations, and engage with experts to pick effective projects that support positive outcomes for people and the planet we call home. If a project fails to meet our ongoing evaluation standards, it is removed from our portfolio.

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Our evaluation criteria are broken into measures of carbon integrity and measures of transformative potential.

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Carbon Integrity Criteria

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We screen carbon offset and removal providers to ensure the integrity of the carbon credits from their projects. Projects must, at their core, actually reduce or remove the carbon they claim to. The five measures of carbon integrity we use for our evaluation are:

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1. Verifiability: The carbon reduction or removal must be measured or rigorously evaluated by a trustworthy, independent third party.
2. Enforceability: The offset vendor must provide evidence that the carbon credits issued from a project are sold once and retired. Credits must be backed by a contract that defines exclusive ownership.
3. Additionality: A project must demonstrate strong evidence that it is not taking credit for carbon reduction or removal that would have happened already, without the project.
4. Permanence: To stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, long-term carbon removal and storage is critical. Commons is curating a selection of projects that balance short-term and long-term carbon storage.
5. Transparency: We seek to work with partners that demonstrate operational transparency, and provide specific, clear, well-documented evidence of carbon reduction and removal.

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Transformative Potential Criteria

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Addressing the climate crisis will require fundamentally transforming our markets and society. We prioritize projects that improve the state of carbon markets and contribute to creating a world for all life to thrive. The five measures of transformative potential we use for our evaluation are:

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1. Efficiency: Commons aims to support a more efficient and direct market for offsets. Commons favors options that provide a higher percent of overall cost to project owners.
2. Scalability: Commons favors scalable projects that can meaningfully contribute to reaching global “Drawdown”— when levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to steadily decline — by 2050.
3. Catalytic Potential: Commons prioritizes projects that advance innovation, demonstrate replicability, and inspire similar future projects.
4. Ecosystem Benefits: We support projects that create benefits to natural ecosystems beyond carbon reduction, including conservation, biodiversity, and climate adaptation benefits.
5. Community Benefits: The climate crisis presents enormous equity and justice challenges. We prioritize projects that will benefit the poorest and most vulnerable populations who are affected most by changing climates.

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Commons' Carbon Portfolio

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Supporting carbon offsets can be a powerful way to invest in green technologies and protect natural ecosystems. But they aren’t a silver bullet – each project has a unique set of risks.

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With the Commons Offset Portfolio, we do the work to maximize your impact. Just as you wouldn’t put all your money into one stock – we don’t put all your dollars into a single offset project.

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To build the Commons Carbon Portfolio, our team of experts rigorously evaluated 24 offset projects to curate our diverse mix of six partners that meet our criteria. Our offset vetting includes deep dives into analyses by third party certifications and shared research with other rigorous, third-party buyers, scoring each partner across a range of carbon integrity and transformative potential criteria.

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Read the full evaluations at our open-source database →

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The resulting Commons Offset Portfolio includes a balanced mix of soil, forestry, ocean, and biomass offsetting partners:

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Learn more about the Commons Offset Portfolio → 

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^Sources

^{1. IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C}

^{2. World Economic Forum}